Good guy with a gun

[kiaa]

The NRA/GOP push for open carry without license or registration or training coupled with red state legislatures lowering the bar for self-defense = greater threat to the public at large:

The Kenosha shooting was the inevitable result after decades of the NRA’s twisted self-defense rhetoric

If you're going to have open carry in order for the citizenry to protect themselves and others from the bad guys with guns, then why not license them. First, there needs to be a minimum age. You don't need teen aged boys with high powered rifles loose in public and unsupervised. Second, it's common sense to require some tests to make sure that they are competent and know how to use their weapons safely.

You know, like we do with cars. You need a driver's license to operate one legally, and for good reason.

Yes, yes, I've heard of the Second Amendment. The Supreme Court has already allowed the infringement of the right to keep and bear arms. You already can't walk into a mall with a sword and a hand grenade. That infringes your right to keep and bear arms, but no one seems to care.

Sure, opinions may vary. I guess you could be just fine with "concealed carry" licenses if someone can show a need and passes some level of qualifications.

But really what's the point of open carry in any format? Ever stood behind "the guy at 7/11" wearing blue jeans/cowboy shirt/.45automatic strapped to his belt? It is uncomfortable and immediately creates a tension in the environment. Just not seeing a big upside.

The laws around gun carry are going to be challenging to reverse, let's face it (not unlike federal entitlement programs). The outcry may come from the minority but it would likely be loud and "election influencing".

No easy answers to this one, that's for sure.

Comments

[mahnmut]

Oh noes! The gun subject! If there's one thing I've learned during these years on the interwebz, it's to run away from this topic like from fire.

[dewline]

It's meant to make the person behind the counter of the store Uncomfortable. Especially with the race/ethnic angles we've all seen added into the American equation.

And Canadian law also sees gun ownership as deemed a Privilege, NOT a God(s')-Damned Right. Rightly so, in my opinion. The National Firearms Association is determined to reshape Canadian society in the image of the NRA's choosing, however, and the Conservative Party is happy to play along to whatever degree they can get away with.

[luzribeiro]

America is the only country in the world that allows brain-dead civilians to parade in public with weapons of mass murder.
This is insane.

[oportet]

The Kenosha shooting was the inevitable result of law enforcement being reduced, limited, or simply not doing their job.

Of course vigilantism was going to fill the void - either that or anarchy - neither ideal but if those are the choices I prefer the one that won out.

[garote]

So you’re saying that vigilantes are doing what cops otherwise would?

Or that if we had more armed cops roving around, vigilantes would be kept “in check”?

[oportet]

I'm saying (some) people will protect themselves, their homes, and their property if police can't do it or refuse to do it.

[garote]

Perhaps you need to draw a line between people protecting their property, and people going onto public property or other people's property and shooting strangers full of holes over differences of opinion.

[oportet]

Did this happen somewhere?

[garote]

Just yesterday, for example.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/30/us/michigan-oxford-high-school-incident/index.html

[oportet]

Is anyone defending this?

[garote]

If you think that what Kyle Rittenhouse did was "vigilantism" - a fair bet since you declared it so above - then you are.

[oportet]

How are the two similar or related at all? I said Rittenhouse was because it fits the definition, I never said this other shooting was.

[garote]

The connection seems pretty obvious to me. Person feels angst about other people in the vicinity, person gets firearm, person goes to public place and shoots strangers full of holes...

If you feel the need to split hairs and claim Rittenhouse is on one side of a line and this kid is on another, well, good luck to you. Rittenhouse's actions are indefensible, regardless of how thoroughly his own residence or the place he traveled to were being policed. The whole point of having more police present would, as I see it, be to prevent incidents like this, not to accomplish them by police means. There is no ground here for vigilantism to stand on.

There never is. There certainly wasn't when armed groups of vigilantes went onto the farmland of my ancestors in Oklahoma and plundered their homes and hauled the men away for the crime of being German immigrants during World War I. And there ain't now.

[oportet]

Rittenhouse's actions are indefensible

There was a trial and he was found not guilty - that's the opposite of indefensible.

I didn't mean that him shooting the people trying to harm/kill him was vigilantism - I meant him being armed in Kenosha in the first place was.

[garote]

There's legally defensible, and there's morally defensible. I'm comfortable saying that his actions are one but not the other.

I can see why you might think that having semi-random people drive in from surrounding areas with firearms is the proper response to the threat of a protest turning violent. I don't see it that way.

Standing on your property and waving a gun around will probably prevent your property from being damaged in a protest that turns into a riot. Probably. Go ahead and do that if you think it's the right thing to do. But bear in mind that the police should not be doing that for you. What vigilantes do is not what the police would, or should do, and in fact it usually works at cross-purposes. As such, vigilantes justifying what they do by claiming that the police are not doing it (as you are) is deeply ironic.

I've been in the thick of multiple protests in and around Oakland that were varying degrees of violent and varying degrees of contained, and by far the most successful response I've seen has been from trained riot response teams using non-lethal crowd control equipment and tactics that are definitely not part of the standard police playbook. Over the decades it's become abundantly clear that killing protestors - even violent agitators using the protests as cover - backfires dramatically and results in far more violence and property damage than it prevents. As was the case with Rittenhouse. He wasn't an idiot for showing up in Kenosha. But he was absolutely an idiot for bringing a rifle there, and then inserting himself deliberately into a situation where he would feel the need to use it to defend himself. That makes him more than an idiot in my book -- that makes him a piece of shit. Two people are dead because he wanted to play hero defending some fucking parked cars. The cops weren't standing around with rifles, you say? Gee, I wonder why they weren't doing that. I guess they just don't value parked cars the way they should.

Vigilantes use "lack of policing" as an excuse for stupidity. Same way violent criminals use protests as cover. Two stupidities do not cancel. That's not how stupidity works.