{"id":43616,"date":"2014-05-09T07:00:29","date_gmt":"2014-05-09T12:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=43616"},"modified":"2014-05-08T08:58:53","modified_gmt":"2014-05-08T13:58:53","slug":"a-vote-against-transparency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=43616","title":{"rendered":"A Vote Against “Transparency”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I get why people open-carry.<\/p>\n

Logistically, it’s less of a hassle; wearing a holster on the outside is more comfortable, and quicker to get to if, heaven forfend, you need to use your gun in a hurry. And I get the political motivation behind the “Open Carry” movement as well; “If you don’t use your rights, you lose them”, say its proponents, and I don’t disagree.<\/p>\n

But if I (hypothetically)\u00a0did<\/em>\u00a0own a firearm, and\u00a0did\u00a0<\/em>want to carry (again, hypothetically), I imagine I’d still carry concealed. \u00a0Partly it’s because I see no reason to let any neer-do-wells know that I’m the guy they have to worry about\u00a0first<\/em>. \u00a0And partly because the urban culture among which I live has so painstakingly trained the law-abiding citizen to be such ninnies around guns.<\/p>\n

As we see in this story from Fort Worth<\/a>, in which the news reports claimed fast food workers ran for the freezer at the sight of guys with guns:<\/p>\n

It turned out the men, some of them from the group Open Carry Texas, were just staging a demonstration of their right to bear arms, Fort Worth, Texas, Police Sgt. Raymond Bush told ABCNews.com.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen police showed up, there were four to six men carrying rifles,\u201d he said. \u201cThe employees were in fear for their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

No arrests were made and the gun owners went home after their demonstration.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, the media are among those that’ve been training urban society to be ninnies, so you can usually count on them getting the story wrong:<\/p>\n

[Demonstration organizer CJ] Grisham denied reports employees hid in the freezer, claiming they were the result of a customer’s false 911 call.<\/p>\n

“There are a lot of people in that area who completely disagree with gun rights,” he said. “They have been doing this to us for months now – call the police with false reports of us waving around guns, scaring people.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s worth noting that here in the Twin Cities, a pro-carry group<\/a> has been staging such demonstrations for months, now . And even in ninny-run Saint Paul, their “demonstration” – which involved eating at a Culver’s on University Avenue – went smoothly, with neither gunfire nor police response.<\/p>\n

Still – I figure that\u00a0if\u00a0<\/em>I owned and carried firearms (hypothetically), I’m one ninny away from having a very complicated day. \u00a0And I have enough complications – and that’s\u00a0not\u00a0<\/em>hypothetical.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I get why people open-carry. Logistically, it’s less of a hassle; wearing a holster on the outside is more comfortable, and quicker to get to if, heaven forfend, you need to use your gun in a hurry. And I get the political motivation behind the “Open Carry” movement as well; “If you don’t use your […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gun-free-zones","category-victim-disarmament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43616"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43650,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43616\/revisions\/43650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}