Security Theatre

Kurt Hoffman has a St. Louis Gun Rights examiner piece entitled Honor Martin Luther King by Defeating Racism Inherent to Gun Control,which got me thinking. Check it out.   The truth about gun control can be found first in the South, where the white population was afraid of a slave rebellion.  After the war, they recognized the fundamental rights of their former slaves, to the point that they actively tried to deny them their rights.  Then there was Alan Korwin's piece on Diplomatic Carry. Go check that one out too.  Korwin points out that diplomats carry, and have significant body guards around them carrying, despite whatever laws may prevent them from doing so.  It is a sort of diplomatic exemption.  Korwin's point is that a diplomat's life isn't any more important than that of one of the "commoners."

Yesterday, a co-worker asked me how my weekend went, and we ended up discussing the Raleigh Gun Show put on by Dixie Gun and Knife shows, and the fact that Grass Roots North Carolina had done a land office business signing up new members (not, btw, due to anything I did. We had a new and enthusiastic member there.) He is from South Carolina, and was curious about the concealed carry permit system here in North Carolina. As I was explaining our shall issue system to him, suddenly, another person broke into the discussion to say that they had always been armed. "I would rather sit in jail than be dead," he said. He also pointed out that a concealed carry permit did not permit you to take it to very many places. I did not ask him if he were armed at that moment. Such would be a breach of etiquette among those who go armed. But good to know. Another says that "Hey, it's nobody's business if I am packin' or not." He is from New York, and he is correct. I have never advised anyone to do something illegal, and I did not do so this day either. Everyone needs to evaluate the risks according to their own lights, and act accordingly.

But all this got me to thinking about what is essentially Security Theatre, whether it is the TSA groping people, and finding your tube of toothpaste in your bag, or the Town of Garner posting "No Gun" signs on playgrounds. Crime can happen anywhere, at any time, to anyone, and it tends to happen where you least expect it. Coming out of your office at night, with no one else around, and suddenly there is some thug, and you hope all he wants is your money.  Wouldn't you wish you had a gun?

North Carolina doesn't want you to go into a place that charges you a price to go in, like a movie theatre, if you are carrying a gun. They don't want you to attend a parade if you are armed, or to run into a protest. They don't want you to take your family out to Ruby Tuesdays while armed, or to go to a hospital, or a financial institution (notice how broadly some of these things are defined.) All these victim disarmament zones are simply Security Theatre. The State will not guarantee your safety, and will not have anyone there to defend you. They also will not make the people who run these places have security on site to defend you. Instead, they depend on laws and signs to provide an illusion of safety. I know, from talking to a great many people that the illusion works on them, but I doubt it works on the criminal, and I know it doesn't work on the peaceably armed citizen who feels deeply the injustice of the State deciding for him where and when he can carry his self defense. I was in Ohio several years ago, right after the concealed carry law was passed in that State. I had gone to a range to get in a little practice. The range master and I struck up a conversation, and he mentioned that he had carried every day, everywhere he went, for 25 years.  He was another who believed it was better to be tried by 12 than carried by 6.