SWATing because GUN!

According to an article by Charles C. W. Cooke in National Review Online, this is what our anti-gun fellow citizens are thinking, and apparently actually doing:

‘You see a GunFilth waving its penis substitute, exit, call police. Armed robbery in progress.” So wrote Twitter user “Little Black Dog” on September 13 of this year.

The injunction was a particularly colorful one, but the idea behind it, alas, is not as uncommon as one might wish. “I see you #opencarry with a gun in public,” a man named “joe villa” threatened earlier this week, “i’m calling the cops. psycho behaving erratic. make your day.” A translation for the more literate among us: “The law be damned; exercise your rights under the law and I’ll threaten your life.”

or this:

Reacting to a photograph of a man standing at a checkout with a handgun holstered upon his hip, mom-who-demands-action Joyce Ward asks, “Why weren’t the police called immediately?” And “why,” Ward continues, “wasn’t he shot by the police for having a weapon”? Fellow poster Lisa McLogan Shaheen has a similar inquiry, wondering, “Why hasn’t someone called 911 so the cops can gun him down?”

This sort of reaction is the reason I choose to carry concealed. These people are advocating murder by proxy, in this case using the police as a murder squad. These men, or women, were not threatening anyone, merely publicly carrying a weapon, which is not a crime, and actually shows good common sense. But I choose instead to emulate the cat.  After all, a cat has sharp claws, capable of rending flesh, and with which it can in very short order inflict hundreds of cuts to the body or an opponent. But, the cat usually keeps its claws sheathed. It usually appears to be a harmless fuzzball unless attacked.  On the other hand, people who are advocating SWATing open carriers who are doing nothing wrong are bearing false witness against fellow citizens. Whether the intent is to merely scare them, or to have them "gunned down" as one commenter stated, doing something like this is despicable and revolting.

That said, I sympathize with the Open Carry movement, and share its goals.  The ultimate solution for both concealed carriers and open carriers is to have what has been dubbed Constitutional carry.  Concealed carriers are people who have gone through background criminal checks, been fingerprinted, and taken mandatory State training to obtain a license to practice what should be a Constitutional right.  As such, the government knows if we have guns, and we would likely be the first they came after if, as some have advocated, they decided to confiscate guns.  Not likely in North Carolina at the moment, but things can change.

Some would say that my risks of being killed or seriously injured by criminals, or now we are facing our Muslim brothers as well, are pretty low, to which I say "Thank god."  I would not want to have to shoot someone, and I am the type that tries very hard to avoid conflicts which might erupt and put me in these situations.  I carry my weapon as insurance. You have insurance on your car, right?  Do you intend to get into an accident?  You have health insurance, right?  Do you intend to get sick?  You have life insurance, right?  Do you intend to die prematurely?  The issue of carrying a gun for protection is an emotional one for many people, but for me it comes down to risk, and I evaluate those risks as small, but not small enough to ignore.

Further, using Leftist words against obvious Leftist, who are you to judge?  If a single mom with small children has been attacked in her home by a crazed ex, I will not find fault with her carrying all day, every day, whether at home or abroad.  If a guy has a job that sometimes takes him to a sketchy neighborhood, I certainly understand why he might want to carry a gun with him.  Would you rather that such neighborhoods receive no service because a few drug gangs set up shop there?  You meet all sorts out in public, of whose background and situation you are totally unaware.  Perhaps the guy you just SWATed is an off duty police officer buying groceries for his family.

The open-carry movement can at times be needlessly provocative, unforgivably impolite, and depressingly counter-productive. Mom’s Demand Action’s mawkish and narcissistic hoplophobia to one side, I share the concern of those who feel that some advocates of the right to bear arms have traded justifiable concern regarding the integrity of their rights for gratuitousness, confrontation, and vanity. Nevertheless, there are constructive and there are disastrous ways of establishing social and legal bright lines, and the proposals that are simmering around the gun-control movement’s fringes fall decidedly into the latter camp. Having been widely chastised for their stupidity, both “Little Black Dog” and “joe villa” removed their boorish warnings and slunk, chastened, back into their festering holes. Their friendlier allies at MDA and beyond would do well to follow suit, politely advising the hotheads that this really isn’t a game.

Exactly.