Open carry activists


Those who work against your interests are not doing you good, whatever they say they are doing. Any number of things may claimed to be for your own good, or for the public good, that are not good. Such claims are inherently unconvincing. An easy refutation is that I know what my own good is and you are not doing it. Quit doing me such favors.

The open carry activists need to stop what they are doing and listen to what everyone else is saying. This is not the right time for this fight, or this is not the right fight for these times. You're scaring the horses, so cut it out.

Most recently these self-appointed bubbas of 2nd Amendment righteousness have gotten Target stores to "request" they go away.

You know what? I'm requesting it too. Go away. If you think you are making a point by displaying your guns where it is not customary or welcome--even if it is, narrowly, legal--you'd better reconsider what point it is that you are actually making. Apply a test of results. Creating annoyance is not victory. Creating welcome and acceptance of gun owners and guns is victory, and you are not victorious. It's not victory to create lousy press that encourages the other side. It's not victory when one business after another closes its doors to people with guns, due to the ill conceived stunts of a few.

It has crossed my mind--wild thought--that these in-you-face open carry activists might be working against our interests intentionally. By "our" I mean gun owners' interests in general. But naah... That couldn't happen, right? Not in America, where everyone is on the up and up, and you never see a false flag. Tell me I'm right, somebody. Please.

If I look at the matter squarely, I cannot believe that the open carry movement is simply a case of good intentions gone wrong. There has to be something else going on. What they are doing gets consistently negative results--negative legislation, negative press and more and more businesses prohibiting guns on their premises. And yet these allegedly pro-gun activists keep on doing the things that produce these results. If it isn't a false flag operation, then maybe it is a matter of useful idiots, talked into doing things they do not understand. There must be some motive beyond their stated one. Otherwise the matter just doesn't add up. The right to bear arms is not advanced by bringing about further restrictions. You would think anyone would see that.

The only other explanation I've heard that is the least bit plausible is that they don't care about the harm they are doing. They are rewarded by their fellows' approval; they are happy to cause others distress while placing themselves in a weird limelight of public notoriety. They like the attention that comes from stirring people up. They love getting on YouTube. Could that be all there is to it, just a gang of attention seekers, unfortunately using guns as their props as they seek fifteen minutes of fame?

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