Steve Blow thinks open carry makes you grown-up brat

A man with a name like Steve Blow should be the last person insulting anyone, take a look at his garbage he wrote:

 

Somehow, one of the mantras of modern parenting became “use your words.”

I’d hear moms sing-songing that phrase to misbehaving kids and I’d want to smack ’em. The moms, I mean, not the kids.

But now I find myself wanting to use those very words with a very different bunch: the grown-up brats carrying assault rifles into stores and restaurants.

Like kids throwing a tantrum, they’re trying to get their way by bad behavior. And I want to shout: “Use your words!”

Put down the guns and use your words.
Source: http://www.dallasnews.com/news/columnists/steve-blow/20140621-memo-to-open-carry-backers-say-your-piece–but-dont-brandish-it.ece

Sometimes you have to sit in the front of the bus, sometimes words are not enough.

 

Their method has overwhelmed their message. They want to make it legal to openly carry handguns in Texas. But all we’re talking about is their tactic of carrying rifles around.

Let’s try to be a little more adult about it today and discuss the real issue.

C.J. Grisham is president of Open Carry Texas. When I asked him for the arguments in favor, he started in an unexpected place.

“Concealed carry discriminates against women,” he said. Female clothing styles make it hard to hide a weapon. “So their only option is a purse, and that’s the number one target of thieves.”

Concealed carry also becomes difficult for men, he said, when they need to wear a shirt tucked in. “Like going to church,” he said.

Those are great points, specially when women are wearing skirts or tight jeans. Another great point is that the 2nd Amendment does not read “the right to keep and bear concealed arms.”

 

But the most important reasons are safety and crime prevention, he said. “It has been proven throughout the country that open carry is a crime deterrent.”

Well, no, actually not. Gary Kleck is the country’s leading expert on gun policy and public safety. He’s a professor of criminology at Florida State University and he said he doesn’t know of any research or real-world evidence on the effects of open carry.

The best that Grisham could offer is that when Arizona approved unrestricted carry six years ago, crime trends did not change — up or down.

Our rights have nothing to do with public safety, and while open carry is legal, it’s not widely practiced, so finding stories about open carriers shooting criminals is complicated.

 

And by the way, unrestricted open carry is what the advocates want. It’s not just the right to openly carry a pistol but also the right to do it without any training, screening or permit.

“Constitutional carry,” they call it. (Crazy, I call it.)

I guess Free Speech is crazy as well.

 

For the other side of the argument, I turned to the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. “At the heart of this is simply the corporate gun lobby promoting more guns in more places,” said Brian Malte, senior national policy director at the Brady Center.

“We don’t think that’s the answer to anything. The best way to stop a bad guy with a gun isn’t more guns. The best way is to make sure bad guys don’t get guns,” he said.

Sure, and the best way to stop rape is teach men not to rape. By the way, Sarah Brady has a permit to carry a concealed firearm, the Giffords own several guns, seems to me they’re not practicing what they preach. If guns are not the answer, let them disarm.

The Brady Center seeks to extend background checks to virtually all gun sales. It doesn’t oppose concealed carry as long it includes a rigorous background check.

Unless we buy  the gun from a private seller, we already went though a rigorous FEDERAL background check.

Open carry creates fear and intimidation for citizens, Malte said. And for law enforcement, it creates time-wasting “person with gun” calls and confusion at active-shooter scenes.

1. Hoodie-wearing thugs create fear and intimidation, yet unless they’re engaging in violence, they have the right to wear whatever they want

2. I’ve had bottles thrown at me, that created far more fear and intimidation than my brothers in arms open carrying their weapons

3. Open carry creates a polite society, it forces people not to act like dangerous animals, not to pick up fights, not to bother strangers. As Meyer Lansky said it when he visited Israel, ‘when everybody has a gun, everybody’s polite.”  Yes, Meyer was with the mafia, but right is right regardless of who said it.

OK, here’s my prediction: This ends up being a lot of hoopla over nothing.

I predicted the same 19 years ago when the controversial concealed-carry law was passed in Texas. No rash of gunfights in the street. No surge of bad guys shot down either.

I say you won’t see much effect from a law that extends our common-sense regulation of concealed carry to include open carry, too.

So if it’s a hoopla over nothing why not defend open carry instead of attacking it? Why not attack the insane hoplophobes who fear our guns? Open carry of rifles isn’t subject to “common-sense regulation” in Texas, yet there’s no rash of gunfights in the street. Thus your demand for regulation is proven wrong by your own words.

The truth is that almost none of us really needs to carry a gun. The threat of violent crime is tiny for most of us.

And if we live in households with children or depression or substance abuse or anger, the presence of a gun greatly increases the danger, not lowers it.

Whatever we decide on the matter, let’s base it on words, not bad manners.

1. More than a million people defend themselves with guns every year, tell them that they didn’t need to carry a gun

2. Kids today sometimes steal their parent’s pills and create drug cocktails with them, so thinking that removing the guns keep us safe is flawed. Good parents keep us safe, and being a good parent is not removing a gun but teaching your kid how to use it, when to touch it, and dealing with whatever issues your children have

3. If you’re going to lecture us on good manners, let’s start with you. I don’t appreciate being called a grown-up brat because I support open carry. I don’t like being told I’m a kid throwing a tantrum. C.J. Grisham and Open Carry Texas have done nothing wrong, they haven’t intimidated anyone, they haven’t attacked anyone, nobody has gotten shot, there hasn’t been any gun accidents,so here’s my advice to you, Steve Blow, healer, heal thyself.

Let Mr. Blow know what you think: 

 

 

 

One Response to Steve Blow thinks open carry makes you grown-up brat

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