soiled pantaloons

Brits must go through a lot of knickers, at least if Alex Hannaford’s most recent column is any indication. I doubt I will have the stamina or the inclination to fisk the entire thing, but I will try and hit the low points.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I had some friends over for dinner. I’m not quite sure how we got on to the subject, but it transpired that one of them carried a gun in her purse. Now this freaked me out slightly, not just because I’m British, but also because I didn’t think any of our friends in Texas felt the need to carry guns. She tried to reassure us that she’d been to the firing range earlier that day to practice (in case, presumably, we thought she was a bad shot).

Basically, what Alex is saying here is that he does not trust his friends. After all, he suddenly felt very uncomfortable when it came to light that the friend in question routinely went about her life peaceably armed, and given that firearms are inanimate, non-motile, non-sentient lumps of metal, he cannot exactly feel uncomfortable about them (Oh noes! That lawn ornament makes me feel all jittery.), but rather what he feels uncomfortable about is the prospect of this supposed friend of his being armed. If he actually trusted the individual, the armament the person was or was not caring would not matter to Alex’s overall comfort level, given that he could rest assured that the friend would not do anything untowards with the firearm (given that firearms cannot exactly go about shooting people all by their little lonesomes). That Alex felt uncomfortable with his friends potentially being armed says a copious amount about him and his own personal issues, rather than anyone else.
Additionally, the need fallacy has already been dealt with sufficiently at this weblog, but suffice to say that “need” may or may not factor into their decisions to arm themselves, and whether it does or does not is absolutely none of Alex’s business, or anyone else’s, for that matter.

Quite aside from the question of why she was even carrying a gun (to defend herself, she said, even though in Austin, a city of just under 750,000 people, there were just 30 murders last year, compared to, say, the London borough of Lambeth, population 273,000, where there were 23), at least she’d left it in her car. The law in Texas states that you must conceal your gun if you own one. But a group of gun advocates is targeting lawmakers here to get them to permit wearing handguns in plain view.

Hm, lemme see. Austin, a city in a state with relatively friendly firearm-related laws, in a nation of relatively friendly firearm-related laws (I use the term “relatively” intentionally – I would prefer our firearm-related laws to be less redundant, less restrictive of law-abiding citizens, more specific, and better enforced, but that is another topic for another day.), and a place where law-abiding citizens can go about armed, has a murder rate of around 0.004%. Lambeth, on the other hand, is a city in a country with positively draconian firearm-related laws, where no citizens can lawfully carry a firearm to defend themselves, and has a murder rate of approximately 0.008%.
Hm. The murder rate doubles in a place where citizens are incapable of effectively, legally defending themselves. Never would have guessed.
As for Alex’s friend leaving her firearm outside in the car, Alex, at least, seems relieved things worked out that way, but I am of two minds on the topic. On the one hand, we have L. Neil Smith’s quote:

Wear a gun to someone else’s house, you’re saying, ‘I’ll defend this home as if it were my own.’ When your guests see you carry a weapon, you’re telling them, ‘I’ll defend you as if you were my own family.’ And anyone who objects levels the deadliest insult possible: ‘I don’t trust you unless you’re rendered harmless’!”

But on the other hand, I have my belief in the inviolate nature of a person’s private property – if someone does not want a firearm in their house, it is their bloody house, and their rules are final. Now, if the question is never asked, the rule would probably never be spoken, and if it were, I would have to think carefully about returning to that abode…
As for the current movement for the legalization of open carry in Texas, I have to admit I was surprised that the Lone Star State was one of only six states in the entire union (as mentioned later in the article) to outright ban open carry. Speaking from personal experience, were I to carry in Florida and my firearm be exposed, I could be arraigned on charges of intimidation, inciting panic, or any of a number of other alternatives. However, here in Tennessee, with my handgun carry permit I can carry my firearm in whatever degree of concealment or openness I so desire. Texas, though, is… well… Texas, and I really have to wonder how/when open carry got banned.

But why, in a country where gun ownership is enshrined in law, are there people who want to have them on display? Surely as long as the man standing next to you in line at the grocery store isn’t visibly packing heat, you won’t start sweating and making for the nearest exit. Back in 1999, a friend and I hitched a ride in a Long Island suburb, and five minutes into the journey we realised our driver was wearing a pistol. It turned out he was a plain-clothed police officer, but the damage to my nerves was already done. I think if Americans must exercise their right to bear arms, they should do so in private where it can’t hurt anybody (or have I missed the point?).

In answer to your question, Alex, yes, you have most definitely missed the point. If the only place you can exercise a natural, Constitutionally-protected right is “in private”, then you may as well not have the right at all. You have just attempted to relegate that right to the realm of the embarassing sweater your auntie gave to you when you were ten… you never wore it, and it eventually got moth-eaten and musty sitting in your closet for years on end. You may as well have never had the dumb thing, and by the time you got back around to it, you had to throw it out. Speaking personally, I would rather not see the same kind of fate befall my rights (nothing personal against your aunt or her tastes in sweaters) – simply put, a right not exercised is a right lost.
As for the rest of your panty-twisting hypothesis and trouser-besmirtching anecdote, I would not “start sweating and making for the nearest exit” whether the man next to me in line at Kroger was or was not carrying a firearm. If he was openly carrying a firearm, I would note it, maybe see what make/model it was without being too intrusive (I am curious like that), and simply leave it at that. If he was carrying a concealed firearm… well, I would never know when to “start sweating”, now would I? And, I hate to break it to you Alex, but in Texas, I would give fairly good odds that you have already encountered at least one person in a grocery line who was armed, and you would never have had a clue. Scary, huh? So what are you going to do now? Start flinching away from everyone because they just might have a gun on them?
Give me a frakking break. Guns are not scary. Well, actually, it is sometimes scary what people do to otherwise unassuming firearms, but when you get right down to it, firearms are nothing more than a finely-crafted, relatively expensive lumps of metal. What is next? Are you going to start getting all damp in the armpits every time you happen across a knife? Well, you are a Brit… How about a car? What about a thick, chunky necklace? A piano? Because, the fact is, those items, or pieces from those items, can be used to kill you almost as effectively (or sometimes more effectively, depending on the practice and training of the assailant in question) as a firearm, and they are all either more-easily concealable, or more commonplace, or both, than firearms in general. However, there is one common thread tying together the firearm, knife, car, necklace, and piano, and it is not that they are all made out of metal (unless your totemification of items extends to elements as well) – rather, it is the intent of the user. What is dangerous is the man pulling the trigger, plunging the knife, flooring the car, etc. etc. etc., not the items themselves.

When I tell Stollenwerk my theory that I’d feel far more comfortable not knowing someone has a gun on them, he calls me an ostrich. “You prefer to stick your head in the sand – that if you don’t know about it you won’t be scared,” he says. “But think about it for a while. Think: ‘Maybe some of my neighbours and friends do carry guns. And I might like it someday if there’s an active shooter in Wal-Mart and they disrupt him while I run out of the front door.’”

Let me make this as simple for you as I can: your friend (Stollenwerk) is right.

Opencarry.org, which has a picture of a sultry looking woman standing with her arms folded wearing a gun in a holster, includes a quote from anthropologist Charles Springwood of Illinois Wesleyan University. Springwood says open carriers are trying to “naturalise the presence of guns, which means that guns become ordinary, omnipresent and expected. Over time, the gun becomes a symbol of ordinary personhood.”

I am not entirely sure that I agree with using firerms as a symbol of anything (for instance, Alex’s entire problem with them seems to be that they symbolize danger, destruction, death, and possibly other words starting with ‘d’), but I completely agree with the rest of the sentiments put forward by Springwood. For some reason the act of displaying your intent to protect and defend you and yours has somehow become taboo or shameful, it is high time for that kind of mentality to stop, and the only way to effectively ensure it does is to reintroduce the concept of an armed populace back into the minds of the American people. Concealed carry was a partial step in the right direction, but it is still “in the closet” – something the average citizen can sweep under the carpet because he or she never sees anything related to it (out of sight, out of mind). I am not sure if open carrying is right for me, for various reasons, but I see absolutely no reason to try and remove the choice from others who are willing to make it.
Unfortunately, not everyone shares my tolerance.

On one internet discussion board, someone calling himself Grassy K Badge Man says: “I am a supporter of firearms, but not really in social settings”, while Marksman says open carry is not good from a strategic standpoint: “You don’t want to give a violent criminal the tactical advantage of taking out the biggest threat they can openly see first. The vast majority of police officers carry concealed while off duty. It’s no longer customary to carry guns openly in American society; therefore, there is no reason to draw attention to yourself by making others nervous when you don’t have to.”

So, just because it is no longer customary, it should not be legally possible? Boy, you could really go off the deep end with that kind of “logic”, without really a whole lot of effort at all.
Furthermore, open carriers are not making anyone do anything – if people get nervous around other people wearing firearms, that is the choice of the nervous person. They would not be nervous around the same person if he or she was disarmed, because societal contracts and constructs typically prevent that person from reaching out and bodily assaulting anyone else. In the same vein, laws, morals, and society keep the vast majority of concealed and open carriers from indiscriminately shooting down people whenever they feel the inclination. The presence of a firearm does not change that equation in the slightest bit – it neither makes the wearer more law-abiding, nor less.
As for the tactical situation of carrying a firearm openly, that is a matter for the carrier to decide on his or her own; for instance, I consider it tactically unwise to go about your life unarmed, but that doing so is not illegal – tactics are a matter for individuals to decide, not governments.

Steven Gunn (that’s his real name) of the Gun Violence Prevention Centre of Utah, believes open carry is about “pure ego” and simply results in “inconsiderate boors walking around on the street carrying firearms openly, (most of whom) are trying to make a statement about the second amendment”.

What a gorramed idiot. So what if it is “pure ego”? So what if the people openly carrying are “inconsiderate boors”? So what if they are “trying to make a statement”? Drivers of high-performance sport cars, super-massive SUVs, and Piouses would probably qualify on some, if not all, of those categories (bloody hybrids never seem to be capable of actually getting up to highway speed…), and yet they are still legally permitted to go on driving. Since when should any of those subjective, abstract, emotional, biased concepts ever be the determining factor for the rule of law? Who the frak died and appointed Steven here the Grand and Sole Declarer of All Things Good and Wholesome?

I tend to agree. Although I sympathise with Stollenwerk that the law needs clarifying, I think if people must play with big boys’ toys, they should do so at a firing range or otherwise keep them under lock and key. If our friend had turned up and put her Glock on the kitchen counter while she enjoyed dinner, I think I would have been more than a little nervous – particularly if I’d said something to offend her.

Well, I tend to believe you, too, are a gorramed idiot. I think that if people want to acknowledge that they, alone, are responsible for their own safety and security, and then equip and train themselves with modern tools to help defend themselves, they should not only be allowed to do so, but encouraged.
However, I know that laws should not be written, rights should not be infringed, and people should not be controlled simply because other people think things without any logical or rational basis, or have a purely emotional response to non-sentient, non-mind-controlling, non-motile, incapable-of-independent-action lumps of metal.
As for your continued diarrhetic anecdotes, you know what they say (though the author of the linked webpage takes an additional, different tack with the phrase as well).