Sunday, November 22, 2015

"Open carry of firearms revives debate over rights, risks and norms."

The Denver Collectivist Compost weighs in: "Recent shootings in Colorado Springs again raise questions about open carry in a state with few restrictions on the practice."

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Carrying a firearm has absolutely zero, zip, to do with using or abusing firearms. Leftists often conflate possession itself as a matter of carrying, with use. Illinois law actually equates possession with unlawful use. Yes, possession itself is unlawful use. This in the face of possession itself being a core fundamental right! Their answer, their position, is that if you wouldn't carry, wouldn't possess, wouldn't have access to, then there wouldn't be killings. Uh huh, cuz people don't strangle, stab or otherwise kill others, eh? The whole damn thing is built upon a false premise. It is best described by switching pencil with gun.

Can a person possess a pencil with it using or abusing it? Of course, anyone but a blatant liar will admit the truth there. Of course a person can possess a pencil without using it. But why carry that pencil? Well gee man, maybe they might catch a thought and want to write it down! Regardless of reason, they have a right to possess that pencil - in a moment they expect not to expect. Whether they "need" that pencil has no merit in a banning pencil carry argument and everyone can see that plainly.

Folks are to be mandated to hide their pencils from view ? Really? Reporters are going to claim that? Hardly. Not a chance of it. So then why does the pencil scenario matter? What's the purpose? Simple. Even SCOTUS has admitted what is true. The Second Amendment is no different than the First Amendment. What is good for the goose is good for the gander. Restrictions and prohibitions fitting one must also fit the other. To this reporters balk but are then squashed by this simple statement. One can stab another in the neck with a pencil and commit murder in doing so. Ironically, a person could be exercising self defense with that pencil to the neck as well! And with that the truth is undeniable.

Carriage, or its manner, matters not. Usage is what matters as a point of law and regulation. Carriage itself shall not be infringed. Period.

Uncle Elmo said...

And what was the banner ad that greeted me on the top of the Denver Post website?

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From Bluebird Botanicals, the trusted source for Cannabidiol.

And I thought life in California was strange.

CzarChasmIII said...

From the linked article:

""Folks have a right to carry weapons," said Rick Brandt, chief of the Evans Police Department and president of the Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police. "So when we respond on those calls, you really don't know if you're dealing with an individual simply exercising his right or an individual trying to draw a law enforcement officer into a confrontation — or, as in Colorado Springs, somebody out there intent on harming innocents."

Ironically, We, The People no longer know the same about many of the cops under the command of Chief Brandt, or any other law enforcement management-type in any other jurisdiction. For open carriers, of which I am one, it is the overriding concern during an encounter with law enforcement. Most of us do it anyway not because we are trying to trap cops into dishonoring their oaths, but because we believe that OC actually offers a visible deterrent to being victimized by the "average" thug who's just looking for an easy mark. It's no guarantee that we'll never be victimized, or attempted to be, anymore than concealed carry is a guarantee that the CC'er will come out on top in every confrontation, but it gives that "average" thug, or thugs, something to think about before they instigate a confrontation, and that absolutely never even has the potential to happen while CC'ing.

I take it that Hickenlooper's Intolerable Act from a couple of years ago didn't address open carry at all? If true, that "oversight" will be rectified in short order, I'm sure. Unfortunately, OC is not difficult for locales to curtail to virtual non-existence because there are so few of us willing to deal with cops and stand for our rights in the first place, and even CC'ers and other gun owners routinely talk OC down as if it's somehow not covered under the 2nd Amendment or something. I doubt there's a large contingent of such folks here on this blog, but they are everywhere else on gun forums, blogs and even on the street. It's amazing how many gun owners love the permit systems, but hate the freemen who OC without a need for a permit. Schizophrenia is alive and well amongst American gun owners.

CzarChasmIII

Chiu ChunLing said...

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Certainly, some men may prefer to be armed so as to better defend themselves against threats from criminals (or other animals). Certainly, the right to defend oneself against criminal aggression is a fundamental right, something that cannot be transgressed or violated for any purpose other than to enable crime and injure the innocent (it could also, of course, be done to no purpose at all, no purpose not being any purpose).

Government should have no power to infringe any right without serving some valid public need. What the Second Amendment extraordinarily and correctly notes is that a free nation has a valid public need for armed citizens. Any nation which does not have need of an armed citizenry is not free. It is said by some that the Second Amendment does not grant us any right we do not possess by nature, and this is true enough. But it does establish that the infringement of this right cannot, in principle, ever serve any valid public need in America. No "national/public security need" can ever be advanced by prohibiting arms to the ordinary citizens of the United States. Any suggestion that it could is, by implication, a suggestion that America is or must become an unfree nation.

It is a point which is disputed by some. But we must be very clear in our response. Yes, the armed citizen may be an inconvenience or danger to a police state, or a totalitarian regime, or a nation which depends on the enslavement of the people. But if we live in a free nation, then the armed citizen is an essential component of our security, not a threat to it.

NorthGunner said...

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Yours In Liberty!
Steve Kristmann III