Please to explain for the hard of understanding...

[glatt]

People doing open carry are attention whores.

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by glatt

People doing open carry are attention whores.

In stead of a whore, couldn't they be a person who maybe inherited grandpa's pistola, but, doesn't have the financial means to obtain a concealed carry permit when the fees/classes can cost more than a lot of guns do?

In that situation wouldn't that person be discriminated against, financially?

Would he not be entitled to self-defense, just like the CCW permitted folks?

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Gravdigr

In stead of a whore....

Of course. I made a very blanket statement that is easily proven wrong with any number of examples.

However, there is much truth in it.

[sexobon]

Originally Posted by glatt

People doing open carry are attention whores.

Originally Posted by glatt

Of course. I made a very blanket statement that is easily proven wrong with any number of examples.

However, there is much truth in it.

IYHO, how much? To what percentage of people who open carry do you attribute attention seeking as the predominant reason rather than any other reason? No need to be precise, perhaps you could round it off to the nearest 25% for us.

[henry quirk]

Seems to me, there are only two reasons -- if you're not law enforcement -- to openly carry a firearm.

1-You live in a place or circumstance where there is a great likelihood you'll need to self-defend.

2-You desperately want to be noticed.

If you live in Utopia, Anystate, America, and you have a rifle slung across your back or a pistol holstered at the hip, you're probably an 'attention whore'.

If you live Ruraltown, Anystate, America, and you lug around a rifle or pistol, you may have practical reasons for doing so (though it's more likely the rifle will be in a rack in your truck and the holstered pistol hanging from that rack).

Again: all this open carry nonsense (the growing movement, the dangers involved, the protection of second amendment rights, etc.) is just another marketing deal foisted up by those uber-vocal minorities I mentioned up-thread.

Simply: there are folks who can profit (in one way or another) from the 'controversy' and so they (those profit-minded folks) generate the issue (inflate tiny little blips into big honkin' blimps).


As for concealed carry: I'm against it. If Joe wants to carry (for whatever reason) let it be openly.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Well, DanaC, the politics of guns in America springs entirely from America being organized as a Republic, never a Kingdom -- and in 1775 and 1812 there were a couple of rather intense discussions on the topic between the two. Artillery arguments, it's fair to say.

The fundamental idea of a republic is that every scrap of political power is ultimately sourced from the electorate -- and a bit from those associating with the electorate but not in it. Of late that is a vanishingly small population segment, but at one time it was half the adult population of the United States. Until the 19th Amendment finished that up.

To function as an electorate in a Republic, the electorate must be powerful, not emasculated. The power of life and death is about as direct as power can get. Power of life and death over the apparatus of the Government keeps the government as the people's servant, right where it belongs. The power to kill is a crude power, yes. But crude power converts readily into refined power, such as that of the ballot.

This was one of the first reasons guns should be kept. Citizen police powers, which is the rubric under which lawful use of force defending self and property and the life and property of others, is another of the first ones -- the invention of modern police departments was still some fifty or sixty years in the future, and the establishment of police departments does not supplant self defense by force. It is instead at bottom an aid to it -- professional, dedicated service to be an adjunct to the completely inalienable right of self defense.

Latterly, another compelling reason arose from these: that We the People have a right not to suffer genocide. Like police powers, this too is rooted in forcible self defense -- calm suasion is not how genocide gets done; it's always deadly force of course. Genocide was not something the Founding Fathers had any experience of, or they might have inserted something in the Second Amendment about it. But it's still true that armed populations do not suffer genocides, and genocides happen in places where the populations are not armed. There are a couple other precursors of genocides too, but the critical one is that the population not have arms. But a population with a lot of arms the Einsatzkommandos cannot tackle -- they are invariably outnumbered; they can only make up the difference in numbers if they are the only ones possessing killing tools.

If they are not, genocides do not happen. Genocides are very very bad things, as all agree: they're nasty enough that it's worth paying a pretty hefty price to escape. Hefty prices may be accounted in treasure or in lives. But having a genocide condemns at least the character of whole peoples. That stain is not a pretty one either.