I know you are but what am I?
by digby
Salon is featuring a great piece by an anti-gun proliferation activist from Nebraska describing what it’s like dealing with the Open Carry zealots. Her group came to the attention of a local pro-gun shock jock and all hell broke loose. In the end the radio talker managed to tar the anti-proliferation people as dangerous potential “school shooters” evidently because the gun nuts have convinced themselves that the only people who commit mass killings are liberals who, by definition, are against guns. You have to admire the mental agility required for that level of rationalization.
Anyway, I was most intrigued by this anecdote:
Gun violence prevention activists in Oklahoma had a similar run-in with willful misinformation in right-wing media a few months ago. Volunteers from Moms Demand Action as well as unaffiliated gun reformists had gone to a farmer’s market in Tulsa to get people to pledge to be gun-sense voters. A group of open carry activists came to the farmer’s market armed to confront the volunteers. When it began to rain the volunteers left for Chipotle, which they had advertised on Facebook, and arrived there to find open carriers already awaiting them. When a volunteer asked if Chipotle had a policy prohibiting weapons — the company had recently announced one — the manager said she had seen a memo about it but was unaware of any official policy on the matter. The open carriers continued the “conversation” about gun rights, and eventually the volunteers left with no further interaction with the management.
This didn’t stop one of the open carriers from writing a fact-scant propaganda piece for the website Freedom Outpost, whose recent headlines include “Obama to Force Militant Homosexual Agenda on Entire World” and “What More Can Barack Obama Do to Destroy America Before He Leaves Office?” In the piece, the author admits to taking a group of armed men to Chipotle to confront the unarmed volunteers. He acknowledges that Chipotle doesn’t want open carry in its stores and says they expected they would be asked to leave. Yet he claims that the gun reformists — whom they had forced into an armed encounter at a restaurant with a no open carry policy — were kicked out for “rude behavior.” Chipotle refuses to comment on the incident, but the agreed upon facts — that openly armed men followed unarmed volunteers to a place that tries to prohibit open carry — make the idea that the gun extremists were somehow the victims prima facie absurd.
Absurd as to the rationalization yes. But the implication of the story is very, very clear. If you want to protest the proliferation of guns you are free to do it. Just be prepared to face down armed counter protesters.
That’s what we call freedom in America. — if America were run by the mafia. After all, they didn’t have to actually shoot anyone to get their way. They’d just show up, flash their guns and tell the store owner, “nice little store you have here — be a shame if anything happened to it.”Those protesters would be foolish to press their case in the presence of these “good guys with guns,” either. Political disputes have a way of getting out of hand at times. It just doesn’t make a lot of sense to argue with people who are packing heat.
But turning the protesters into the “rude” ones who were asked to leave by management was an extra savvy touch. See, these good guys with guns needed to be armed. How else could they have protected themselves from these liberals? After all, they are irrational weirdos who are shooting up schools and movie theatres.
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