I feel the need to preface this by making it clear that I fully support the right to bear arms, and I have no issue with gun owners. That said, there's a time and a place to exercise that right, and protesting a town hall meeting is neither. This is doubly true when the one holding that particular meeting was the president himself! Oh, and for added fun, here's the dude:
Sign arguably advocating political violence? Check. Means to carry out violence, if desired? Check. Place where tempers are flaring (say, a political protest)? Check. The president himself on-site? That's a big check. Bad combination.
Nothing this guy did was illegal, sure, but I think gun owners would back me up when I say that gun ownership requires a measure of awareness and personal responsibility. Even if you are sure that you can control your temper, what about the guy next to you? Could he pull a gun out of your holster if HE lost control? There are just far too many ways for something like this to go horribly awry. Time and again the old adage is proven: Just because you can do something legally, that doesn't make it a good idea.
Exactly. Thanks for putting it so clearly.
ReplyDeleteAs somebody who is 100% pro gun ownership (but yet somehow has never owned one himself) I couldn't agree more with what you wrote. This was not the time or place. It's idiots like this (and maybe Ted Nugent) that give gun owners a bad name.
ReplyDeleteI agree entirely with you on this particular issue. I am a girl who has chosen to live alone for many years now, and instead of pretending nothing will ever happen to me I made the choice to have my firearms license and use them. While it is legal for me to have my weapons almost anywhere I go there are still places I do not feel as though I as a trained carrier should have my own. Far too many people think of guns as the end to a dispute just by drawing their weapons, but what they do not understand is that if you pull it, you better mean to use it, and just because you have one doesn't mean the other guy doesn't and won't use it. This is not the place for something of this magnitude, and yet again reaffrims my idea that this nation as a whole is getting totally out of control. Would it be ironic to say we need a reality check when we already have so much "reality" in our nation today?
ReplyDeleteThe Gadsden flag is a not sign of violence. Individual interpretation varies, but its intended as a symbol of liberty. However, watering the "tree of liberty", I have no words for. They always pick the most outrageous and, well, stupidest of the bunch to represent a whole group.
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