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What Didn’t Happen
After a month of horrible headlines — from the Islamist-inspired massacres in Orlando, France, and Germany, to a pair of (very different) shootings by police, to the assassinations of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge — it’s worth taking a moment to point out that the one incident the Left predicted didn’t actually happen. That is, despite Ohio’s open carry laws, handwringing op-eds from the usual suspects, and calls for Governor John Kasich to suspend the 2nd Amendment (he didn’t), and the hot tempers that often accompany Donald Trump, there wasn’t a single shooting around the GOP convention; from that perspective, the whole thing was a total disappointment. From an excellent piece in USA Today:
The city’s police union also pushed for a gun ban. Ohio Gov. John Kasich “could very easily do some kind of executive order or something — I don’t care if it’s constitutional at this point,” said Stephen Loomis, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association. “I want him to absolutely outlaw open-carry in Cuyahoga County until this (Republican National Convention) is over.”
Kasich resisted efforts to get him to abrogate the Constitution. “Ohio governors do not have the power to arbitrarily suspend federal and state constitutional rights or state laws as suggested,” he explained.
Major news organizations across the country cautioned that the sky was falling because of legal gun carriers, with many editorials illogically tying law-abiding citizens to future mass murder.
“The people vowing to swagger with their guns in Cleveland will, in a literal sense, be law-abiding,” editorialized The New York Times. “But their self-indulgence, backed by timorous politicians, can only make it easier for the next killer to obtain a military-style weapon in what amounts to an open market for mass mayhem.”
The upshot:
All the panicked warnings amounted to a big misfire. Chief Williams later admitted that open-carry wasn’t a problem, noting that “nobody’s been arrested or has challenged the things we asked them to do.” Part of the explanation for the surprise passivity is that media hysterics focused more on those law-abiding folks wanting to protect themselves instead of on real threats.
I’ve mixed feelings on open-carry. Done properly, it can normalize people to handguns and add convenience; done improperly, it can (rightly) confirm the hoplophobics’ worst fears and you can easily end-up like this fellow if you find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But the next time the Democrats play Chicken Little on guns, we might remind them of this.
Published in Guns
I loved reading this. The liberals truly believe that the Great Unwashed (everyone who isn’t them), if left to their own devices, will blow it every time. They crack me up.
Isn’t that the logic of open-carry? The likelihood of an attack goes down when any single attacker perceives that many others might respond. You’d think that the presence of so many guns would increase the odds of an attack, but instead, they decrease them.
Why? Because the presence of a gun is not the major variable in the equation; instead, it’s the balance between the one gun that an attacker might have versus the number of guns that could be brought to bear upon him. If no other gun is available, then each attacker’s gun carries more weight. If there are plenty of other guns around, and they’ll all be turned on you the instant you start shooting, your incentive to start shooting goes down.
Once again, this shows the fact that a gun is simultaneously the most efficient means of attack, and also the most efficient means of responding to an attack.
They are projecting their own behavior on others. After all, they throw a temper tantrum any time they are balked, no matter how little. Of course they expect everyone to behave that way.
Seawriter
How else do you get your guns from point A to point B, especially if they are too long to conceal?
The open carry furor was set off by threats from the New Black Panther Party to legally carry firearms during the Cleveland convention. The liklihood of finding a member of this organization without several felony convictions to his record is remote. Thus, their threat to legally carry firearms during the convention was an empty one. They could, of course, have convincingly threatened to vote against Trump in Virginia.
This piece of information was conveniently missed by the MSM – and of course the Dems – because the ones with half a brain of that group may have had to conclude that No Gun Zone signs are just about the dumbest – and most dangerous thing – to have been thought of.
…Which KC in comment #2 carefully explained.
I have long believed that greater practice of open-carry is the best answer to the prospect of gun violence in our communities. I’m also in favor of concealed-carry as well; a number of other concealed-carry advocates have disagreed with me about my preference for open-carry. The argument tends to be: “I don’t want the thug facing me to know whether or not I’m armed, Rather, I want him to be unsure, and therefore decide NOT to risk it by becoming violent.” Fair enough, I say, but doesn’t this point-of-view work from the assumption that the potential thug is a rational actor?
I’m just a retired knuckle-dragger, but I don’t want the thug to have to guess whether or not I can resolve the situation and still be standing.
There aren’t many times I want to give John Kasich a pat on the back, but you deserve one this time, Governor.
I wonder how much of their limited resources the Dallas Police spent trying to incorrectly track down and then clear that man, and how much time they wasted on him before setting their sights on finding the true shooter.
The original Black Panthers went around with visible legal firearms, exhorting victims of illegal,law enforcement tactics to remember their constitutional rights.
You can’t name one situation that has been worsened by legal gun owners displaying their weapons.
I really appreciate this post! So right; there was such a huge uproar about this, and—–nothing! Memory is so short these days; the Orlando Islamist attack seems like a distant memory. Thank you!
Mixed feelings about when an individual should choose to open-carry, or mixed feelings about whether it ought to be legal?
When guns are outlawed, only leftwing fascists will have guns.
Amen.