YOUR FLY IS OPEN!
Yeah, I'm just sayin too!
I've been having an ongoing convo on this one on my blog. I even went as far as to bring up this case.
But...
whoo! kibs on the board!
As someone said, guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people.
As I noted in comments at the Flyer, if you had taken this situation and thrown into the mix a couple dozen more armed citizens. One guy, who no one can recognize as a deputy, whips out his piece. A dozen more heroes whip out theirs. Nobody knows who is the bad guy and who is the good guy in this situation, but the result is likely to be... not good.
Truth is, when the shooting starts, most people, even the concealed carriers, are going to hit the floor and pee themselves. Except in rare circumstances, a gun is worse than useless. It's presence can override your flight function. That's not to say I don't have one. I do. I just don't go places where I would be afraid to go without a gun - problem solved.
Hey! Nice to see you around these parts. Hell, nice to see you at all.
If we take Jones' story at face value, then he was out of harm's way when he went to his car. From that point, a cellular phone would have sufficed. If he made it all the way outside, then he's not in mortal danger anymore. That's what makes Jones' story, well, bullshit.
However, if the bartender or the DJ had been packing? Well, it's impossible to say how it would have gone differently, but they've at least got this much going for them: they were both sober. (Yes, I know about the meth, but poor marksmanship is not a known side effect of amphetamines.)
I read a number of restaurant owners in the Flyer story on this saying that they don't understand what problem the new law aims to solve. Was it not precisely this one? If something like this happens again, I'm not saying that events won't unfold tragically, and I'm not even going to say that a 3% chance that someone else has a concealed weapon is going to deter bitter drunks from playing with guns. But I will say that if that same situation ever happens again, this time around the victims will at least have the means to defend themselves with equal force.
I can't comprehend how that could ever be a bad thing to anyone who doesn't suffer from a reflexive fear of guns. That's the expansion of a right, not the curtailment of one.
As I said, auto, I own guns, but being able to defend myself with equal force is not always the best solution. Guns in bars would escalate such a situation, not tamp it down. The gunplay of idiots is not helped by adding more gun-wielding idiots to the scenario. Being able to defend myself from someone who wants to kill me personally is quite different from being able to defend myself from some guy shooting a gun. Situation 1 is something I support. Situation 2 is made worse by the presence of more guns. If I feared for my life, I would carry a gun, but I have no reason to fear for my life at Applebees.
Commenting by HaloScan
