FILE – In this Jan. 26, 2015 file photo, Scott Smith, a supporter of open carry gun laws, wears a pistol as he prepares for a rally in support of open carry gun laws at the Capitol, in Austin, Texas. Texas the second-most populous state, is joining 44 other states in allowing at least some firearm owners to carry handguns openly in public places. Under the Texas law, guns can be carried by those with licenses and only in holsters. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
One of the great advances in gun rights in the past couple of decades has been the proliferation of open carry and Constitutional carry laws (listing of states). There is no reason you should have to treat your possession of a firearm in public the way you’d treat carrying porn or the latest issue of Mother Jones. That movement is being put in jeopardy.
Earlier I posted on why I think the so-called red flag law being pimped by Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal is a very, very bad idea. It not only uses the mental health system as a means of social control and as a law enforcement tool (sorta like they did in the USSR, only with less ambition) it is open the all manner of abuse. Whether you are a gun owner or not you will be subject to having someone who doesn’t like you report you for potentially dangerous behavior and it is incumbent upon you to prove your aren’t dangerous.
Because the filing of complaints of dangerous behavior to harass and intimidate is not illegal…and I suspect most jurisdictions would be reluctant to prosecute even if it were because you wouldn’t want to deter people from reporting, even if they were in error…and so a red flag law makes any exercise of constitutional carry potentially fraught behavior. Lest you think I exaggerate, check this out from “centrist” David Frum:
Rifle in a coffee shop. Why isn't THIS a red flag? https://t.co/Rc0Mh1erlc
— David Frum (@davidfrum) August 7, 2019
Why isn't this a red flag? https://t.co/JD3k7eWojP
— David Frum (@davidfrum) August 7, 2019
Red flag? https://t.co/2rS3CjHl0R
— David Frum (@davidfrum) August 7, 2019
Even Charlie Three-Wives is testing the waters
Serious question: You walk into a business and see this —> do you 1. Leave
2. Feel Safer
3. Don’t Care pic.twitter.com/ovRLQyBXSH— Charlie Sykes (@SykesCharlie) August 7, 2019
You can read this one of two ways. Either Frum is a closeted libertarian who realizes the incredible danger of marrying what is essentially witch-doctor science to law enforcement and gun confiscation…or he sees the upside potential in these laws to classify inoffensive behavior as a “red flag.” Given his history on guns, you’d have to be a moron to invest too much in arguing the former.
Carrying a firearm is not dangerous behavior. I got my first weapon, a Remington break-action .410 shotgun for Christmas when I was 12. My brother and I an our friends all went out shooting without any parental supervision (and we are all alive and unmaimed, just like all the other kids we grew up with who did the same). It was a different time but is speaks more to the pussification of society today than it does to poor parenting some years ago. Nearly all the boys at my high school who drove to school would have a gun in their car for the duration of deer season. For many of them, the rifle in the rear window rack of the pickup was a year round accessory. (With my little brother, there was often a spotlight…just in case your headlights suddenly failed on those back roads.) The red flag law will provide the weak-kneed and the evil a tool to bring everyone down to their own level of moral degradation through the simple expedient of making it very expensive and inconvenient and humiliating to openly carry a firearm.
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