Two Dudes With Rifles Who Have Man Issues
There have been news reports of gun nuts walking into various quick service restaurants with assault rifles strapped to their backs like they are on an army patrol in Fallujah Iraq. The incidents have taken place in Texas, where carrying a rifle in public is legal. We’ve seen these kind of men before. They like to draw attention to themselves and maybe try to impress people. They are still douchebags but their loaded rifles will intimidate you if not outright kill you. But then again, that is the usual douchebag agenda – to be a bully.
Carne asada with an assault rifle on the side? Not so much. Chipotle has now become the third food and beverage chain to explicitly ask customers not to bring loaded firearms into its stores, after a demonstration at a Dallas franchise over the weekend provoked a backlash from a leading national gun-reform group.
On Saturday (05/17/2014), members of the Dallas County chapter of the gun-rights activist group Open Carry Texas brought along their military-style assault rifles with their appetites for burritos. “I personally carry an AK-47,” one member told a local reporter. “There were a few AR-15s there. The rifles were loaded. There’s no reason to carry an unloaded weapon—it wouldn’t do any good.” Openly carrying rifles (but not handguns) is legal in Texas.
We’ve seen guys like these Open Carry bozos before. They are same kind of guys you find in a park on a hot sunny day, shirtless, throwing a Frisbee to their dogs. They are the same guys you see in tricked out cars with the booming stereo. These are the same kind of guys who will try to lift more than the weight they should at the gym so they can flex their muscles.
These guys are douchebags. They either want to draw attention to themselves to impress people, such as women, or intimidate people to show how manly they are. If they could walk around with their dick hanging out they would do that.
Even the NRA thought they were jerks:
The NRA said the demonstrations have “crossed the line from enthusiasm to downright foolishness.”
“Using guns merely to draw attention to yourself in public not only defies common sense, it shows a lack of consideration and manners. That’s not the Texas way. And that’s certainly not the NRA way,” the NRA said in a statement posted on its website Friday (5/30).
Good on them for pointing out the obvious.
Of course the NRA retracted their statement about 24 hours later because of politics. They can NEVER be seen to be reasonable about anything related to guns because of the right wing political control of the group.
Not only are they being a douchebag strutting around with their rifle but they are being stupid because they can’t understand why people are upset. They think it’s because of “Liberals!!!!” but it’s because of simple optics.
If you aren’t wearing a uniform, people have NO IDEA you are a “good guy with a gun”. Just like we don’t know if that shirtless chucklehead in the park isn’t a serial killer, we don’t know your intentions as you wonder around with a loaded assault rifle strapped to your body.
Let me give you an example the gun flaunters will understand. It would be like eating at McDonald’s and seeing a large group of teens wearing hoodies come in. People would be nervous and uncomfortable.
I can also tell you for certain that if the Open Carry people were African-Americans, there wouldn’t just be stories of nervous people but the police would be arresting people because it would not be legal to carry rifles in the open like that. It’s happened before:
Opposition to gun control was what drove the black militants to visit the California capitol with loaded weapons in hand. The Black Panther Party had been formed six months earlier, in Oakland, by Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. Like many young African Americans, Newton and Seale were frustrated with the failed promise of the civil-rights movement. Brown v. Board of Education, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were legal landmarks, but they had yet to deliver equal opportunity. In Newton and Seale’s view, the only tangible outcome of the civil-rights movement had been more violence and oppression, much of it committed by the very entity meant to protect and serve the public: the police.
Don Mulford, a conservative Republican state assemblyman from Alameda County, which includes Oakland, was determined to end the Panthers’ police patrols. To disarm the Panthers, he proposed a law that would prohibit the carrying of a loaded weapon in any California city. When Newton found out about this, he told Seale, “You know what we’re going to do? We’re going to the Capitol.” Seale was incredulous. “The Capitol?” Newton explained: “Mulford’s there, and they’re trying to pass a law against our guns, and we’re going to the Capitol steps.” Newton’s plan was to take a select group of Panthers “loaded down to the gills,” to send a message to California lawmakers about the group’s opposition to any new gun control.
The Panthers’ methods provoked an immediate backlash. The day of their statehouse protest, lawmakers said the incident would speed enactment of Mulford’s gun-control proposal. Mulford himself pledged to make his bill even tougher, and he added a provision barring anyone but law enforcement from bringing a loaded firearm into the state capitol.
Republicans in California eagerly supported increased gun control. Governor Reagan told reporters that afternoon that he saw “no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons.” He called guns a “ridiculous way to solve problems that have to be solved among people of good will.” In a later press conference, Reagan said he didn’t “know of any sportsman who leaves his home with a gun to go out into the field to hunt or for target shooting who carries that gun loaded.” The Mulford Act, he said, “would work no hardship on the honest citizen.”
Sound familiar?
Strutting around in public with a loaded rifle doesn’t make you a man or tough. It shows you are an immature douchebag. Buy some spinner rims for your muscle car instead.
