They carried their AR's openly too. Pictures from linked Fox News article.
Wait, that can't be right, I am assured that openly packing an AR leads to nothing but laws banning open carry.
Nope, that's really Fox News, not Babylon Bee...
And Oklahoma is mentioned in the Wikipedia entry on Constitutional Carry too.
Huh!
It's like we should be bold and not cowardly about asserting our rights.
I feel sometimes that some are fervently hoping for these kind of laws to fail so they can cluck that they were, by God, right and the rest of us are "idiots".
But, then, you kind of know when someone doesn't really have a point to make when they start with insults rather than actually making and defending their position.
OK is low-hanging fruit, and it still took until just now to pluck it.
ReplyDeleteLet me know how that works when it's done everyday at the strip malls or diners there, rather than a one-time political rally, and get back to that topic. Bear well in mind that OK also is the only solid-red state in the entire U.S. that voted entirely - in every county - for Trump in 2016.
49 other states: not so much.
It, quite literally, won't play that well in Peoria.
I'm always open to evidence, but the experiment in Florida is still an open question, as the recent proposed SB Whatever (which I hope fails to pass) in response to any number of OC incidents there demonstrates, and a single data point in OK is not a trend.
Fair enough?
It's more like 12 data points with Oklahoma being the latest. Constitutional carry IS expanding and the sky is not falling.
DeleteWe get to look at the events in context now? That's new. This is a one time celebratory carry of rifles on the capital steps and that makes it OK, but obeying the, very restrictive already, laws and open carrying to protest those laws isn't?
The point I've repeatedly made, and been ignored by people who oppose open carry, is the public and vocal condemnation of people OBEYING THE LAW and exercising both their right to protest and to be armed BY otherwise pro-gun people is doing far more damage to our cause than the people protesting.
That means it's people like you and Miguel who're doing the most to advance the anti-gun cause.
It lets the anti-gun side think you will not object to them further restricting open carry.
It makes the pro-gun side think that there's nothing to gain from opposing such further restrictions.
This is a lot like 1992 when the people we, today, derisively refer to as "fudds" vocally condemned "assault weapons". It's not the people protesting who're doing the most damage to our side. Again.
A completely red state joined the trend, what took them so long?
Until 2003 it was just Vermont, then Alaska went Constitutional.
The other 13 states that passed it are not so pure and Republican. MAINE, for Christ's sake!
I will get a lot more worried about SB 634 when it starts moving through committee. Just like every year when I don't panic about the annual AWB attempt. So far it's just been filed.
HB273, which is Constitutional Carry for Florida has been referred to three committees; it's moving.
How about you openly support the pro-gun side? Spread the word to support HB273 rather than slinging insults?
So far, it appears that you and Miguel are staunch supporters of SB634 and solid opponents to HB734. You are definitely being counted as supporters of SB634 by the anti-gun side.
I'm no opponent of HB273; just the opposite.
DeleteAnd I've been through the "assault weapon" nonsense first-hand four times to date in this silly state, including while I was full-time employed in the gun industry (and it fed me and put a roof over my head, and not just hired help behind a gun counter, but as a field rep for a firearms wholesaling company), so please, let's not try to play guilt-by-association games with me on that score. My street cred on guns in general is, as Limbaugh says about his conservatism, "somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun".
And let's be fair both ways: the biggest supporters of SB 634 are the guys popping up on YouTube providing grist for the mills of those that proposed that measure in the first place. Watch and see what evidence is used in committee and press releases: my blog posts, or those YouTube videos, and stills excerpted from them. 6:2:even at least some of those guys are shills for the other side. Unless you'd argue that the other side would never do that.
I was also told anecdotally that in the lead-up to OK getting Constitutional carry passed, they weren't plagued by people providing such "help" again and again, unlike there in FL, or here in Califrutopia. The lack of such input to the debate can't have hurt the Constitutional Carry side there, and its appearance afterwards would probably go a long way to getting that law revoked. Now bear that in mind, if the same sort of incidents start popping up on YouTube from OK after the fact, and remember that "the other side would never do that" howler.
My gun position is that common sense and history mean that crew-served weaponry is included in the 2A, and the NFA et al should be revoked in total as a statist fantasy list.
But that still doesn't mean I think it's a good idea to take a pintle-mounted .50 to the local high school football game or the mall parking lot at Christmas time. At least unless Russian paratroops or hordes of shambling zombies are a factor.
By the same token, a lot more of your state's reps would probably happily tell you that the less times they see guys kitted out for a siege in Fallujah strolling down the pier on YouTube incidents or the local news, the easier it would be for them politically to support bills like HB 734.
Don't believe me though. Just ask them.
All I'm about is not making those decisions hard for politicians in the first place, especially the wobbly ones in the middle (which is typically most of them).
They're seldom blessed with much common sense or backbone from the get-go, or they wouldn't be in politics.
Stop making them work hard to do the right thing.
I'm hoping people would have the sense to use honey for bait, and not vinegar.
That shouldn't be such a hard sell.
Thank you for a well articulated and thoughtful reply without a single insult!
DeleteI feel like we're debating for a change and not yelling at each other.
With the people carrying at others with their rifles I have a feeling of moving goalposts from some bloggers. They show pictures, I find out where the picture is from and have found that in three of the five cases that the open carrying was done in protest to fait accompli and the ban hammer was already falling when they were protesting.
The other two, Texas and Florida; Texas got open carry. Florida doesn't know yet.
When Texas was being debated and everyone was screaming that Open Carry Texas had lost them the war... Open carry passed anyways. They weren't as harmful as so many people had, not just feared, but outright declared.
Florida's open carry events have been going on for over ten years without a hitch. There's one in Tampa every month, ever heard about it? Nobody was noticing them at all until Miami decided to hold the members at gunpoint. I always find it odd that hardly anyone seems to notice that citizens engaging in a legal activity, peacefully and well within their rights were held at gunpoint. Because they don't seem to notice, they never condemn the violation of these citizen's rights. That pisses me off. A lot.
The following month went from pistols in retention holsters to flat-hats and modern sporting rifles as a FUCK YOU to the overbearing police department, who handled themselves with much more dignity than the previous month.
Unless you watched the news from the area or read blogs who condemn open carry, you'd have never known about the FUCK YOU protest. Erin Palette was there. She took pics.
The next month, the fishing event was back to retention holsters and zero drama.
Context matters.
It's a different group in a different place that's apparently triggered a RINO enclave surrounded by a sea of New York South with low-key but rifle carry. That'd be SB634. Which isn't being considering in committee yet. That's pretty telling. If it had traction and was being pushed hard, it'd already be on the assignment list.
I've been sending emails, writing letters and visiting the local congress creature's offices.
So far I have not been told by them that, "they'd like to help but there's these people scaring the mundanes and THEY have been writing, emailing and visiting asking for it to stop!" They have told me that they've had visits from the anti-gun groups in their red shirts and been informed that even pro-gun people oppose open carry. When I ask which pro-gun people they say "bloggers".
I don't think the staffer is old enough to confuse youtube with blogging.
We're prolly into YMMV territory because MY congress creatures are not YOUR congress creatures and they've been petitioned by different people.
As for using honey on a congress creature I'd like to quote noted philosopher Archibald Cunningham, "You don't ask a whore. You make them!"
I will point out that we've been asking pretty please with honey on top for a rather long time. Being nice has gotten us ignored for far too long. I want some damn victory while I'm still young enough to enjoy it!
OMG! Blood Flowing Through The Streets!!! REEEEEEEeeeeeeeee!!!!!
ReplyDeleteOr not.
So far, in any state that's gone open carry or concealed carry or Constitutional carry, only two noticeable things have happened.
1. Lots of news reports and articles as to how it's gonna be blood in the street, crime all over, people shooting each other over parking spaces and milk and eggs and beer and whatever reason the idiot newsies can think of as they channel various leftist organizations.
2. Crime is measurably reduced. Almost immediately. Boom. And the more guns carried and the more open guns are carried, the more crime is deterred.
(Oh, forgot... 3. 'Gun-Rights' bloggers get their panties in a twist as they're proven as wrong as the news media was on Election Night, 2016... tee-hee...)
The thing about points 1 and 2 is that they crank out the same blood in the street arguments about concealed carry and stand your ground. It's a formula.
DeleteMaybe they'll learn that formula isn't working and start a new one, but they've been using it since 1987 and the start of the modern concealed carry movement. I don't think it has worked anywhere.
I don't claim to be an expert, but it seems to me that a rifle should be carried muzzle down. To keep dirt from settling in the barrel.
ReplyDelete