Monday, April 10, 2006

Permitting the Right: From the Mouths of Antis

Yesterday I linked to an article about a minister who claims attempts to mandate "no guns" in churches violates the separation doctrine. The post allows comments, and no shortage of enuretics use them to take the obligatory swipe at gun owners and the concept of bearing arms--invariably offering sweeping and unsubstantiated opinions and characterizing anyone who disagrees with them in a negative light.

I generally avoid these things, but one guy struck me as particularly ignorant and obnoxious, so I asked him:

If someone DOES bring a gun to church, what exactly are you prepared to do about it?
His partial response:
I'd do the same thing you would do if someone brought a gun to school, or anyone of the other places that the concealed carry law will be exempt from.
Thing is, aside from his expectation of what I'd do, he's right.

He'd do nothing. He'd be helpless. Just like Susanna Gratia Hupp was when she left her gun in the car and the madman who invaded the cafeteria did not.

And so would most gun owners with CCWs, I'd wager. After all, if someone goes to the time, effort and trouble to obtain a license, they're probably the type who follows the rules. These people are the very definition of "law abiding," and probably wouldn't want to risk losing their permit or getting into legal trouble by flouting the law.

Now, if you have a CCW and you wouldn't disarm just because you're in a forbidden zone, why get a license in the first place if you intend to break the law whenever you deem it "pragmatic"?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Now, if you have a CCW and you wouldn't disarm just because you're in a forbidden zone, why get a license in the first place if you intend to break the law whenever you deem it "pragmatic"?

Guilty.

Anonymous said...

You get the license even though you intend to carry "where you shouldn't" because you don't want to get hassled carrying "where you can". The assumption is that you're unlikely to get caught carrying in a 'forbidden' place unless there's an incident, in which case it's better to have been carrying against the rules than to die following them.

I myself don't carry in 'forbidden' places. Doesn't mean I don't carry, just that I don't go to the 'forbidden' places.

Ken said...

As has been said--there's the normal course, and there's the dire straits. Avoiding places you can't carry, to the extent possible or practical, is a good idea too.