RE: No More Guns
June 26, 2021 at 9:34 pm
(This post was last modified: June 26, 2021 at 9:49 pm by Foxaèr.)
Police Killed A "Good Samaritan" Who Fatally Shot A Gunman Who Had Killed A Cop
buzzfeednews.com
People parading guns through grocery stores does not make them, or America, great
upworthy.com
buzzfeednews.com
Quote:A "good Samaritan" shot a man who ambushed and killed a Colorado police officer, likely saving other lives, only to be fatally shot himself by responding officers, officials confirmed Friday.
People parading guns through grocery stores does not make them, or America, great
upworthy.com
Quote:Last summer, my husband and I went to a grocery store in Sandpoint, Idaho to pick up some ice cream. As we started walking down the frozen foods aisle, my husband grabbed my arm to stop me. He gestured to the couple ahead of us, and I saw what he saw—a handgun sticking out of the back of the man's pants.
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We turned around and left the ice cream aisle, choosing to wait until the openly armed shopper left. And we were irritated. Seeing a man with a gun in a grocery aisle feels like living in a war zone—meanwhile, Sandpoint's violent crime rate is half the national average.
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Twitter user "Cacky" shared a similar encounter in an Oklahoma Trader Joe's, with a photo of a man with a handgun in a holster on his hip at the salad display.
"I have no idea if this guy is stable or mentally ill," she wrote. "Is he bothered by the heat and have a short fuse today? What if someone makes him mad and he has poor impulse control? I'm not willing to risk my life for groceries, so I just left Trader Joe's."
I had the same thoughts in the ice cream aisle in Idaho. Not only do we not know this person's mental state, but with a gun so openly broadcast, what's to stop another unstable shopper from grabbing the gun from them? I'm sure these guys think they'd be quick to stop someone from doing so, but there are dozens of scenarios where that confrontation ends very badly for them, as well as for the innocent bystanders who just want to buy some freaking lettuce.
State laws vary when it comes to open or concealed carry, but this isn't an issue of legality. It's an issue of morality, responsibility, and sensibility. "Because I can" or "Because it's my right" is not a good enough reason to do something—not when you live in a community with other human beings. You might have a right to carry a gun in a grocery store, but that doesn't mean that it is the right thing to do.
Your fellow citizens matter. And I would guess that most people feel less safe, not more, when they see someone with a gun sticking out of their pants at the grocery store. You might argue that you carry for your protection or even the protection of those around you, but the "good guy with a gun" idea has been outed as a myth over and over again. That myth and the fairly consistent mass shootings in the U.S. are why most of us see a random person with a gun as a threat, not protection.
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Freedom that feels like fear isn't true freedom, and wearing a gun in a grocery store feels like nothing but fear to me. If you have to carry a gun everywhere you go, you're not free, no matter how much you talk about your constitutional rights.