“About this time last year, there was furor about state House Bill 2, the ‘open carry’ bill,” Geoff Pender writes at clarionledger.com. “HB 2 allows someone to openly carry a firearm. It caused an uproar, and litigation to block it, even though the state constitution already had given Mississippians such a right since 1890. In late August last year, with opponents warning it would bring ‘chaos’ and ‘the wild West’ and with no-guns-allowed signs popping up everywhere, the state Supreme Court upheld the law. Since then . . .
I’ve noticed … nothing. I’ve seen two people who I suspected were just citizens and not law enforcement wearing holstered pistols. Neither caused an uproar, and neither of their pistols jumped out of their holsters and committed a crime.” So, how long before all these non-events convince gun control advocates realize that open carry – indeed any sort of legal carry – doesn’t lead to “blood in the streets”? I’m thinking . . . . never.
Same thing in my state when they changed the law from “may issue” to “shall issue” a few years ago. The progressive left wing newspaper (A Gannett Publication) when on and on about about how there would be blood in the streets and we would revisit scenes from the old west playing out on our streets.
Of course, none of that happened here either.
What state is that?
Me too here. Iowa?
Let’s start up the way-back machine.
1987. Florida. Shall Issue. Media hysteria.
Prediction: “blood in the streets”
Reality: not so much
After 27 years, one would think that “blood in the streets” would be retired.
not true if you worship at the altar of St. Trayvon and believe all yoots are misguided, misunderstood, getting their lives back/together/organized, found Jesus, singing in church choir, working on going back to school, and all around “good kids”. a minority religion indeed, but we have to respect Freedom of Religion. /sarc off
Dude
“…After 27 years, one would think that “blood in the streets” would be retired.”
It’s coming! Just you wait! Why just last year that was that incident with those 74 school kids!
Can we lobby to change “blood in the streets” to “blood in the Gun Free Zones”?
No, the Anti-Rights crowd will never go for it. They want the entire place to be a gun-free zone. To admit that is where the bloody streets and high-noon capers happen goes against their narrative.
Gun-Free Zones = Involuntary Blood Donation Zones
The prediction s of blood in the streets is merely a projection of their own inability to trust themselves with a firearm. They think that everyone must be just as lacking in self control and responsibility as them. I find it insulting.
Bingo!
On a related note, here’s an excellent piece that delves deep into the psyche of gun grabbers.
Raging Against Self Defense: A Psychiatrist Examines the Anti-Gun Mentality
By Sarah Thompson, M.D.
http://jpfo.org/filegen-n-z/ragingagainstselfdefense.htm
Interesting read. Thanks for posting that.
That report has been around for several years. Should be “required reading” for every TTAG member. It really is that good!
You have to remember that the antis are the epitome of anal retentive about guns. It doesn’t matter to them. There is no logic that they recognize that is in opposition to their fixation on disarming us. It’s part of the plan to force socialism and slavery on us all.
They already know it is false. There must be a written playbook somewhere, in order to have the *exact same* arguments every time for 27 years, while proven wrong every time. Groups thousands of miles apart do not come up with the same wording in their insanity by coincidence. What grabs me is that they must know, by now, their supposed fears have no basis, It seems like their objections themselves would disappear.
But if it saves just one child!
.
it doesn’t fit their agenda. Just another useless fact…
The true hoplophopes fear any kind of carrying of firearms, because the sight or even the suspicion of people carrying around them induces a real panic for them. Phobias are an IRRATIONAL fear of something. It does not matter at all if crime doesn’t increase, or even if crime decreases, their internal fear still exists within them, and increases with each removal of an infringement on the 2nd Amendment. Their perception of society is warped by their fear, and can not be removed with any amount of facts or logic.
They have allied themselves with the folks that believe in a big all powerful government that handles and solves ALL of society’s problems, making the average citizen into an obedient peasant.These folks can not be swayed from their course as they believe it is their destiny to rule over the majority of the population because we are too stupid, ignorant or unqualified to be responsible for ourselves.
Complete government control of all aspects of life is the neurotic’s dream.
Rather than confront and take responsibility for their anxiety about the world, they seek to control everyone else.
neurosis
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/481779/neurosis
“Neuroses are characterized by anxiety, depression, or other feelings of unhappiness or distress that are out of proportion to the circumstances of a person’s life. They may impair a person’s functioning in virtually any area of his life, relationships, or external affairs, but they are not severe enough to incapacitate the person.”
But if I was running things, life and society would be PERFECT!
.
“Rather than confront and take responsibility for their anxiety about the world, they seek to control everyone else.”
I think you’re onto something, but I wouldn’t call it neurotic. I call it childish. Immature creatures are never happy to hear that bad things can happen, that prudence is sometimes good or that personal vigilance is necessary. In their ideal world, that is all managed for them and they don’t have to think about it.
Aye. I spent the better part of a decade living in Mississippi. Open carry has been legal for for many years. It’s only with the recent law that we’ve had some adjustments to make the state more friendly to it. And since then there honestly hasn’t been a real serious problem. Hell I can’t think of ANY honest incidents involving a violent crime associated with the legal act of open carry. At least not in North Mississippi.
Yes, because Vermont, a true bastion of reactionary conservatism, had been awash for approximately forever.
Various authors have written (e.g. John Lott in More Guns Less Crime, Chapter 10) that, in every state where lawful carry opportunities are expanded, newspapers and politicians predict blood in the streets. But then a year later, the newspapers notice (if they say anything at all) there’s been no such calamity, and the restoration of citizens’ rights was a public safety non-event. Or maybe there’s a measurable increase in defensive gun uses – justified shootings and brandishing as deterrence.
I would love to see a project* to compile a collection of such predictions and their corresponding followups, if any. At least, the predictions juxtaposed with the resulting statistics, since there are likely to be very few followup articles. Such a collection of before/after article pairs would be a powerful and useful argument.
(*This would be a great research focus for funding an intern under the Crime Prevention Research Center umbrella, or a Master’s thesis in public policy or communications or some such related discipline.)
We’re certainly experiencing the “before” effect, right now here in post-Peruta California.
Is that a matching carbon fiber belt in the photo?
This is a gun article alright but it’s not necessarily a PRO gun article. Read it carefully. The Clarion Ledger is severely liberal.
I’d say it’s definitely a pro-gun article — that is, it’s objectively fair, which considering that all the objective facts are with the pro-gun position, is virtually the same thing. If it’s in a severely liberal paper, all the better.
The only problem I have with it is the writer’s repeated assertion that rights are “granted” or “allowed” by some benevolent law, when in reality they’re inherent human rights that are protected (or not) by government, not given.
I wrote to him. His reply is on top below:
Point taken. Thanks for the feedback.
I’m curious, have you heard anything about a push for constitutional carry this coming legislative session?
I know bills have been filed in the past, but it seems like it’s gaining momentum in other states, and I haven’t really heard of anyone pushing for it here.
Thanks again,
Geoff
From: MICHAEL CROGNALE [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, August 18, 2014 1:53 PM
To: Pender, Geoffrey
Subject: One minor point of order
Hi,
In your article on Constitutional carry in the great state of Mississippi you said, “Allowing citizens rights requires trust. Apparently, our founding fathers trusted their fellow Mississippians to have and carry guns.” I disagree with the part that says “allowing citizens”. There is no choice when it comes to rights. That said, I agree that there have been certain restrictions put in place on all manner of rights, automatic weapons, hate speech, etc. We in the open carry movement are working to get those illegal laws rescinded. Thanks for an otherwise great article.
Mike
In the year this law has been on the books, i’ve seen one, not including myself, person OC’ing. Everybody but the antis wanted it, but no one really wanted to open carry, they just wanted to be able to.
I think that very few people actually want to Open Carry. However, all of those who Concealed Carry want to be free from arrest if they accidentally expose their concealed weapon, and that is a very important thing.
Will they ever admit that any one of their arguments is wrong? Never.
Why? Because as Robert Farago once said, “When it comes to infringing on Americans’ Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms, losing the arguments means never having to say you’re wrong.”
I live in MS, and I can’t say that I’ve seen a single instance of open carry. I don’t OC as I prefer CC, but it has helped me lose the self-consciousness of, “what if someone notices?” Not that it stopped me from carrying, but the trepidation caused by the possibility of being charged with something because someone catches a peek of something was discomforting. Now that is gone, and I have to say that it’s quite liberating…and that was the whole reason the bill was passed.
They could make it much simpler by wiping out those insane statutes with constitutional carry, but anyway. We Mississippians have a lot of things to work on in our state, but between the enhanced CC permit system and clarified OC, gun rights is one place we’ve seen steady improvement.
Can you put a belt clip like
E techno clip on a beretta pico
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