Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Open Carry in Michigan

Freep.com reports on the open carry movement in Michigan.

Gun-rights activists are not only demanding that Royal Oak officials drop the city's ban on openly carrying guns at the Ford Arts, Beats & Eats festival over Labor Day weekend, they also are going after Clawson, Pontiac, Taylor and Flint for local rules they say infringe on gun rights.

To me this is one of the funniest aspects of the gun rights debate. These open carry guys are so blinded by their bias that they can't see that open carry, especially in forced demonstrations, is counterproductive and detrimental to their own movement.

Even many of their own understand this, I don't suppose they're any less biased but simply intelligent enough to put two and two together. Sebastian is one of them. A bit more pragmatic and more circumspect than your average gun owner, he's suggested these guys do more harm than good. I suppose his idea is to work under the radar in gradually increasing gun rights.

What's your opinion? Is open carry helpful to the cause in the long run? Is the image of a man carrying a gun openly going to become acceptable to main stream America? Or, is the average person going to view these folks as extremists and paint the entire gun culture with that brush?

Please leave a comment.

1 comment:

  1. Gay rights seemed to progress after pride parades.

    Civil rights seemed to progress after Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of the bus.

    Women won the vote after parading and demonstrating publically.

    Black Panthers in CA...

    Too early to tell. We'll have to see what the future holds here.

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