Pew Pew Texas

Texas: Where walking through the mall with a switchblade in your pocket is illegal, but strapping an AR15 on your back is a God-given right.

I tweeted that the other day, in response to this. In short, this guy Derek Poe owned (past tense) a store in the local shopping mall called Golden Triangle Tactical and decided to drum up some publicity, stir up some controversy, come up with a way to break his lease, exercise his 2nd amendment right to keep and bear arms by strapping an AR15 on his back and strolling into the mall’s GameStop. Depending on who you ask, Texas is or isn’t an open carry state for “long arms,” aka rifles. The law is ambiguous by not ever actually mentioning long arms, but it’s generally accepted that Texas allows you to openly carry a rifle in certain situations. Like when you’re hunting, or driving to go hunt and have a gun rack mounted on the back of your pick ’em up truck, and that sort of thing. Patrolling for varmints and such. But it’s also generally accepted that this freedom does not translate well to urban environments, and certainly not to the environment of a shopping mall. Except that it’s not so generally accepted, at least by people who refuse to accept it.

So anyway, this guy strolls around the mall and wanders into a GameStop, then eventually the police get wind of it and charge him with disorderly conduct, which is what’s used in cases like this. Later, the cops refuse to return his rifle, citing it as evidence in an ongoing investigation. So naturally, we have an open carry rally coming up next week at the nearest Gander Mountain. Because that’ll make everything better.

First, my thoughts on gun control. They’re pretty simple. We need to be able to track firearm sales. We need to enforce existing laws that are rigged to be unenforceable (and therefore remain a safe chant for the NRA to constantly cite), and we need to use some common sense. A shopping mall is no place to carry a rifle slung on your back. Not in today’s world, with mass shootings happening only slightly less frequently than political sex scandals. I’ll tell you this: it’s a good thing no do-gooder, concealed carry gun advocate saw this guy before the police caught up with him. It doesn’t take a big leap to imagine how quickly that situation could have gone downhill.

Do we have a right to keep and bear arms? Of course we do. Is Obama coming for our guns? Of course he isn’t. He didn’t come for them in 2008, back when everyone started screaming it. He didn’t come for them in 2009. Or 2010. Or 2011. Or 2012. And he’s not coming for them now. Stop being crazy.

But while we’re on the subject of crazy, please stop thinking that you could realistically challenge the federal government if it ever decided to become openly hostile to American citizens. Your handguns and shotguns and scary, look-at-how-badass-I-am “assault” rifles ain’t gonna do much against a targeted attack from a drone you never even see before it kills you. Think we’re going to have another American Revolution? Good luck with that, unless you have a Navy I don’t know about. (And don’t count on France coming to our rescue this time, not after that whole Freedom Fries incident.) Or, you know, an Air Force. Or artillery. Or any of the countless technological and armament superiority currently enjoyed by the largest and most heavily funded military force the world has ever known. Stop watching so many movies. They lie to you. Pick up some books on military tactics and war strategy, and you’ll quickly understand that you can’t secure and hold a coastal area without a navy. You can’t secure and hold an inland area without air support and artillery. You can’t secure and hold anything with your pea shooters when the “enemy” has smart bombs and remote-controlled aerial drones and fleets of warships and tactical nuclear weapons. Stop being crazy. And stop being stupid.

You wanted this military. You wanted to fund it at insane levels. You wanted it to be strong. You wanted the biggest gun in the world, and you got it. So don’t act all butthurt when you finally stop to consider that it could ever be swiveled around and aimed at you. You paid for it. You bought it. Congratulations.

So anyway, enough with the armed revolt nonsense. It’s just not gonna happen, pilgrim. And if it did, it’ll be shut down so quickly and decisively that it’ll likely help secure the tyrannical rule of whoever’s in power at the time, because nobody else will be dumb enough to try taking on the world’s meanest military force a second time, not after what happened to those poor people who tried it first. They’re still picking bits of them out of the Appalachians.

But back to gun control. No, I don’t want the government to take our guns. Yes, I believe we all have a right to own them. No, I don’t think they make you any safer. Yes, I believe they exist in large part to make people feel safer (not to mention, more badass) than they do to actually provide additional security, but I’ll concede that knowledge and expertise with firearms could conceivably save your life in certain situations. No, I don’t think those situations are nearly as common as other people seem to think they are. You’re still about a billion times more likely to die in a car accident than to ever be in a situation where shooting someone else in the face would be helpful, but I understand the need to feel safe. Yes, we need regulations and enforcement. No, it’s not the wild west.

Now let’s get back to this yahoo with the AR15. What he did does nothing for gun advocacy groups. It hurts the pro-gun cause. Anyone with any common sense at all knows that you shouldn’t go strutting around a shopping mall with a rifle strapped to your back, and the idea that he was somehow wronged by being cited and having his gun temporarily taken away is just insane. He knew what he was doing, even if he didn’t expect that there would actually be consequences for being an asshole.

However, instead of seeing what this guy did for the cause-damaging publicity stunt it was, tons of people are set to rally around him and protest on behalf of his rights. But I ask you, where are my rights as a sword-owning American? I can’t carry a Roman gladius through the mall, so why does this jerk get to carry an AR15? Heck, I can’t even carry a knife that’s over 5.5″, or that is spring-loaded, or under 5.5″ if it’s a butterfly knife, etc… Why is having it be illegal to carry a much less lethal weapon than a semi-automatic rifle not an issue for these people? I just want to keep and bear my brand of arms, so where’s my 2nd amendment right to open carry a katana on my hip?

Oh, that’s right. There’s no National Melee Association shoving millions down the pants of politicians and media pundits.

Look, I know this is Texas. And southeast Texas is more Texas than a lot of Texas in the whole gun/red state/God-fearing/Constitution/Tea Partying regard, but let’s at least try to have a little perspective on this. Remember, if you get your rights, then everyone else gets their rights. That’s why they’re called rights. Now, just sit back and ponder that, you largely Angry Doughy White Dude demographic. Imagine a group of heavily armed black men walking near you in the mall. You can’t just casually roll up your windows and lock your doors in that situation, can you? It’s not like southeast Texas has some of the most inflammatory, backwater racial tensions in the country that would be incalculably worsened by adding open carry firearms to the mix or anything, right? Oh, wait…

Imagine rival gang members, both within their legal rights to openly carry assault rifles in public places. What could possibly go wrong? Imagine Longhorns fans and Aggies passing by each other in the aisles of Academy, fresh from buying new boxes of ammunition on game day. Or just imagine a world where everyone walking around with rifles is no big deal. Then imagine hundreds of Charles Whitmans causally strolling into thousands of bell towers across the nation. Imagine Lee Harvey Oswald and the book depository. Imagine Columbine. Sandy Hook. Virginia Tech. The Washington Navy Yard. Aurora, Colorado. The list, sadly, goes on and on and on…

Now imagine more of those, except now imagine them with a bunch of other armed people. Particularly, imagine the shooting at the Batman movie in Aurora, and try to guess how many more people would’ve been injured or killed by a theater filled with would-be heroes all shooting their guns at random targets in the dark. You are not as good of a shot as you think you are. You are not trained to point your gun and not shoot. You are not a police officer. (Unless you are; in which case, I’m not talking about you.)

And stop crying about your freedoms. We don’t live in a free society. Never have. I can’t go all Katniss and carry a bow and arrow with me when I’m browsing the grocery store aisles for snack cakes, so why should you get to carry a gun? Besides, we live in a country that actively tells people what they can and can’t do to their own bodies, which is the one thing that should be wholly yours to do with as you see fit. You know, if you’re actually free. But nope. Get sick? Go to the doctor if you want medicine. You can’t be trusted to diagnose and treat yourself. Depressed? Here, have some healthy alcohol, but stay away from drugs. Enjoy soda? Ok, but not too much. You can’t be trusted to make your own decisions about the Extra Super Giant Big Gulp. Raped and want an abortion? Oooooooh, let’s not even open that can of worms.

The point is, you don’t care about freedom. Not really. You care about this one issue, and how it affects your fragile sense of empowerment. You think owning a firearm is essential to protect yourself from a phantom menace that only you can see. (Well, you and Alex Jones. Maybe David Icke.) You think owning a gun is the key to freedom. It isn’t. It’s a weapon. It shoots small bits of metal at things. Its only purpose is to hurt and kill. At least I can use a sword to help trim the back forty, if I needed to. If I had a back forty, that is. Or even knew what the hell the proverbial back forty is that everyone is always plowing, but that’s neither here nor there.

TL; DR: Yes, you have a right to keep and bear arms. No, you don’t need to be a douche about it.

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