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Old August 22, 2009, 10:53 PM   #393
Tom Servo
Join Date: September 27, 2008
Location: Foothills of the Appalachians
Posts: 9,259
Yeesh. So this thread started as a post about a guy openly carrying a rifle to a political event, and now we're down to discussing the 2nd American Revolution.

Whenever open carry comes up, it turns into this. The same tiresome cliches get trotted out yet again. Let's bring up Auschwitz, Pol Pot and Chairman Mao as shaky analogues to what could happen. In fact, let's claim that it's going to happen right here tomorrow unless someone takes radical action.

I've probably had this same conversation dozens of times this year alone. It's always the same. Carrying a gun isn't activism. The gun is a weapon, nothing more and nothing less. In the eyes of gun people, it's nothing scary, but to the people we're supposed to be converting, it is.

Activism takes a great deal of boring and tedious legwork. It's not sexy, and it doesn't make for good soundbites on the evening news. Sorry, but that's the way it is. Skip the Unintended Consequences book club meeting and use that time to research pending legislation and court cases. Write some letters. It'll do far more good.

The plain fact is, the guy isn't a symbol of anything. His actions will lead to no change in policy or law. He's just someone who thought it was a good idea to walk around a political function with an exposed firearm. The vast majority of observers scratch their heads and wonder what he was trying to achieve. I'm one of them.
--Albert Camus
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