Throw Tom Fatfinger out of your store. When I was SWAT commander, I had a rule that me and the Chief clashed on a few times. I always won. My rule was "The SWAT team is idiot proof because I throw all idiots off the team." You don't need a bunch of rules. You need people with a bunch of common sense.
If you can figure out in advance who is going to have an ND and screen people as they come in the door of a gun show or gun shop, that might be a practical solution. So far no one has a solution like that.
A SWAT team is a fairly elite group of people--I think you would agree that a random sampling of people at a gun show would not be at all similar to a random sampling of SWAT team members.
I agree that if we could easily screen for idiots and people lacking common sense that this topic would be a lot simpler. But that's just not reality. In reality, there are some people who can't even learn from their mistakes. I know a guy who accidentally killed someone playing with his gun. Awhile back, AFTER the fatal incident, he shot a hole in the door of the local gun shop. Obviously the kind of guy you'd like to throw out of your gun shop or turn back at the door of a gun show. But he doesn't stand out from a crowd. Short of running him through some sort of a test to see how he handles firearms there's no way to know that he's a danger to himself and others when he has a gun in his hands.
So, is the left correct about the "armed citizen"?
You have created what is called a false dichotomy. That is, you have taken a complicated topic and tried to pretend that there are only two possibilities.
1. The anti-gunners are right and gun owners are irresponsible.
OR
2. Gun shops and gun show organizers are hypocrites because they advocate carry but restrict it on their premises.
But it's a false dichotomy because it's not nearly that simple.
Some gun owners are irresponsible, but in typical situations, the fact that they are few and the fact that the circumstances generally don't have them doing potentially risky activities means that we don't need to worry about citizens firing off unintentional shots at every turn.
HOWEVER, change the circumstances by concentrating large numbers of people all in one spot, all doing the kinds of things that are potentially risky when it comes to NDs and things change.
I don't really think that it's difficult to understand why 1000 people standing around handling guns are more likely to have a mishap than 1000 people who are carrying guns while they eat at a restaurant or watch a movie or go to the grocery store.
I make a conscious decision not to trade with shops who restrict the freedoms of the citizen to be armed.
That is your right. I'm not trying to tell you that you are wrong to take that stance. If you feel like that is the right course of action then do it.
What I am saying is that your assertion that such restrictions are hypocritical is not based on a conventional definition of the word 'hypocritical'. The idea that people believe that SOME CIRCUMSTANCES can warrant more restrictions than other sets of circumstances is not hypocrisy. It is simply an acknowledgement of the fact that differing circumstances can create differing levels of risk. Different standards for different situations is not hypocrisy. Differing standards for the SAME situation IS hypocrisy.
So if you want to boycott gun shops that prohibit loaded guns, then go right ahead. It's your right. But calling them hypocritical isn't accurate because it fails to take into account the fact that the risk of an ND in a gun shop is much higher than it is in other locations where people carry, but do not handle firearms.
