As I have repeatedly stated, hypocrisy is based in principle and not in practicality.
'Hypocrisy' is a word with a standard definition.
It means saying one thing and doing another.
It would be hypocrisy for a gun store owner to say that carry should be allowed in gun stores and then ban carry in his own store. Because that is saying one thing about gun store carry and doing another thing about gun store carry.
But it is NOT hypocrisy for a gun store owner to say that carry should be allowed in restaurants and movie theaters and then ban carry in his gun store. Because gun stores are not restaurants and movie theaters.
'Hypocrisy' is something that meets the definition of 'hypocrisy'. 'Hypocrisy' is not something that doesn't meet the definition of 'hypocrisy' no matter what principles or practicalities are involved.
Most often when one stands on principles, they do so at the expense of what is practical. The most extreme example is a martyr. To the truly principled person, practicality has no bearing on decision making if that practicality violates principle.
There is a lot of truth to this. But it's not relevant.
If one truly holds to the principle that concealed carry and the armed citizen are the best defense against violent crime, then a man who makes his living selling arms is a blatant hypocrite if he does not allow concealed carry in his store.
This argument mixes things up a little.
IF a gun store owner truly believes that concealed carry and armed citizens are the best defense, and advocates concealed carry and armed citizens for that reason, and that reason alone, AND, if that person was concerned about the possibility of crime in his gun store and wanted the best defense against it, AND if that person felt that the danger of crime was higher than the danger of being shot by a negligent person in his shop, then yes, he would be hypocritical to ban carry in his store.
If, however, the gun store owner advocates concealed carry because he believes self-defense is a right, regardless of whether it is an effective means of self-defense in general, and if he believes that property owners are justified in restricting carry on their property, and if he is concerned about being killed (or having one of his customers killed or his propery damaged) by someone negligently discharging a firearm in his store, then prohibiting carry wouldn't be hypocritical. It WOULD be hypocritical if he then complained about some other gun shop prohibiting carry after banning it in his own shop.
And it would be hypocritical if he stated that people should be able to carry everywhere and then banned it in his own shop.
The hypocrisy is a fact in principle.
I'm not arguing that there are no circumstances under which it would be hypocritical for a gun store owner to advocate carry and then prohibit it in his own store.
But it is not possible to make a sweeping statement about it being hypocritical without knowing a lot more details. If we know exactly why a gun store owner advocates carry and if we know why he bans carry in his shop, and if the two motivations are contradictory, then that would be hypocritical. But to make that assessment we need to know the motivation for both his support for carry and his reason for banning carry.
And it certainly isn't hypocritical to advocate for carry under certain circumstances while noting that
different situations and circumstances can warrant banning carry.
The shop owner does not trust a person enough to handle a loaded firearm, but he gladly sells them a firearm and ammunition?
This also, is not hypocrisy, nor is it really an accurate description of the situation.
The gun owner who bans carry in his shop isn't stating that every person who comes in is incompetent. He's pointing out that some are and he doesn't know which ones are and aren't. Your comment makes it sound like he knows that a given person is negligent and yet he's selling them guns and ammo anyway. The fact is that he doesn't know, and there's no simple test to find out, if a given person is or isn't negligent. More to the point, most people, yourself included, would be highly indignant if a gun store made you prove your competence with firearms before they would agree to sell you a box of ammo--and that's without getting into how they would manage such a thing.
So the gun store owner sells to the people who have the money and pass the background check and don't raise any red flags. But that doesn't mean he's assessing them as competent or incompetent. It is, in fact, the difficulty in assessing people who walk in off the street that motivates some gun store owners to place blanket restrictions in an attempt to keep their shop, themselves, and their customers unshot when the undetectable negligent person walks in.
I might not trust the shooting abilities of the shop owner to keep me safe in the event of an attack.
This is a reasonable argument, but it doesn't have any relevance to whether or not a gun store owner is hypocritical or not. It does speak to one practical reason why you would be opposed to carry restrictions in stores, but not one that's relevant to pure principle or to an argument about hypocrisy.
The MRI industry does not advocate for firearms rights.
But the point is a good one. If a particular doctor advocates for firearms rights, would it be hypocritical to ban firearms in an MRI room? Of course not--because there are valid reasons for the ban that have nothing to do with the doctor's position on carry. Does it mean that he's proving that anti-gunners are right? Again, no, because the circumstances are different in the MRI room and dangers exist there that are essentially a non-issue in other areas.
