I'd been wondering what happened to the others initially reported arrested during the Dallas shootings, only the bomb recipient sniper was mentioned after those early reports.
Finally saw one news feed yesterday.
If true, apparently 20-30 protestors showed up for the event with rifles openly carried, Tejas being an open-carry state.
And wearing camo. And helmets. And gas masks. And "bullet-proof" vests.
Think about that.
LE running INTO the kill zone after firing commenced & unable to determine the source direction encountering armed people running toward them all dolled up for combat.
Among all that pandemonium, with fellow officers going down from gunfire, and the panicked crowd screaming, milling & running around in all directions.
In my mind, as a retired cop who's worked a hostile crowd a time or two, officers on scene deserve the highest amount of credit possible for the fact that two men & one woman were ARRESTED, and not SHOT, in those circumstances.
It could so easily have gone the other way, had any of those rifle-totin' vest-wearin' protestors have innocently & accidentally waved a muzzle in the wrong direction in front of LE during the excitement.
I do not imply in any way that those protestors had any intentions whatever of USING the rifles they carried to & during the protest.
But, responding cops had no way of knowing that.
The primary point is that when you carry openly, particularly your pet AR, you create certain potential risks for yourself.
When you do so in inappropriate times & places, more so.
And those who carry openly "just 'cause I can & it's my right" do more harm than good to responsible gun owners.
There's already talk among Tejas government of new legislation to restrict certain aspects of open carry.
The un-thinking few, as with the Starbucks AR-15 Club a couple years back, screw it up for the rest of us.
The Dallas incident, in this one small corner of the event as a whole, clearly illustrates one very real fall-out potential for open-carriers.
You don't do gun owners at large anything positive by scaring the public at large, and you risk finding yourself on the wrong side of LE response if something totally unexpected goes to spit around you, because of two things: YOUR visible presence, and your GUN'S visible presence.
In the current environment, thinking that "If more of us do it more often, it'll get the public more used to it & we'll get more support" is a major mis-reading of life today.
It ain't gonna happen that way.
THINK before you haul your AR (or shotgun, or whatever) along to ANY event or place. Pro-gun demonstration, Sunday picnic in the park, stroll through the mall, whatever.
And there is no racial or political component in any part of my message, so let's not even try either route.
Denis
Finally saw one news feed yesterday.
If true, apparently 20-30 protestors showed up for the event with rifles openly carried, Tejas being an open-carry state.
And wearing camo. And helmets. And gas masks. And "bullet-proof" vests.
Think about that.
LE running INTO the kill zone after firing commenced & unable to determine the source direction encountering armed people running toward them all dolled up for combat.
Among all that pandemonium, with fellow officers going down from gunfire, and the panicked crowd screaming, milling & running around in all directions.
In my mind, as a retired cop who's worked a hostile crowd a time or two, officers on scene deserve the highest amount of credit possible for the fact that two men & one woman were ARRESTED, and not SHOT, in those circumstances.
It could so easily have gone the other way, had any of those rifle-totin' vest-wearin' protestors have innocently & accidentally waved a muzzle in the wrong direction in front of LE during the excitement.
I do not imply in any way that those protestors had any intentions whatever of USING the rifles they carried to & during the protest.
But, responding cops had no way of knowing that.
The primary point is that when you carry openly, particularly your pet AR, you create certain potential risks for yourself.
When you do so in inappropriate times & places, more so.
And those who carry openly "just 'cause I can & it's my right" do more harm than good to responsible gun owners.
There's already talk among Tejas government of new legislation to restrict certain aspects of open carry.
The un-thinking few, as with the Starbucks AR-15 Club a couple years back, screw it up for the rest of us.
The Dallas incident, in this one small corner of the event as a whole, clearly illustrates one very real fall-out potential for open-carriers.
You don't do gun owners at large anything positive by scaring the public at large, and you risk finding yourself on the wrong side of LE response if something totally unexpected goes to spit around you, because of two things: YOUR visible presence, and your GUN'S visible presence.
In the current environment, thinking that "If more of us do it more often, it'll get the public more used to it & we'll get more support" is a major mis-reading of life today.
It ain't gonna happen that way.
THINK before you haul your AR (or shotgun, or whatever) along to ANY event or place. Pro-gun demonstration, Sunday picnic in the park, stroll through the mall, whatever.
And there is no racial or political component in any part of my message, so let's not even try either route.
Denis
This incident is a COUNTER-example to your argument.