Glenn
That's my point - for those outside the choir - the presence of the firearm does imply violence and prime negative attitudes. Then, if this is the case - does this display of firearms actually aid in achieving some political goal?
(At this point, let's say that we are talking specifically about open carry; CC means that the public, in general, would not even realize that a firearm enters into the equation.)
Would you say that the public, in general, would have the same "negative attitudes" toward government employees with firearms; i.e. law enforcement, armed forces, USSS, etc...?
If the public, in general, has a different reaction to this group, then it is not necessarily the firearm that is creating the impression, rather the appearance of the carrier.
Let's take the photo of the "men in black" on the balcony in a posting above. Most would assume that these are USSS (or the like), given the context of the event. Now would John and Joan Q Public feel differently if they found out that these were just a couple of guys that lived in that apartment cleaning their "sniper rifles" out on the balcony that day? And were pointing them at the crowd, just to bore sight in a new scope.
In my mind the real issue here goes beyond the actual 2nd Amendment. (Yes, we have the right.) The issue goes beyond the political machine that can restrict, and free up, our gun laws. (Yes, government and politics do enter into the equation.) The real issue here is appearance to the average Joe and Josephine.
Because, if the average citizen feels (and I use this word purposefully) that a firearm with another average citizen is O.K., or better than O.K., then all is well with respect to RKBA.
Do I like this? Personally no. For example: a number of years ago I was involved with an educational project. Our group was attempting to produce essentially an informercial type short video to introduce our project. After much work, research, and testing, we found that talking about dinner right off captured the attention and produced more positive "feelings" and associations with our project than introducing the topic and the importance of the material. Our project now had the appearance of "warm-fuzzies-full-tummy". This project had absolutely nothing to do with dinner or eating or food for that matter.
BUT (
Behold the
Underlying
Truth) we remained true to the nature and intention of the project throughout. "Dinner" in no way took away from, or conflicted with, the intent of the project. And in the both day to day and long run it added positively to the end result.
Appearance is what we need to work at. Firearms associated with the average citizen must appear to be "normal", "good", "responsible", etc... We want the average John and Jane Q Public to have those same "warm-fuzzies-full-tummy" feelings when seeing open carry. At the same time we must never do anything that would promote this that would in any way detract from our beliefs and support of the 2nd Amendment. No compromises.
While I personally do not like this, I believe it. I do not like that to promote an educational project that one must resort to introducing it with "Dinner". But then again, the average American spends more time in front of a screen than any other activity daily, and most of that is in front of a television. (Really think about that for a minute. More time than at work, sleeping, school, etc...) This is who we are working with. These are our neighbors that we must convince to "feel good" about the RKBA.
There is a reason that those opposing the RKBA use fear in their arguments. As silly as it may sound, we must use love (warm-fuzzies-full-tummies) in our arguments.
Just my .22 cents worth. (Inflation and long posting.)