Open Carry at Presidential Town Hall

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Openly wearing a gun with a sign that specifically promotes a message of insurrection (one of my favorite Jeffersonian quotes, by the way) at a Presidential "Town Hall" meeting, does nothing to promote an image of responsible gun ownership, but does promote an image of gun-owners being kooks.

That's the bottom line
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If you believe that exercising your rights in a lawful manner "does promote an image of gun-owners being kooks" then I wonder about how one does go about exercising those rights without looking like a kook?

Where do we draw the line? How do we define "appropriate" behavior? Do we define it by other's standards who are not in agreement with our own? Slippery slope.

Regardless of your own personal opinion, whether you believed that his actions were "smart" or not, acting in a lawful manner, causing no physical harm, being rather "cool under fire" during the interview, I have respect for a man/woman who actually lives by his beliefs.

What if 50 people did the same with the same results? What if 1,000? What if more than half the population? Should not matter how many exercise the right, the right exists; popular or not, The Bill of Rights has been around for a while and exercising the rights contained within only helps to maintain those rights.

While is should not matter how frequently a right is exercised, in reality it does. I would venture to guess that the British considered the colonists a bunch of "kooks" and worse at times; not to mention that they were illegally defying the British crown.

Some folks believe that a "Right" is right. (See sig line.)

I am all for promoting responsible gun ownership. However, calling law abiding citizens exercising their rights as contained in our founding documents "kooks" I do not agree with. It well may turn out that the man in question can be shown to be a "kook", but it should not be from his actions being discussed; namely exercising his "Constitutional/Bill of Rights" rights, especially from a group of people who support and promote "responsible gun ownership".
 
In one sense, nothing could be more exemplary of responsible exercise of 2A rights than bearing the weapon and never, ever using it to threaten or make one's point with violence. This is where I part ways a little bit with Kostric.

The threatening content of his sign, combined with being armed, is entirely premature. We don't yet have any tyranny to resist; it is still a democracy, and we can still kick the bums out. There is much to do before and unless all peaceful options have been exercised. Our complacency and ignorance is more responsible for our having drifted so far from our founding principles than anything. Until we remedy that, we have no right to call for violent opposition, IMO.

But it is crucial that the right, and means to violent overthrow be retained overtly. Meanwhile, there it is, right there in the holster, the ultimate monument to self-governance, where it peaceably remains until needed to oppose a immediate violent threat. That, we should not have a problem with.
 
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:sniff: I love you guys.:p

Good to hear some people disagreeing with Antipitas' argument that by default, armed 1A protests are somehow "wrong."

I've seen lots of events here in AZ that have been like that.

Frankly, if a man can't carry a pistol in a supposed pro-2A state at a peaceful rally that is in favor of political ideas that he believes in, and can't express that he believes strongly in those ideas (as some other men expressed 234 years ago on a certain Lexington green), then we've lost already.

Captain Parker never intended to start a fight that day. He mustered his men as a protest against Crown interference (well... he mustered his men because of the alarm system; the alarm system was kicked off because of a protest against Crown interference). Every single time that Crown and Colonial forces met up until the retreat back to Boston, the Crown shot first.

God forbid some peaceful rally of activists meets a group of state police or national guard with intentions to violently quell the protest (Ohio State?).

Your right to self defense is not waived when you exercise the 1A for its original purpose: political expression.
 
Some of you are as bad as Matthews was, not letting the facts speak for themselves so you can spout hyperbolic rhetoric about this patriot. Notice how Kostric said nothing about assassinations, the pundits here and in the interview took it to that level.

He was not protesting, he was demonstrating. Matthews wouldn't let him get that out (in the first minute of the interview) and it seems pretty thoroughly glossed over here as well.

The Jefferson quote, while amazing appropriate in his time, is a bit dated, and I feel was very well paraphrased by the individual in question to avoid the word blood, tyranny or patriot.
 
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Now that everyone is in an uproar over my last post (and while I have your attention), let me flesh my thoughts out a bit.

What was this town hall meeting about? Did it have anything whatsoever to do with any specific right, we possess? Or was the event about another power-grab by the Feds? <-- That could be the basis for a display of guns. I just happen to think it isn't time... yet. All other options are yet to be exhausted (paraphrasing Judge Kozinski in his dissent in Silveira).

So, other than expressing an opinion over insurrection, what do guns have to do with this particular event? How do guns, combined with the displayed message, apply to that particular meeting event?

I fail to see how Kostric furthered an agenda of protest (or demonstration, if you prefer that word) over the Federal takeover of the U.S. medical system.

I will say that the argument maestro gave in his prior post has come the closest to changing my mind.
 
I'm not in an uproar, anti....

However I am doing an awful lot of chuckling.....

(Btw...this is my first post, so please indulge me a bit!)

You stated:
Protesting is one thing. Armed protesting raises the stakes to a new level. Given the stakes, it was downright stupid. Foolhardy is another term that comes to mind.
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I notice you reside in Idaho, a GOLD STAR open carry state, according to opencarry.org, http://opencarry.org/id.html

I also know that New Hampshire is an open carry state.....

That being said, I find it a bit disconcerting your comments about this.....

Just my opinion, but I don't think that Mr. Kostric was, in your words, "armed protesting"....

Protesting, yes, the armed part played absolutely no part....

As I said, just my opinion....
 
Protesting is one thing. Armed protesting raises the stakes to a new level. Given the stakes, it was downright stupid. Foolhardy is another term that comes to mind.

explain how him being armed at a function open to the public (add the fact hes on private property with permission) raise the stakes?what i see is an individual
exercising his rights as afforded him by the blood of out forefathers.you say it was down right stupid,an foolhardy.....seems to me you don't believe in his lawful right to bare arms.or maybe you do but you don't have the guts to exercise them your self so the next best thing to do is be a sideline QB and make assumptions of how it should be done or how you would have done things different.
some will say what if it had turned out different,what if he did try to discharge his weapon?well.....he didn't so why go there.you cant condemn or try to add "what iff's.

the facts .
1.he had a lawful right to be there to demonstrate peacefully (which is what he did)
2.he was on private property with permission
3.he was following the law as it pertains to open carry(obviously from the fact that he wasn't detained or arrested or otherwise molested)except by the so called news guy.
 
pnac said: So you saw the video of the bombing then?
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If you are asking how I know what McVeigh's shirt says, feel free to read American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing by Lou Michel, Dan Herbeck. He was still wearing it when arrested.

Back on topic......

This guy wore the gun and picked his t-shirt with the intention of getting just what has occured, media attention. He knew that wearing a visible sidearm to a Presidential town hall meeting was going to get him involved in a confrontration.

If he has a lick of common sense, he has to have known that he wouldn't get anywhere near Obama wearing a gun. As such, he had no intention of merely attending the town hall meeting and asking questions. He wanted his 15-minutes of fame.

Is it his right to wear the gun? Yup.

Did he help the 2nd Amendment cause? Nope.

To most people, his actions alone make him look like a nutcase.
 
the problem with this whole issue is that for so long we have not been able to exercise our rights and when some one does hes a whack job.i for one am glad someone did. if we were able to exercise our rights as we have the right to but are banned from doing so due to our government people would not be alarmed. it wasn't too long ago when average citizens could carry.
we need to stop the ******* match and fight for our rights.
because if this one gets taken away the rest of them will go to the way side rather quickly.

guns set us free and its what keeps us safe from those who wish to harm us.
you take that away and your a victim.or at least a slave to the regime.
 
Did he help the 2nd Amendment cause? Nope.
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Sure he did, he quite likely opened a lot of minds, and eyes, to the fact that the 2A is still alive and well. yours is the same argument that some expressed when people went to the tea party events armed, and it just does not hold water.

While none of his rhetoric may have been specifically aimed at the healthcare issue, he was still making a broad stand against the increasingly troubling (self imposed) power of government.

This is a brilliant statement:

But it is crucial that the right, and means to violent overthrow be retained overtly. Meanwhile, there it is, right there in the holster, the ultimate monument to self-governance, where it peaceably remains until needed to oppose a immediate violent threat. That, we should not have a problem with.
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Bravo Sir !
 
Sure he did, he quite likely opened a lot of minds, and eyes, to the fact that the 2A is still alive and well.
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In my opinion, the only minds, and eyes he opened were those of the folks that are scared of guns (and politicians that just hate them) and made them say, "You mean open carry is still legal? We better ban that quick or we'll have more nutcases showing up to confront elected officials with guns."

I'm not saying what he did was wrong. His venue however, totally sucked. You do not bring a firearm when meeting the President of the United States.
 
Given time to prepare for a Chris Matthews interview...

... I'd have emphasized the importance the US government places on having the Navy perform Freedom of Navigation cruises and flights. These go through international waters and / or airspace which is claimed by another nation, such as the Economic Exclusion Zone of China which we've read about in the news quite a lot, or the Line of Death in the Gulf of Sidra off Libya in the 1980's.

The whole point of steaming or flying through those areas, even though it ostensibly antagonizes countries who are trying to claim waters and airspace outside the internationally recognized 12 nautical miles from their shorelines, is to avoid having the internationally recognized boundaries changed by tacit precedent.

In other words, it would be possible in international assemblies, for an argument to be made that by avoiding the water and air claimed by China, Libya, Cambodia, North Korea (take your pick) the US and other nations have tacitly conceded that those waters and airspaces belong to the claimant countries.

If the US government feels it is worthwhile to antagonize such countries, at risk of possible violence (actual violence, if you count the collision some Chinese F8's caused with our EP3 off Hainan island, or the shootdown of a US Lockheed Constellation off North Korea in the 60's) and politically uncomfortable situations in order to exercise and preserve the right to freedom of navigation, then how is it reasonable for the US government to expect its own citizens not to exercise and preserve their own Constitutional rights?
 
I'm not saying what he did was wrong. His venue however, totally sucked. You do not bring a firearm when meeting the President of the United States.
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He wasn't meeting the POTUS. He was nowhere NEAR the POTUS nor was he anywhere near where the POTUS would be that day. According to this article, he was on private property 50-75 yards from the entrance to the school grounds where Obama would be later in the day. He never even laid eyes on the POTUS.

If he was

Not only that, but have you all forgotten John Noble already?
 
I'm tempted to abandon this conversation but this question is raking my brain too hard not to ask:

How close to the president would you feel comfortable having this representative of the 2nd amendment, with a crowd around him full of unknown intentions?

Everyone keeps saying that he was no where near the president. So how close would he have to be for the needle to move from "im cool with it" to "maybe this isn't such a great idea"?
 
i think it is reasonable to keep armed, non-LE, out of firing range of the President, whatever that means. For a pistol, 200-300 yards would render the round harmless. For a rifle, perhaps 10 times that far.
 
How close to the president would you feel comfortable having this representative of the 2nd amendment, with a crowd around him full of unknown intentions?
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Should it be illegal to be critical of Government policy in the vicinity of the POTUS?
Should the protections from illegal search and seizure be suspended in homes near the POTUS?
Should troops be involuntarily quartered in your home to protect the POTUS?
Should you be denied a jury trial in cases involving alleged threats against the POTUS?
Then why should the RKBA be any different? In the absence of any reasonable suspicion of a crime being committed, then why does it matter? Is the President a King, that we must prostrate ourselves before him? Do our natural rights not exist in his exalted presence?

Lookup "prior restraint"

ETA: This is an issue because the anti media WANTS it to be a issue. Where was the media hysteria when protesters were calling for Bush to be killed, and throwing rocks at his motorcade?
 
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