By Dean Weingarten
I have come to expect the New York Times to denigrate America’s gun culture and the Second Amendment at every opportunity. It’s interesting that they fail to note in their coverage of the Alamo protest that Texas is one of only six states that have banned the open carry of handguns. This small and shrinking minority of states (Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Mississippi recently changed their laws to recognize the constitutional right of open carry), which consists of California, Texas, Illinois, Florida, South Carolina, and New York includes the state where the Times is published . . .
There are strong legislative challenges to the bans on open carry in Texas, Florida, and South Carolina. I wouldn’t be surprised if five years from now, only California, Illinois, and New York still have such bans. Even Illinois is uncertain as the Supreme Court there has recognized the right to carry outside the home. It’s a sign of progress that the ultimate paper of liberal fascism felt compelled to cover a gathering of those who wish to restore the Second Amendment to the status given it before the Kansas Supreme Court created the “collective right theory” in 1905.
I think it is ridiculous to go from that shooting to a diatribe about “gun owners being responsible”. That leap though appearing sensible is filled with bias and flawed. If the parents were negligent and irresponsible that should be addressed, certainly. But putting full focus on parents and gun owners, I am pretty tired of hearing that sorry old song.
Guns are dangerous but so are many other items in the world. Alcohol, cars, knives, gasoline, etc. Replace the word gun and firearm with the preceding dangerous items and see if you “common sense” solutions to the parent/gun issue still make sense. Do you keep your car keys, kitchen knives, alcohol and gasoline locked up? Why not?
History has shown that those items have been used similarly, and in the absence of guns they are absolutely used by crazy people to harm.
If a child in is a place for 6 or 8 hours a day that is presumably “responsible” for them and this kind of thing happens, is it the parents fault also for giving schools that “responsiblity”?
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/texas-high-school-stabbing-kills-reports-article-1.1445360
Well, around here shooting on public land is only good if you are hunting. Target practice is discouraged at any place other than a range setting.
What if I am hunting tin cans and zombie pictures?
I would subscribe to The Times just for their exclusive pics of Bloomberg’s head exploding after reading that article. . . .
Big American Babies™ want to play with ALL their toys in public! Beany babies, their dicks and their TOY GUNS! They also want their mothers to breast feed them in public! Go, Go Big American Babies™!
Housekeeping, please take out the trash.
No, leave his comments there. It can serve as a reminder to the undecided what Liberals think of us. It just proves that they are only concerned with attacks, lies, underhanded tricks, and feeling good about themselves. His comments paint the perfect picture of the enemy.
[YUP. HE’S BANNED NOW, BUT THIS STAYS, FOR THE REASONS YOU STATED. –MATT]
Hey, call me all the names you want, just remember after you’re done name calling, I still have my ALL my “toys” whether you like it or not.
And, evident by the failed attempts to take them via bans and restriction, there is nothing you can do about, except call me names…
Nana nana, boo boo!
Hey, Moran or Moron or whatever, take your Ritalin and do your homework, okay?
The fact that Texas does not allow OC is a joke.
NOT the most gun-friendly state, unlike what many Texans like to claim.
Workin’ on it . . .
I hear this kind of statement 100 times more often than “Texas is gun-friendly”. I don’t know who you’re talking to, everybody knows that Texas traded OC for CC – it’s not news.
Not me. This Texan has been working for years to get campus carry and open carry for Texas. I am fully aware of how far behind other states we are on those.
In Texas it’s hard, by design, to get bills passed, and the legislature meets for a few months every other year. Every session we do manage to pass better gun laws, so there’s always progress, but it’s slow.
On a positive note, it also keeps the legislature from passing any really bad stuff. We are less inclined to do that in texas, but maybe they should meet in DC in a similar way.
Being gun friendly doesn’t only involve open carry, which we can open carry long guns, like the San Antonio rally represented.
Texas has very pro self defense laws, in some states you open carry, but God help you if you have to use it.
I’ll admit Texas needs to get better about licensing and open carry, but our self defense laws are very gun friendly.
You are correct, however to those of us who have the ability to legally OC, it seems like a pretty big block missing from the puzzle.
maryland and NJ should be red. Maryland you can’t really get a license without a G&S, which means kiss the gov ass, make a donation.
Open carry outside the largest urban centers in Ohio is hardly noticed unless you’re doing something to draw a lot of attention to yourself, it’s also legal statewide. Out here in the land of hills, farms and villages a ‘man with a gun’ call is likely to net a response of ‘and. . . ‘
I prefer concealed carry but I frequently pack a full size 1911 with a relatively skimpy cover up and I know my gun has had to either have badly printed or been partially exposed an unimaginable number of times. the police have never come to ask me about it, and the only comments I’ve ever received have been good natured questions about what gun I carry.
I spent yesterday in the capital and while I carried concealed I saw zero locations marked as GFZs. I’m not sure what the police or the locals would have made of an open pistol ( I don’t go there often) but it seems to me that if the businesses are that cool with concealed carry they aren’t apt to panic much over a visible holstered pistol.
In and around the Dayton area it’s hit and miss, two suburban PDs have gotten their share of shaming after poor response to open carry calls in the last few years, one resulting in a lawsuit for unlawful detainment.
You just assuaged my fears…
I just took a job in Dayton, I’ll be moving down there this weekend. I’ve never lived anywhere but Michigan and I’ve been going nuts trying to gather as much info as I can regarding the differences in firearms laws. You just made it a little better.
This guy was born in Jersey, went to Stanford Law, is a tenured law professor, and he STILL somehow “gets” it. I’m sure all the real-life LE and counter-terrorism experience has something to do with the difference in his viewpoint vs. his contemporaries that never left the imaginary world of University.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Noble
I was shocked when I read the following statement in The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence’s blog: “Perhaps Farago is unaware that violence—like his pointed accusations—is used as a way of demeaning and controlling women, to keep them in a subordinate position to men. Or maybe he simply fails to appreciate irony”. Let me get this straight: the author equates words of disagreement with “violence” against women. Wow. That’s a real stretch. Women complain that men don’t take them seriously, and then turn around and make statements like this.
You could send them my way. With another stellar post-season performance by the Tigers the rest of my fall is wide open….
Good on you, Sir! Please run for office!
JhonnieB
Lancaster, PA
Open carry is allowed in Florida as long as you are active in some sort of outdoor activity. Fishing/hunting/camping/hiking or travelling directly too or from that activity
A babysitter in TX recently left a gun in the open and a child was shot. When I look at the comments on most sites you can see many members ragging on Texas.
“Only in Texas”
“Gotta love those gun nut Texans”
Yet as we can see from the chart not only are Texans NOT running around like “the wild wild west” but aren’t even allowed to open carry. So I have to ask, why do liberals and those not in the know think Texas is the way they perceive it in their head? I honestly believe it has something to do with Yosemite Sam
A lot of leftists are bigots, at the least the ones I see commenting on websites. They are quick to stereotype and even hate entire states or regions. I was raised in Texas and will die here, and I think every other area of the country has good qualities and good people. I’m very grateful not to be living in a state that has less freedom, though.
Even though Texas is concealed carry, when working out on the open range or in the hill country many wranglers open carry their sidearm because of rattle snakes or larger predators such as coyotes and mountain lions. Most LEOS in Texas won’t stop a working wrangler on the range if they open carry. However, they will stop anyone that open carries in town.
I’ve spent a lot of time in Keene, my ex went to Keene State College. There are lots of free staters, libertarians, and open carry advocates, activists, the civilly disobedient, etc. in Keene NH so I wouldn’t be surprised if they make the town nervous enough to buy that kind of stuff. Nothing makes a government more nervous than people exercising their constitutional rights and exercising civil disobedience.
To the towns credit though, their police force and the locals see this kind of stuff enough that they generally respond to it better than most other places on the planet.
While it is comical to think anyone would target pumpkin fest, a event the town threatens to cancel every year, you can understand their concerns about wanting extra security given terrorism, blah blah blah etc etc. Just for some perspective, I don’t know if any of you have been, but it is basically throngs of people mingling around main street, which is closed down, pushing through crowds and eating fair food.
F&F was designed to put American guns next to dead Mexican bodies. This was to support the lie that 90% of Mexican crime guns came from the USA.
The problem is that not all Mexican guns comes come directly form the U.S. plus many are smuggled in from overseas through the U.S.
You missed the rest of his quote on page 2 of that article which is equally good:
“For me it’s a profound question,” he continued. “People are quick to say ‘gun control, people shouldn’t be armed,’ etc., etc. I think they have to ask themselves: ‘Where would you have wanted to be? In a city where there was gun control and no citizens armed if you’re in a Westgate mall, or in a place like Denver or Texas?'”
Well, there goes his career.
All I have to say about this quote is, “No shit Sherlock.”
‘Is an armed citizenry more necessary now than it was in the past with an evolving threat of terrorism?’
Yes.
My take away on this is that the ATF basically neutered Dodson’s book to cover their ass-ets, and Dodson wrote it to cover *his* ass-ets.
So is Dodson’s book is simply a non event; it seems ‘the rest of the story’ on Fast n’ Furious won’t be told until somehow the real meat is exposed by some inside player or investigative researcher / author who can publish an exposé without restrictions.
Okay, I have to ask this. I have come to learn my buffer tube spring pretty well. By that, I mean I can hear it make a different sound when the bolt locks open, and I key off of that sound to begin my mag change or as a cue to grab my secondary. Can you still do that with this, or is it truly silent to the point where you really can’t tell?
Blah…Blah…Blah; just like Obama.
Holder trying to sell his own recipe of snake oil.
I’m a litte late to this party and with all due respect, I think the author is drawing conclusions that are not yet supported by the facts. To wit, we don’t know how the gun in question was stored and how the teen shooter got a hold of it. Indeed, we are not even sure that it was his parents gun at this point.
That said, I agree that guns should be locked up. As an NRA Training Counselor, I teach (and believe) that guns should not be accessible to unauthorized users but nothing is foolproof. By way of example, I seem to remember that Nancy Lanza kept her guns in a safe that Adam somehow got access to; perhaps after killing his own mother. Let’s get all the facts before we start “telling” people how to store there guns.
I was ready to order one when I saw the ad in the American Rifleman. Then, after a bit of digging I found out the butt inserts for the standard model are all 13.5″ lop. I am a bit taller than many, but not extremely so. I need a longer lop for comfortable shooting. Ruger missed a bet by not offering longer inserts. Is there a reasonably priced, quality .22 out there with a longer lop?
A well armed constabulary, being necessary to the security of the ruling class, the wealth of the people shall be confiscated so as to purchase arms.
Shooting coyotes – a valuable predator – for the mortal sin of drinking pond water. Wow. Nice work, assholes.
Carry an appropriate weapon for the circumstances.
When you have a round wire spring, it will ring, and it can degrade in as little as 1000 cycles. You also can’t store it compressed. Now, chrome silicate springs (the same material that valve springs are made from) are amazing. You’ll get 500,000+ cycles and can store it compressed (bolt locked back for fast deployment). Another bonus, no “spronnnnnng” sound, and consistent compressions throughout the life of the spring. I have been through 2 barrels so far on my original set of springs and no sign of letting up. They’re available through Tubb Precision.
The last time I was in Glacier nat park I had my 9 and bear spray. I believe the bear spray would be more effective. If the sound of the gunshot doesn’t scare the bear off, don’t think a little 9mm or even a 45 will stop a charging grizzly. If you think otherwise, you probably dont understand just how big these predators are.
I have no words for how angry this makes me.
No criminal record… no guns… A DUD, A FEW EMPTIES AND A HUNK OF LEATHER.
2 Years? Really?
I hope the Prosecution rots in hell.
just like us, the LA times won’t buy into the idea that guns just go off.. they put the quotation marks around ‘accidental discharge’
“Three students were injured Wednesday morning after the ‘accidental discharge’ of a police weapon during a safety presentation at a Chino elementary school, police said.”
Although my dad had a couple slide action .22 rifles, a bolt action 30-06, and maybe a Winchester Model 94, he never owned a safe. I think the gun safe is more of a modern thing (certainly a boon to those in the safe business). Nevertheless, it never even occured to me to take a gun and go shoot some people. I took the hunter’s safety course in my early teens and did lot of plinking and hunting as a teenager. Again, it never even crossed my mind to take a gun, go somewhere with it, and whack some folks.
oh goody! Now maybe Shannon Watts will come out of hiding and say something so spectacular and snippy that she inspires more lust in my loins. . . . .
A student discharged the round, from an AR-15 mounted to a motorcycle, the officer was distracted talking to other students when the discharge occurred. I have no idea why a round would be in battery.
The “injuries” were because of the sound, not being hit by a round. Three students ears were hurting.
California doesn’t allow for suppressors, I guess it likes hearing loss.