King of my jungle just a gangster stalking:
Two men walked the streets of Portland armed with assault weapons earlier this week because they said they wanted to “educate” residents, who reacted by fleeing and calling police.
Warren Drouin and Steven Boyce told KPTV that they were forced to take drastic measure to make sure people were aware of their Second Amendment rights after 20 children in Connecticut were massacred with same type of AR-15 rifles they were carrying.
“We’re not threatening anyone,” Drouin explained. “We don’t have that type of criminal behavior.”
“This happens to open that line of communication, to let people know that you can defend yourself in a time of crisis or any time that you want to,” Boyce added.
But KPTV’s Kaitlyn Bolduc reported that the demonstration created a “state of panic” in Portland’s Sellwood neighborhood.
When did the crazy people get the upper hand in this country?
JMG
Just wondering what would’ve happened if some other heavily armed good citizen had seen these guys, perceived a deadly threat (not a reach, that) and opened up on ’em?
andy
The Tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of first graders. I hate these people more and more every day.
quannlace
Chill out. They were just being ‘provocative.’
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
As JMG said. And would that other citizen claim he was standing his ground?
TBogg
@JMG:
Then the Tree of Liberty would have been watered with the blood of idiots.
OzarkHillbilly
1980. November.
f space that
30 some years ago when Ronald Reagan mainstreamed the idea that a democractically elected government was your sworn enemy.
OzarkHillbilly
Nothing says “Pussy” like an AR-15.
Spaghetti Lee
We’re probably 2 years away, as a country, from the gun lobby demanding regular human sacrifices to remind people of ‘the importance of self-defense’, and getting them.
As for these two bozos, I don’t know if one can go to jail for this, but they should lose their licenses at least. “I’m a responsible gun owner, except when I wander through a city with a loaded gun trying to scare people into following me!” Fucking shitheads.
dms
@OzarkHillbilly: Exactly
Nick
I bet the combined size of those gun toting tough guy’s penises (erect, not flacid) is 4 inches.
bystander
John Cole asks: When did the crazy people get the upper hand in this country?
Relative to guns, Rick Perlstein answers: Part I and Part II
Comrade Jake
I thought Portland was some kind of liberal/progressive oasis.
Maude
In my town, people would freak if two men were walking down the street with those weapons.
OT Looks like the US is getting out of Afghanistan 2014.
The IG at Pentagon said that screening of Afghans to be in military wasn’t good, at the beginning of the surge.
Nemo_N
When the non-crazies decided that it was more “mature” or “realistic” or whatever to let them be.
Wag
Good thing they aren’t blah otherwise the cops would have hot them and Limbaugh would be pointing out they must be members of the New Black Panthers.
Hunter Gathers
The national of nightmare of White Men Who Cannot Achieve Natural Erections continues unabated.
chopper
I’m sure these two guys wouldn’t mind at all if a couple of black panthers waved assault rifles on the sidewalk in front of their kids’ school. it would just be some guys showing off their constitutional rights.
daverave
I don’t know about you ladies but if I see some dude wandering around my town with a rifle and what appears to be a Keffiyeh on his head, I’m going to blow him away, assuming he’s a terrorist and ask the questions later… WOLVERINES!
Comrade Dread
@Maude: In my town of Los Angeles, we’d call it Tuesday. I kid.
Seriously, they’d be lucky if the LAPD didn’t taser them for pulling that shit.
brendancalling
@JMG: they would have been shot dead, and we’d have another “stand your ground” case. And you know, I am so tired of these fuckbuckets, I kind of wish that had happened.
Sawgrass Stan
@TBogg: Aren’t we glad that we have brave patreoots like these clowns to protect us against the “fascist” Obammer Dems? If we all had assault rifles, these two idiots would have been shot as soon as they walked outside.
BTW– If Jesus had only had a gun, we’d all be Jews today! No, wait, we’d be uh… Romans? Anyway, can I get an ‘amen’ on that, brother?
The Other Bob
I have to wonder what would happen to the pro gun groups if nonwhites started parading around with AR-15’s on their back?
Violet
Just imagine if it were black men who did this. They’d be in jail or worse.
I’m starting to think the New Black Panthers might have a winning formula if they decided to promote their members all have guns and gun training and march in white neighborhoods with their guns. Just imagine the freakout on the right.
donnah
And not just when did the crazy people get the upper hand, but why? Why does this wedge of American citizens get to run everything? Why are we seeing gun violence rising and the gun lovers pushing for even more guns? Why are we still unable to get rid of assault weapons and find ways to address the Angry White Teenage Male issue?
The news gets more grim every day and we have to support the people who are making the push for changing how guns are bought, sold, and regulated.
ranchandsyrup
Legendary Character Actor Ice T! Hoocouldanode he’d end up on a cop show.
A while back the open carry crowd in Escondido kept showing up at the Starbucks trying to scare/educate people. Of course their guns weren’t loaded so what is the fracking point? It must chap them that Reagan is the one that stopped their open carry days.
Sawgrass Stan
@The Other Bob: You’d get the gun control laws Gov. Reagan signed in the ’70s when the Panthers paraded around with guns, citing 2nd amendment.
kindness
Morans can walk around openly carrying weapons but they should not be surprised if someone shoots them before asking them why they are walking around carrying weapons.
Won’t be me. I don’t want to live out my life in jail, but there are others who won’t ask first.
NCSteve
@JMG: They would have died free!
cathyx
@Comrade Jake: It is, but every town has their crazies.
cathyx
My nephew lives in that town, I hope he didn’t get ‘educated’.
japa21
If somebody walked up to these two and pulled a handgun, these two wouldn’t stand a chance. By the time they started to get their weapons unslung, they would be on the ground.
rdale
Two men walked the streets of Portland armed with assault weapons earlier this week because they said they wanted to “educate” residents, to the fact that yes, we are ashamed of our tiny penises, but hey! We have big guns to make up for it.
Citizen_X
Shorter.
ruemara
As I said when I posted this on my FB page, you really think if this was 2 black guys, the police wouldn’t have come in guns drawn and they’d have been arrested? I was too polite to say those 2 black guys would be 2 dead black guys and the headline would have read, “Assailants killed by police, investigation of possible domestic terror situation”. Fuck this shit. This is why you don’t see black people parading with weapons unless it’s with fellow stupid white people. We’d be goddamned dead.
BAtFFP
No. The reaction to the civil rights movement turned ugly (well, uglier) because the racists and segregationists realized they might actually lose, and then they got scared. This is the same thing. They are losing and they are scared. I have friends (sadly, they are my friends still… although I don’t know for how much longer) who post this sort of thing proudly on their FB pages every single day. Frankly, they scare me a little. Especially the one with the sniper rifles.
But they are losing, and this is our country too. We can’t be scared back.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@OzarkHillbilly:
This. And a generation of people like Cole who voted for em and gave em money. At least Cole eventually pulled his head out of his ass.
Of course a generation of Dems let them get away with this shit. Our “3rd way” crap did as much to set back progressive policies as a neo-Confederacy full of white politicians and their voting enablers did.
Unabogie
This happened about a half mile from my house. This has truly changed my mind about responsible gun owners. In that I now believe they do not exist.
Nylund
@OzarkHillbilly:
This is actually the attitude that my gun-loving country relatives are trying to push. I spend the holidays with them. We talked a lot about Sandy Hook. These guys are real country types, tons of guns, hunt deer, moose, bears, etc. The walls are covered with antlers and the freezers are filled with meat.
They were lamenting how much the hunting world has changed. They refer to a bolt-action rifle as a “gentleman’s gun” and pointed to the old pictures of them all, posing with their kills, decked out in bright safety-colored hunter’s orange. “Nowadays, you go out and it’s some young jackass wondering the woods with an assault rifle in full camo and face paint like a wannabe Special Ops soldier just to hunt a deer.”
I asked him, “So what do you say to these young guys when you see them with a 30 round mag and an AR-15?”
My elderly cousin says, he looks at the clip, looks back at them and says, “I guess you’re planning on missing a bunch. Maybe you should stay out of the woods until you’re good enough to only need one shot to get the job done.”
The basic idea is the same. He thinks AR-15’s and big clips are for pussies. Real men don’t need them, real men don’t use them, and real men don’t like them.
What’s crazy though is that I always considered my cousins to be “gun nuts” but in this day and age, they’re outright sensible and reasonable by comparison.
Tone in DC
@Hunter Gathers:
LULz.
The crazies have had the upper hand since November 2008. When about 27% of the country lost their minds.
rdale
Meant to add: this happened in Utah a year or two ago, a guy showed up at a mall down’ta Orem (reddest of the red counties in the reddest of the red states) carrying his “FREEDOM” and caused quite a stir; he was only doing to educate the moms and kiddies at the mall, too.
ranchandsyrup
@cathyx: I hope those guys get run over by a vegetarian food truck.
NCSteve
@Comrade Jake: Also, evidently, inhabited by arrested development Pauleroids who believe the libertarian gabba gabba in science fiction novels that smarter people just kind of ignore.
WJS
Well, one of these delightful young fellows has slung his weapon across his back with the muzzle down, clearly indicating that he is looking for a welcoming place in the chow hall line so that he can join everyone in a place of companionship and brotherhood.
How can you be a threat to others when you are clearly well versed in carrying your weapon in such a non-threatening manner? Educate yourselves, citizens. Educate yourselves.
MikeJ
@ranchandsyrup: With a bird on it.
cathyx
@ranchandsyrup: More like a Prius.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
The most idiotic thing about this story is this quote:
Bullshit bullshit bullshit. Having a locked and loaded assault rifle on your back is inherently threatening.
When I was a kid being taught about gun safety, I was told that I should never carry a gun unless I was prepared to use it. It’s not a fucking fashion accessory, it’s a tool for killing living things.
Carrying a rifle with you while wandering down the street means one of two things: you’re ready and willing to shoot somebody, or you’re such a goddam moron that you might just shoot somebody accidentally. There’s no such thing as peacefully carrying that rifle.
ETA: And considering that the jackass in the kufi isn’t even carrying his gun correctly, I’m guessing it’s the latter.
The Other Chuck
As I was
rantingcalmly explaining last night to my girlfriend: The Second Amendment defenders have been saying over and over about how their arms are for the ultimate purpose of defending from government tyranny and overthrowing the same. Well, after all these years, we found out a few years ago what exactly tyranny is: government provided healthcare. Wrong answer, fuckwits, you lose, turn in your guns now.Chris
@BAtFFP:
This.
I would seriously love to live in an America where the word “conservative” has become as marginalized and synonymous with filth as the word “liberal” was in the last thirty years, and these people have become the fringe lunatics they so richly deserve to be. And I don’t think it’s completely impossible that it’ll happen in my lifetime. In the meantime, even if they don’t end up on the fringe, they are losing.
tom
This makes me wonder about what exactly background checks check. Most will probably agree that crazy people shouldn’t get a gun permit, but what about truly stupid people like these clowns?
Comrade Dread
Bank robbers should get in on this. “Really, we weren’t robbing the bank. We were displaying our freedom to carry. I mean, yeah, we thought it was weird that the teller was handing us bags of money, but we thought maybe we won a contest or something.”
Jon
1980
Woodrowfan
these are the same people who freaked when 2-3 “New Black Panthers” showed up outside a polling place in a majority black district and one of them carried A STICK!.
Violet
@BAtFFP: I agree. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. But the fact it’s getting worse is a sign they are losing. They are losing and we are winning. Keep doing stuff like this, wingnuts.
dr. bloor
@Wag: But *those* guys would be deemed to be acting “suspiciously because, you know, “suspicious” is synonymous with “blah.”
Betty Cracker
These morons scared people in one business so badly that they locked their front door, hid in a closet and called the cops. Let’s call this what it is: terrorism. They didn’t kill anyone (yet), but they knew this would scare the shit out of people, and they did it anyway. Fuckers.
Chris
@Unabogie:
A responsible gun owner is one who’s okay with regulations on his firearms. Also known as actually applying the Second Amendment as it’s written.
In other words, a gun owner who’s not right wing.
Kyle
Point the first: The gentlemen very likely dream every night that they will wake to a real life Red Dawn. Every night. They are idiots.
Point the second: The guy wearing the camo burka is kinda hot.
James Hare
I’ve been in a training class all week with a guy from Portland. He mentioned these guys but made it sound like more. He was a little bit unnerved by the whole thing. Portland isn’t that kind of community.
West of the Cascades
@cathyx: neither of these assholes was from Portland – one is from a conservative suburb, the other is a slug from far southern Oregon who has a history of this sort of gun/penis waving — oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2013/01/rifle_toting_activist_in_portl.html
They went to one of the more liberal neighborhoods in Portland to make a point, namely, that they are assholes.
Cassidy
@Betty Cracker: And I’m guessing these are a couple of assholes who went to a “liberal” city to teach dem liberals a lesson.
cathyx
To me, it seems that all they really want to do is to show people that they are macho tough guys and they have a legal right to carry a gun and just dare to disagree with them.
gelfling545
@JMG: Exactly. Were they wearing gun permits pinned to their coats or something so people could tell they were “good guys” (nuts but good). I mean, they’re not even wearing white hats or anything so how do you tell?
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
September 12th, 2001
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Unabogie:
At this point I have to assume that any given gun owner falls in the irresponsible category until proven otherwise.
Violet
@ruemara: How would it work if 20 black men or 50 black men marched around carrying visible guns? What if they announced beforehand that they were going to do it? I’m not advocating it–I’m really, honestly asking. Would they all get shot?
I know gun violence in African American communities is a problem. I would guess that leaders in those communities aren’t happy about it. Would there be any support for doing such a thing (walking with guns) to scare the white folk and thus bring about more sensible gun laws?
I don’t want anyone to get hurt and maybe such a suggestion is impossible. But the Black Panthers scared the white folk enough that Gov. Reagan changed the laws. Could such a thing work now?
Wag
@dr. bloor:
well of course.
Mandalay
@Violet:
I think that might be a highly effective approach to bring some sanity to wingnuts, and provoke changes in the law. Flaunt those weapons every weekend in affluent neighborhoods. Walk past schools and churches and hospitals. Exercise those rights!
By any means necessary.
Emdee
If you are really doing this to educate people, and hope they ask you questions, why would you not wear a shirt, or cap, or jacket, or carry a sign that said “FIREARMS EDUCATION: ASK ME ANYTHING”?
(Yes, I may be making the mistake of taking what they said at face value, but IMHO carrying a gun is not automatically a reason to believe they’re lying.)
If they were wearing such disclaimers, do people still react this badly? Was there anything they could have done to pull this stunt and actually have it work? My only thought is labeling, but again, I may be too credulous.
Ted & Hellen
This seems more like an ANTI-gun demonstration? This wasn’t done ironically?
rikyrah
@ruemara:
tell the truth , why don’t you.
if that was Jamal, Akeem and Tequan…
their Black behinds would be in a pool of blood shot by the police.
billiecat
So this is where we are – two knuckleheads can walk through a peaceful town, armed to the fucking teeth and they’re not violating any laws- they’re “responsible gun owners.” Bullshit. They put a whole neighborhood at risk. Some other “responsible gun owner” could easily have decided it was time for a “freedom firefight” and we’d be counting the bodies today.
But to suggest idiots like that should be on a registry – FASHISTISM! To ask that they be required to carry insurance if they want to carry fucking military hardware – COMMUNISTISM! To suggest that maybe the 2d Amendment didn’t envision stupid guys like this acting like morons – SOSHULISTISM!
Fuck them, fuck the NRA. I hope they burn in hell. And I don’t even believe in hell.
OzarkHillbilly
@Unabogie:
I am. My guns are put up and unloaded except for the .22 for the varmints and when my Gdaughter is coming over, it is unloaded and put up too. Also, I would never get a concealed carry permit because nothing says “pussy” like a Glock. I don’t have anything even close to an assault rifle (a .30-06 bolt action is the closest) and my standard reply to anyone who says they need a 30 round clip is, “You don’t need 30 rounds! What you need is practice!”
Comrade Jake
I wonder if the best way to handle these folks isn’t to mock them viciously. Where’s a good SNL skit when you need one?
Gex
I really love the juxtaposition of the last two posts. Painkillers for no one! Pain givers for everyone!
The Dangerman
More like Smallwood.
It was pointed out above; stand your ground and open carry can’t coexist. Because if one of these shits gets near me in a SYG state, I’m dropping him (since the basic fact of SYG is he/she that gets off the first accurate shot wins).
ruemara
@Violet: I’m from an African American community. I went to school in Hollis Queens and lived in a barrio across the street from the City College of New York. I have never seen a gun outside from on a cop and once, when a stupid kid that sat next to me in 5th grade blew a hole in the seat next to me because he was showing off the gun he snuck out of his house in class and dropped it.
I’d get a permit and open carry a fucking tank on my back, but it would take 20 or 30 or probably 100 black people doing so. And the chance that these trigger happy morons itching for their personal Turner Diaries fantasies to come to life is greater now than it was 20 years ago.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@ruemara: The southern poverty law center website has a list of people who are recognized as dying as part of the Civil Rights Movement. Post the list and point out how many of the incidents involved guns. I’m at work or I would find it for you.
Ted
Isn’t this called “brandishing”? I would take this as a threat if I was on the street with them.
Culture of Truth
to let people know that you can defend yourself in a time of crisis
hell, let’s create one…
or any time that you want to
or just any old time you dang well feel like it
Mandalay
@ruemara:
For what? The very point being made by these people walking down the street with weapons on their shoulders is that it is their right to do so, and entirely legal. Just have a few people tagging along with video cameras.
What could possibly go wrong?…..
Violet
@Comrade Jake: It’s one approach of many. Like I’ve said before–making doing this kind of stuff the equivalent of saying you’ve got a small, limp dick will make doing this kind of stuff much less desirable. Point and laugh. Point and laugh.
Gex
Do they think that people can tell just by looking at them what their past behavioral history is like?
I’m wondering what it is they think people can view at a glance that lets us know that they are safe. And what we might see so we know when a gun carrying person is not safe.
I’m guessing skin tone is a huge factor.
Cassidy
Someone should have jumped them and stolen the guns.
Brachiator
@Violet:
White people are already losing their shit because of the supposed New Black Panther in the White House.
You cannot expect any kind of sensible reaction from these wingnuts.
Betty Cracker
@Comrade Jake: I did my part to mock them viciously by leaving the following comment at the Portland news channel site that covered the story:
Dear Mssrs. Drouin and Boyce: We understand that you need big metal bang-bang sticks to fondle in compensation for other, um, shortcomings. But kindly confine future exhibitions to your moms’ basements. No one is impressed, and you have nothing to teach the rest of us, except perhaps that it’s time for Portland to update its municipal code.
David in NY
The only place I remember seeing guys walking around with guns like that was East Berlin, before 1989. Who says guns=freedom.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Emdee: At a school here in the Metroplex, a dad walked into his kids school, walked up to the office, and asked what they would have done if he had walked in with a gun and started shooting. He was arrested in part because he left his phone number if the school wanted to talk about security.
Some parents are up in arms that the school didn’t tell them about it for a day, you know, rather than being pissed that a dad would try that stupid shit.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire:
Actually, the jackass in the kufi is more dangerous than his non-kufi-wearing-asshole buddy: The NKWA buddy has to unsling his rifle and then shoulder it on the opposite shoulder, while the KWA only has to rotate his rifle under his arm to use it. Its a feature, not a bug.
The Ancient Randonneur
We elected Richard Milhouse Nixon to be our President. Twice.
Mandalay
@Ted:
Only by rational people.
Gun nuts prefer the terms “open carry”, or “exercising their rights”, or “defending the republic”.
Violet
@ruemara: When I said “gun violence in African American communities” I guess I was thinking of the stuff I’ve seen about Chicago. Anyway, thanks for the response. I think it would take a critical mass of people marching–like you said 100 or so. And there would definitely be a personal risk to them. I don’t know…just thinking out loud about it. I know it worked once to scare the white folk and get the law changed. Everyone would benefit from the law being changed.
Ted & Hellen
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire:
Bingo.
On a lesser but similar level, this reminds me of people who walk down the street with a hulking pit bull at the end of their leash, going…”what?”
jp7505a
So when did the crazies take over. Certainly November 1980 is a good start but they get a daily fix from Faux News. A case in point, and I will paste a bit from the article rather than trying to paraphrase the crazy since it makes my head hurt. Suffice it to say that Math has a liberal bias
from Faux – ‘Bolling held up a worksheet created by the publisher on the math property distribution. Bolling and his Fox News co-hosts were seemingly appalled by the worksheet’s title, “Distribute the Wealth.”
“Distribute the wealth, for distributive property of addition and multiplication,” Bolling said while reading off the worksheet. Pointing to the illustration of a girl holding money, Bolling added, “Distribute the wealth with the lovely rich girl with a big old bag of money, handing some money out.”
Who knew that math was a liberal. (sigh)
Culture of Truth
Is it legal to walk around that town naked?
Roger Moore
@Woodrowfan:
That’s because assault rifles have an everyday peaceful purpose, unlike sticks. Or something.
trollhattan
One of these assholes has been at this for awhile. BTW, at 22 let’s not flatter him with the label “man.” He’s still a snot-nose kid who’d never consider enlisting for a chance to extend gun “rights” to Afghans.
oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2013/01/2nd_amendment_protester_says_h.html
MCA1
This entire fever would slowly go away if we could just stop the “War” on drugs. What these crazies really fear is (i) the militarized police and federal forces like DEA and BATF, who have become militarized in order to combat the drug trade, and (ii) the [not incidentally, almost all minority] heavily armed drug trade players. Nevermind that neither of those groups could give a shit less about bothering some deer hunter in the far suburbs. The first one plays into their fantasy of a tyrannical “big government” just poised and awaiting the right moment to swoop in and take all their freedoms. The second speaks to the lizard brain and fear of the other, and is fed nightly by the local news reporting on the ongoing epidemic of gang violence in the neighborhoods where those “other” people live.
It makes no difference in the emotional part of the brain that 99% of what people see on the news is related to the illegal drug trade. What registers to them is scary people of color and a subculture where violence is condoned, and a war mentality emanating from law enforcement. I’m not saying all gangs would go away, and all violence, but over time I think it would make a huge difference in demilitarizing the culture if we could get the pot off of the streets and into the grocery stores.
We can attempt to address our problems with gun violence by trying to reduce the supply of guns out there and access to that supply, but I guess what I’m saying is we should be looking at steps that would reduce the demand for guns, too. If you whittle down the drug-related gang violence driving the vast majority of our gun-related death rate, I think you’d naturally reduce the desire of people to own guns of their own for self-protection, etc.
mingo
someone needs to start a parody Twitter account for these specimens.
I recommend the name “DicklessDuo”.
OzarkHillbilly
@The Other Chuck:
Every time I hear this load of horse shit, I ask them, “So, just exactly how long do you think you can hold out against a platoon of Marine’s?”
For some reason I never get an answer.
Violet
@Brachiator: People who marched in the Civil Rights movement didn’t expect sensible responses either, and often didn’t get them, but they marched anyway. Some of them were beaten and some lost their lives. But they did it anyway.
In some ways, the gun situation needs people who are similarly brave enough to stand up to the bullies who have controlled the gun situation for far too long.
Culture of Truth
There have been crazy peeps in this country since Columbus landed.
This level of insanity began when a guy named Barack Hussein Obama moved into the White House.
Roger Moore
@Mandalay:
I think that might be a highly effective approach to bringing some more gun deaths at the hands of police to the black community. It’s all well and good to be right under the law, but it wouldn’t do the dead guys much good.
SatanicPanic
This is what it’s all about, pushing other people around.
JGabriel
OzarkHillbilly:
Bingo. I was just about to post the same damn exact answer. Good thing I checked to see if someone else had gotten their first.
.
DW
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage: Well, much as I’d like to I can’t really blame the Third Way types. The votes simply weren’t there for progressives in the 80s and 90s. Remember, the Democratic victories in 2008 and 2012 depended on young voters who only recently entered the electorate. The crazy is a reaction. It was always there under the surface but stayed under control when things looked good. First they had Reagan. Then they had the Republican takeover of Congress and all the liberals had was Clinton who at the time triangulated like crazy and got impeached anyway. Then Dubya squeaked in. Then along came 9/11 and the Republicans ruthlessly exploited that and held on in 2004. Rove was proclaimed a genius and everyone was sure we were in an age of conservative ascendancy. But it all fell apart and it’s increasingly clear the Republicans are dependent on an aging dwindling base. Dubya was just an Indian summer and now winter has come. That’s why they’re crazy.
Ted & Hellen
The moron in the camo-scarf is kind of hot.
I would like to oversee his interrogation and punishment.
jah
Warren Drouin and Steven Boyce told KPTV that they were forced to take drastic measure to make sure people were aware of their Second Amendment rights
ahh, so those nice folks at the Westboro Baptist Church have just been making sure people were aware of their First Amendment rights this whole time!
and here I’ve been thinking they were just being total assholes.
David in NY
@Violet: “bullies”
That’s the word that the gun fetishists have been making me think of. Bullies.
ETA:
@SatanicPanic:
“This is what it’s all about, pushing other people around.”
This too.
Todd
Cultural defect of white christian people. I had a spirited discussion with a couple of older lawyers of the glibertarian bent yesterday (they claim to be libertarians, but somehow couldn’t find a conservatard that they couldn’t love). Anyhow, they were shocked that my white, gun-owning, churchgoing self might hold firearm fetishists in total contempt, and objected to phrases such as “cowardly”, “trembling”, “paranoid”, “trailer trash”, “fearful”, and “gun f@gs”. One of them won’t be speaking with me again, ever.
No loss.
They need to know that they don’t own the mantle of Real ‘Murkans, much as they may claim.
jp7505a
@Violet: Funny how the civil rights movment was able to challange an entrenched social/legal system without resorting to 2nd amendment solutions.
Jimmi the Grey
Dunno if it’s been pointed out that Sellwood dist is a very tame middleclass ‘hood here in PDX metro. Like to see them pull this in NoPo or say Felony Flats.
Todd
@OzarkHillbilly:
This. A thousand times over.
Joel
These guys are just trying out for Portlandia.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@Comrade Scrutinizer: Yes, good point. He was carrying it correctly if he was anticipating having to open fire at a moment’s notice like he was on patrol in the Vietnamese jungle. Not so correctly if his goal was to encourage people to come have a friendly conversation or to avoid hitting anything (like his own ass) with an accidental discharge.
@Ted & Hellen: Well, I have known pitbulls to be sweet and cuddly towards people (but keep them away from other dogs), but I’ve never had a happy Bushmaster lick my face before. I’m guessing it doesn’t feel nearly as good.
Comrade Jake
You do wonder if these bozos aren’t inadvertently doing us all a service. People see this, find out that yes, it is legal to walk around downtown with an assault rifle, and realize that the law is fucked up.
Bruuuuce
And, just to make things worse and more confusing, we get the Super-Sniper setup on sale next week. I don’t think I’ve heard anything this disingenuous since “I am not a crook”:
As if we’ve never had serial snipers in the US. As if they couldn’t account for as many deaths — and much more terror — than even mass shooters.
“Available models are not designed for semi-automatic weapons”, my torched butt!
SatanicPanic
@OzarkHillbilly: My response is- “I wouldn’t be on your side, so I’m more than happy to see you disarmed.”
Also “Mao took up arms against what he said was a tyrannical government, how do I know you’re not the next Mao?”
Brachiator
@Violet:
These folk were not marching to try to scare white people into doing something sensible.
I think I see what you are trying to accomplish, but trying to get something accomplished from a state of fear never works.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Todd:
Given that our country’s founding was based on the violent dispossession of, and where necessary the extermination of, Native Americans, our white christian gun culture today could well be regarded as an ill-tempered and disease infested set of chickens coming home to roost. When white people run out of natives to terrorize and slaughter they naturally turn on each other.
Comrade Dread
@Bruuuuce: That is disturbing, but the $17,000 price tag should be out of reach for most potential serial killers… I’d hope.
Mnemosyne
@Unabogie:
Oh, they exist, but they’re not the ones who keep insisting on bringing their guns out in public to show everyone.
I try not to jump onto the “guns=penis substitutes” bandwagon too often, but, really, how is this different than a flasher walking around town with his pants off to show the world what he’s got?
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@Jimmi the Grey:
QFT
Hell, they don’t even have to go all the way to Felony Flats. Come walk down Duke with your little guns, boys. Go from 52nd to the freeway and maybe I won’t think you’re a pathetic coward.
Funny that they only do this in a spot that’s just about crime-free.
Gravenstone
@Ted: This. Fuckers should have spent the night in jail and now have to seek legal counsel (with corresponding expense)for their upcoming trials. I don’t give a flying fuck if the charges ultimately get tossed, these morons need to learn that a civil society should not tolerate public intimidation like this.
Roger Moore
@MCA1:
FTFY.
trollhattan
@Comrade Dread:
And then one gets stolen and….
In my spare time I worry about asshats with .50 cal gunz. Am led to understand the rounds can travel through multiple houses.
Todd
@donnah:
Somewhere about the time that the Masters of the Universe realized that they had to cater to the ever more deranged whims of JBS Americans in order to maintain power in the face of demographic shifts and ideological change, this idiocy got mainstreamed.
Jon
@Citizen_X: This.
JoyceH
I wonder what these guys would have done if a couple other rifle toters had showed up, people they didn’t know? A couple guys who didn’t talk to them, but just stayed within eye shot of them, following them around? You think they might have felt threatened by that?
Jon
@Betty Cracker: This. Isn’t using the threat of violence to advance a political agenda exactly what terrorism is?
slag
Meh. Not scary enough. If they really wanted to threaten people, they’d be carrying Skittles and iced tea.
Southern Beale
I’m sure y’all have seen this item about gunmen in a Los Angeles shopping mall last night?
Jesus fucking whatever. And you know what? This shit will only change when big business starts to feel the pinch. When we all decide to stay home where it’s safe, watch our movies on streaming and DVDs, buy our clothes from Amazon and other online outlets, because it’s NOT FUCKING SAFE TO GO TO THE GODDAMN MALL ANYMORE.
Seriously. When big business realizes this hurts their bottom line they’ll start telling the wingnuttosphere to back the fuck off.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Ted:
IANAL, but isn’t threatening other people illegal under the statues for simple assault (i.e. without battery)? If reasonable bystanders felt threatened, it seems to me that would be enough for the cops to step in and put a stop to it using a citation for assault.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@JoyceH: This probably makes me a horrible person, but I kind of hope something like that happens and they all blow each other away in a Taratinoesque blaze of glory and gore, only with no damage to bystanders innocent or guilty and no property damage either. And then the good people of Portland could go back to drinking coffee and fixing their ill-thought-out gun laws.
MattR
@Gravenstone:
Might as well hand them a blank check when you release them. Many of these open carry nuts are hoping the police overreach so they can sue.
Southern Beale
Oh and yes, the “Don’t Tread On Me” T-shirt is priceless. Cliches all start somewhere.
catclub
@JGabriel: and 1980 was the flowering of Nixonland.
Chris
@Todd:
Mostly this, but there was a time (fifties and sixties) when the Masters of the Universe had to keep the JBS types at arms length and make their peace with the post-New Deal consensus, because to do otherwise was suicide. Then the climate shifted again, and they realized that they could embrace the JBS crazy and win elections again.
Amir Khalid
Are these clowns not going to lose their gun permits for scaring the bejezus out of the public?
Southern Beale
@slag:
You win.
jp7505a
@JoyceH:Like Maybe those New Blank Panthers with the billy clubs(sigh)
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@MattR: Sadly, yes. That’s pretty much how the loathsome Westboro Baptist assholes make their living.
bago
Someone needs to start a group called Negro Gun Rights, form a militia, and start patrolling white suburbs. I guarantee gun control will be taken seriously when the NGR militia walks through town.
SpotWeld
Here’s the thing. They are saying that are being persecured because as gun owers they are ridiculed for carring guns openly in public spaces.
What would happen to me if I took to walking around with a snow shovel in the middle of July?
Tone in DC
@Woodrowfan:
LULz.
And the normal passersby had little if any problem with the two Panthers standing there. The Panthers were encouraging people to vote, as I recall.
The people who wigged out in Philly that day were GOP poll watchers from out of state.
Beverly
@OzarkHillbilly: LOL
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
I’m guessing that any flasher who did that would have a much more impressive natural endowment than these guys.
burnspbesq
@Ted & Hellen:
Umm, no. As you would know if you had bothered to look at any of the media coverage of the event.
Wingnuts and gun nuts don’t do irony. It requires a kind of intelligence that they don’t have.
OzarkHillbilly
@slag:
Now there’s an idea…. Unfortunately, to really carry it off I’d have to wear black face.
zombie rotten mcdonald
Well, I may only be a simple Midwestern Zombie, but round these parts we don’t do our edumacating with bullets.
Bruuuuce
@Comrade Dread: Sadly, it only takes one. And $17K is steep, but not overwhelmingly so. Add $8K worth of other hardware including a vehicle and ammunition, and it would be possible to terrorize one or more cities, easily, like the guys did to Washington.
The Ancient Randonneur
“Nothing is over! Nothing! You just don’t turn it off! It wasn’t my war! You asked me … ” WHOA! Sorry I was goin’ all Rambo their for a second.
trollhattan
@SpotWeld:
These days some denialist organization would give you a grant and invite you to speak at the Aspen Institute.
bago
Anyone want to take bets on how long that idea would take to cause a media scene?
John Cole
150 comments and no props for the old school title of this post.
Roger Moore
@SpotWeld:
That depends on whether you’re part of a
well regulated militiaPrecision Snow Shovel Drill Team.Tone in DC
@Betty Cracker:
Moar LULz.
Good one, Betty.
Mnemosyne
@Southern Beale:
For those outside the LA area, Westchester is a fairly upscale area on the westside (at least, as upscale as an area near an airport can be). It’s no Beverly Hills or Brentwood, but it’s white and middle-class enough that this incident is going to scare the living fuck out of a whole lot of people.
Death Panel Truck
@ruemara: If they were blahs:
Best case scenario — thrown in jail
Worst case scenario — Portland SWAT team called out, resulting in two dead blahs.
trollhattan
@John Cole: How old? Certain of us listened to Zepplin when we was yout, nomsyn?
Southern Beale
Texas father charged with making terrorist threats, but claims he was “just testing” the school’s safety system.
Dumbass du jour.
Certified Mutant Enemy
@Bruuuuce:
Someone who earns $10/hr. and lives rent free in his parent’s basement could save up for one in about year….
SenyorDave
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire: I think you said it all very well. I would add that I I was a cop I would hate jackasses like these two. It has to make their jobs harder.
Raven
@Mnemosyne: My sis is on the other side of Imperial.
Spaghetti Lee
@Southern Beale:
Aw, shitballs, is this gonna become the new trendy thing for rightwing assholes? “I wasn’t really threatening to kill people, I was just seeing what would happen if I did!” Hopefully the judicial system isn’t quite as stupid as these brave patriots.
Raven
@Spaghetti Lee: What new? They were doing this shit a couple of years back in DC.
Evolving Deep Southerner
They need a “Million Gun March” on Washington. I’m totally fucking serious. Every Second Amendment-loving able-bodied citizen who has a gun needs to converge on the Mall, every one of them packing with a full clip/chamber. Just make sure you announce this event in plenty of time so that everyone else can clear out and watch from a long way away.
Suffern ACE
@Southern Beale:
Although the hostages they took were all employees of Nordstrom Rack, I’m still going to count them as civilians. Because, no, when you go to work in a store, you don’t actually cross the line and become a member of the military.
Cassidy
@Spaghetti Lee: Hey, if someone is walking around with an assault rifle and gets dropped by a responsible gun owner protecting their neighborhood, I don’t feel bad for them.
Bruuuuce
@Certified Mutant Enemy: And some jackass kid with too much money, or some recently unemployed 50-year-old engineer whose wife left him with his shoes and his severance pay, or some “freedom fighter” who puts together the funds, couldn’t manage it? $25K is an imposing amount of money, but not by any means overwhelming.
Either way, I just hope when whoever does it, he streams his vids to his iPad and then posts them to YouTube. Because that’s just the kind of jackass who would.
Roger Moore
@Evolving Deep Southerner:
Then we release the pre-planted sleeping gas bombs and haul them all away to the FEMA camps, right?
Raven
@Evolving Deep Southerner: They had one at Franklin’s this weekend!
Felonius Monk
Soylent Green
@Comrade Jake:
I live in Sellwood.
It’s one of Portland’s trendier, more progressive neighborhoods, in a city that indeed has a well-earned reputation for them. But there’s no fence around it, no checkpoints with metal detectors, no random traffic stops, to keep wingnuts out. Gun nuts live everywhere, more in some places than others. They are your neighbors too.
Evolving Deep Southerner
@Roger Moore: No, shit no. Just leave them alone. Chaos theory will take care of everything.
ETA: I forgot to say that it needs to be marketed with the slogan “Bring your biggest and baddest – and if your safety’s on, you’re a fucking pussy.”
Soup of the evening
What about this is not a blatant example of disturbing the peace?
Eric U.
I think in Pennsylvania and other “stand your ground” states you could blow these guys away and the authorities would have a hard time getting a conviction.
Evolving Deep Southerner
@Raven: Yeah. Figures.
geg6
@slag:
And where would you like your internets delivered, sir?
Violet
@Soup of the evening:
The fact they’re white men. They are the peace. If you’re disturbed, it’s your fault.
OzarkHillbilly
@Soylent Green:
I don’t know about his, but they definitely are mine. There is a shooting range about a mile-mile and a half down the road from my place and sometimes you would swear to Dog there was a war going on.
Raven
@Evolving Deep Southerner: You should hear the commercials that moron runs on the radio.
Roger Moore
@Evolving Deep Southerner:
Can we at least set off a few firecrackers?
EdTheRed
The gangs of Medford will never die
Just multiply
Death Panel Truck
@Felonius Monk: The seed was planted in 1964, when some jackass at Cow Palace in San Francisco said, and I quoteth:
“Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ)
@Mnemosyne: It’s hard, one might even say impossible, to kill someone with your penis. That’s the most important difference between a flasher and a gun nut.
Omnes Omnibus
@John Cole: Some one referenced Ice-T miles back. Read more carefully.
Raven
@Death Panel Truck: Hence, the “Barry Goldwater Range”
Haydnseek
@John Cole: This is a tough room, John. I know from experience.
handy
@John Cole:
Ummm
roc
The Internet. It let the crazy people find one another and establish little echo-chambers to build one another into a foam.
That the GOP incorporated the frothing lunatics was a bit of demographic inevitability. If they weren’t kowtow’ing to the truthers and the birthers and the rest, they’d already *be* a permanent minority party. They literally cannot make a McCain style “my opponent is not a secret-mulsim demon”-style statement and win federal control of anything anymore.
So now the GOP is *reliant* on the lunatics. They can’t tell ’em to settle down. They can’t moderate their positions. That would just accelerate their own forced retirement. “Better to rule in hell” and all that.
As to the press: lunacy and fear are great for business. What incentive do they have to anchor the news to reality or reasonableness?
Ash Can
As Betty Cracker said above, let’s call this what it is: terrorism. If these shitheels had shown up in my neighborhood, I’d have hustled Bottle Rocket into the basement to the safe place away from windows where we go for tornado warnings, then I would have dialed 911. (Of course, this neighborhood is full of cops and most of them have kids themselves, so these clowns could very well have been ventilated by the time the 911 operator picked up the phone.)
Since when does “exercising a right” send people scurrying to hide in terror? Since when is it a “right” to do that to o0ther people? I don’t care if these guys were riding a fucking parade float down the main drag with a goddamned marching band, banners, and skywriters, all spelling out “FIREARMS EDUCATION, RIGHT HERE.” If they were carrying rifles like that, they were a fucking threat, and if they think that people are just going to take their word for it that they wanted nothing other than to peacefully exercise their rights, then they’re too fucking stupid to own firearms just on the basis of that alone.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ)
@Comrade Dread: Depends on whether you can buy it on credit. I doubt your average mass murderer is worried about whether he can make the payments so long as he can get his hands on the goods for long enough to carry out his plan.
legalize
@Comrade Jake:
Portland, proper, pretty much is. But, it’s like most medium to small sized cities, in that it is surrounded by hillbillies who freely wander in. I, personally, choose to live in the city to get away from assholes like this.
Lancelot Link
Last time i saw someone other than a policeman hauling around a gun in public, he shot 5 people.
Roger Moore
@Death Panel Truck:
The crazy has been building ever since.
MattR
@Omnes Omnibus: The dope he’s selling, you don’t smoke. You feel.
Evolving Deep Southerner
@Raven: I can remember back in the 90s when they ran TV commercials with production values that were bad even for 1990s local TV stations. Have they gotten all ideological? Back in the day, their only ideology was money. My God, their shit was so overpriced it was unbelievable.
geg6
@Ash Can:
Yeah, I’d like to know exactly why you can’t yell “fire” in a crowded theater but jackassery like this is just a-ok.
Death Panel Truck
@Roger Moore: Lincoln a jackass? Hoo noo?
Sly
Crazy people even have their own statistics now.
Here’s a fucking clue: when you’re trying to compare two sets of statistics that were compiled by separate outfits, you better make damn sure that those outfits are using the same criteria in their models so you can actually make an apples to apples comparison.
For instance, comparing the U.S. violent crime rate as reported by the FBI is not particularly useful to compare against the UK violent crime rate as reported by the UK Home Office when the UK Home Office includes in its categorization of violent crime a whole host of offenses (like harassment, non-aggravated assault, and “public fear, alarm or distress”) that the FBI does not. Because if you do that, and do it in a particularly smug way, you just end up looking like an asshole to people who actually know how to do statistical analysis.
zombie rotten mcdonald
@SpotWeld:
Nothing, if you lived in Minnesota.
Roger Moore
@geg6:
Because your right to guns is protected in the Bill of Rights, but not your right to falsely shout fire in a crowded theater.
J.D. Rhoades
LET ME SHOW YOU MY GUNZ
MY GUNZ
LET ME SHOW YOU THEM
J.D. Rhoades
@Roger Moore:
What about bringing your guns to a crowded theater?
What? Too soon?
Raven
@Evolving Deep Southerner: Back in the 90’s Clarence was alive and it was a different ballgame. His son, Mark, is a fucking jackass who tried to make a big deal out of the fact that Clarence quit the police force to start the store. Mark had one commercial that said he “hated” the president. I called and emailed the station and it went off fairly quickly. I have no idea if my effort had and impact but, fuck it.
Roger Moore
@Sly:
And if gun nuts were worried about looking bad to people who know how to do statistical analysis, they might be worried. Instead, they’re trying to rile up people who think that statistical analysis is for weenies, so they can warp the facts seven ways from Sunday without having to worry.
Patricia Kayden
Wonder if two Black men casually walking around with guns in their hands would just be talked to by the police and left to continue to roam around.
Fascinating.
pseudonymous in nc
This is Godwin territory, but let’s remember that the brown-shirted guys who trotted around the place with guns weren’t part of an official law enforcement organisation: they were a club with a costume and a mission to intimidate.
Evolving Deep Southerner
@Roger Moore: No need, and nobody else needs to get that close. These fuckers close their eyes and hear gunshots, only they’ve never been in combat. They’ve just watched too many movies. Let that relatively narrow part of the gun-owning herd cull itself (kind of like self-deportation except more permanent) and everybody left would be able to come up with a good, common-sense set of rules everybody would be happy with in an afternoon.
MikeBoyScout
America, F*CK YEAH!
Roger Moore
@Death Panel Truck:
I probably should have fixt the “jackass” part too, but I hope my point is clear: these guys have been nuts for a long, long time. The sociological problems we’re dealing with have deep roots.
Raven
Fuckin Joe Walsh rippin Rocky Mountain Way on the Srat Pack. . .
Forum Transmitted Disease
Pull that shit in my neighborhood and I’m not going to wait and see if you’re a law-abiding citizen or not. The law is on my side and said gun-toters aren’t going to survive the experience.
J.D. Rhoades
@Woodrowfan:
You may be on to something. Let the New Black Panthers hold a gun show. You’ll have a ban so fast it’ll make your head spin.
gene108
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Check out the Presidential electoral maps of 1980, 1984 and 1988.
The Republican candidate got 400+ EV in each race, while the Democratic candidate carried no more than about a dozen states.
As badly as the Republicans have done since 1992, i.e. when DLC/”3rd way crap” started running for President, which is to say lose the popular vote every year, but 2004 and seized the White House in 2000 on a “technicality”, Bush, Sr., Dole, Bush, Jr. and McCain and Romney all carried over 20 states.
Democratic victors in 1992, 1996, 2008 and 2012 carried less than 400 EV and we think we enjoyed huge wins the past couple of Presidential elections.
Whatever it was Democrats were doing before the “3rd way crap” wasn’t working at all in Presidential elections.
Omnes Omnibus
@J.D. Rhoades: A right to bear arms does not implicitly mean that one can do it at any time and in any place. If speech is subject to reasonable time, place, and manner regulation, why is the right to bear arms exempt from similar regs?
Mnemosyne
@Suffern ACE:
I think the distinction the paper was drawing was between “civilians” and “hostages,” not implying that the store employees who were taken hostage were somehow honorary members of law enforcement.
wasabi gasp
The education angle made this pop out of the memory banks: youtube.com/watch?v=MeGD7r6s-zU
Next up, cookies and milk time.
Mnemosyne
@roc:
There’s something to this. IIRC, the guy who attacked Elie Wiesel a few years ago was a Holocaust denier who spent a lot of time on denialist websites and message boards. The constant reinforcement he got there helped him build up his courage for the attack.
Ronzoni Rigatoni
@Nylund: Cole’s own Senator noted that “if you can’t kill a deer with one shot, maybe you shouldn’t be hunting.”
Roger Moore
@Omnes Omnibus:
It’s not clear that gun rights can’t be regulated on the basis of time, place, and manner. It’s just that the “guns for everyone, everywhere, all the time” lobby has been very aggressive in pushing back against any kind of restriction, to the point that people can carry in ways most people find crazy.
Soonergrunt
@John Cole, top:
“When did the crazy people get the upper hand in this country?”
January 20, 1981
SATSQ
kc
It would be funny if someone had shot the dumb sonsofbitches.
Yeah, that’s right, I said funny.
J.D. Rhoades
@Ronzoni Rigatoni:
My Grandpa had the same philosophy.
jp7505a
There is just this seething anger on the right. It was there when Clinton was in office. Jesse Helms suggested Clinton not visit Fort Bragg because a soldier might take a shot at him. Obviously it has grown by orders of magnitude under Obama. You have Alex Jones and his bizarre world, the guy on the video yesterday who wanted to kill some people and now claims he has an army packed and ready to go.
The casual references to 2nd amendment solutions and watering the tree of liberty with blood. Listening to Limbaugh on the way home and it’s 3 hours of free floating anger at anybody and anything that isn’t ‘conservative’. The flu epidemic is a plot by Obama to distract from the unemployment situation. Unemployment insurance is a scam to let the lazy spend the day in front of the TV drinking booze and eating fast food.
I was no fan of Reagan or W but I don’t remember the level of violence tinged rhetoric from the left. There are always nuts but so much of this rhetoric is coming from opinion leaders and political leaders. Even during the 1960’s when you had fools like the Weather Underground, they were on the fringe of the anti-war movement. I don’t remember serious leaders voicing support for what they were doing as opposed to a Rick Perry flirting with succession.In 1968 it was the ‘clean with Gene’ that rejected that type of rhetoric. Today the tea party wing seems to encourage, or atleast tolerate, it.
Not going to end well
Omnes Omnibus
@Roger Moore: I think gun rights can be regulated in that way, and I would argue that the Supreme Court said so in Heller.
kc
Good thing thieves never read newspapers, otherwise they’d know where they can steal a couple of AR-15’s in the Portland area.
johnny aquitard
Gun nuts = terrorists.
FBI definition of domestic terrorism:
“Domestic terrorism is the unlawful use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual based and operating entirely within the United States or Puerto Rico without foreign direction committed against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof in furtherance of political or social objectives.”
These guys were doing exactly that, engaging in a threatened use of violence against people to further their political objectives. Even as they were pretending it wasn’t a threat.
Fucking asshole gun nut terrorists.
Jax6655
@Citizen_X:
Exactly.
Tonal Crow
Not tolerable. We are not (yet) Somalia. Please call your representatives and ask them to ban open carry — indeed, all carry. In your home, maybe. On the street, no.
Roger Moore
@Omnes Omnibus:
The Supreme Court may have suggested that it’s legal to regulate gun rights that way, but I won’t believe it until it’s actually been litigated. Between Heller and Citizens United, I’ve lost my confidence that the Supreme Court won’t give the wingnuts everything they want and a little bit more that they forgot to ask for, and to hell with precedent.
Don
@Evolving Deep Southerner: Wish misery on your own town, wouldja? We got enough home grown assholes already, thanks.
Tonal Crow
@Roger Moore:
Time to enact the statutes to regulate the hell out of gun use. Blanket registration. Regular mental health screenings for all registrees. Ban AR15-style weapons, ban large clips, ban open carry or maybe all carry. Require liability insurance. Ban carry while intoxicated. Register and microstamp ammo. If Republicans can whittle away at Roe, we can damn well whittle away at Heller.
ETA: Also too, who’s the moron with the muzzle pointed up? Look like a prima facie case of improper gun usage, which should lead to permit revocation, personal search, etc.
Death Panel Truck
@Roger Moore: Doesn’t really matter when the seed was planted, today’s full metal crazy wasn’t ramped up to 11 until after a black man took the oath of office. As someone said above, tyranny to the gun nuts is the ACA. White boys weren’t patrolling the streets with high power firearms when Clinton was president. At least he had the right skin tone.
J.D. Rhoades
Legal note, from North Carolina:
“A gun is an ‘unusual weapon,’ wherewith to be armed and clad. No man amongst us carries it about with him, as one of his every day accoutrements–as a part of his dress–and never we trust will the day come when any deadly weapon will be worn or wielded in our peace loving and law-abiding State, as an appendage of manly equipment.”
State v. Huntly, 25 N.C. 418, 418 (1843), defining the common law offense of “going armed to the terror of the people.”
God bless the Tar Heel State. And while he’s at it, may He wake their asses up about gay marriage.
Kristin
@Betty Cracker: Basically, what they are telling me is, “if you try to enact reasonable gun regulations, we’re going to shoot everyone.” It’s a threat, and it’s politically motivated. Thus, terrorism.
Jax6655
@Violet:
Violet @66
Here’s what I don’t get about you, Violet. Why on EARTH should Black people, who are already shot at by police when unarmed, make themselves even more of a target to convince WHITE people to give up their guns???
I have tapped you on this myself on earlier threads. Yet you keep asking the same dumb shit! Your false “sincerity” of this repeated question makes me want to puke.
Give it up. Not going to happen. Stupid idea.
Tell you what. Why don’t you wear an assault rifle around your neighborhood?
kc
@J.D. Rhoades:
What a great cite!
aimai
@Roger Moore:
That actually is the result of a constitutional challenge and a court case so your “right” to bring a gun to ANYTHING isn’t necessarily more secure than your right to disturb the peace/yell fire/fighting words. The problem we are having is that the current Supreme Court decided to interpet the 2nd amendment in a certain way–not that the amendment itself would necessarily be beyond an alternate interpretation.
aimai
gogol's wife
@Jax6655:
Yes, I wish this idea would go away. I don’t want anyone carrying guns around. I want the terrorism to stop. And it is terrorism.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tonal Crow: Yep. Argue that Heller simply invalidated blanket bans. It explicitly okays regulation. I don’t have access to the decision right now, but I recall language that says certain types of weapons could be banned. So, make the regulations specific and narrow. Just make lots of ’em
Paul
Scared people that saw these two idiots naturally called the cops. Any rational person would have.
If their second amendment right is so holy, then why not at least charge these two people the amount of time the police had to waste on these idiots? Why should the rest of us have to pay for it?
aimai
@jp7505a:
I remember that moment, the Jesse Helms moment. How I wished Clinton had had the Secret Service kick down his door and haul him, pissinghimself, into his front yard. The thing is that that was the start of the/sign of the right wing determination to attack Democrats as “not military enough” to be CinC and at risk for a kind of fraggign from the military. Clinton should have made a gigantic fuss and cut off funding for those military installations until the various generals told Helms to sTFU. But he didn’t.
aimai
Roger Moore
@Death Panel Truck:
No, but they were headed to backwoods Idaho to live as survivalists. I lived through the Clinton era, and the right wing was plenty crazy back then.
zombie rotten mcdonald
Related topic, and since I am hip-deep in a code review for a recreational facility, y’all will be very comforted to know that shooting ranges in this country are required to be accessible.
J.D. Rhoades
@aimai:
If I recall, the commanding General at Fort Bragg (which is the base to which Helms was referring) did something like that, only politely.
Jay S
@Omnes Omnibus: IANAL but I have read that the words about regulation are in dicta and are not binding.
Tonal Crow
@Jay S:
Of course they’re dicta — dicta is everything that’s not needed to decide the case. Also too, the Supreme Court not infrequently ignores its own precedent, so it’s not as if they’re bound by it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jay S: Even if that were the case (and I certainly would not conced that it is), dicta can be used as persuasive authority. There is nothing in opinion that suggests that unregulated arms ownership is okie-dokie. Pass some laws. Hell, by the time they reach the Court, it may have a different composition.
jefft452
@Violet: “They are losing and we are winning. Keep doing stuff like this, wingnuts”
Yep
This crap will be a bigger boost to sane gun regulations then Sandy Hook
It is way to easy, when bad things happen to other people, for people to feel it wouldn’t happen to them
And “arm the teachers!”, however dumb, gives people who don’t really want to do anything to solve the problem a way to feel like the problem has been solved
Then these goobers terrorize your wife and kids, so you call the cops
That’s what cops are for, right? Protect and Serve, you’re not one of “those people”, Officer Friendly is there to protect you and your family
That’s what you grew up thinking
Then the cops tell you “our hands are tied, the law lets them do that”
A hell of a lot of white, middle class, suburban, republican voting, leave-it-to-beaver types are going to yell “then change the fucking law!!!”
Joy
I would laugh my ass off if the dude with his gun slung behind his back either a) shot his own ass, b) shot himself in the leg, or c) got it caught in a door handle, causing it to discharge into the ground, simulating a 4th of July celebration (with no innocent bystanders hurt but fellow 2nd Amendmenter next to him is on his own). These people are fucking idiots!
Evolving Deep Southerner
@Don: You can come stay with me and we’ll watch it on Fox together.
Kristin
@Roger Moore: I think people forget how insane the Republicans were during Clinton’s two terms. As just one example, they regularly accused the President and his wife of murder.
Betty Cracker
@aimai: True. I don’t like to actively hope Judge Scalia faceplants in a plate of alfredo during the next four years, but it might have a salutary effect on a number of fronts.
PLH ~ NYC
@John Cole: In answer to your question at the end of your post, 1980 when Reagan became President. That was it. There have been moments when adults ran the asylum, but only moments. I am thinking of sending my kids to Sweden. I briefly lived in that neighborhood in Portland (Sellwood), and it is sleepy. No one I knew in 1980 when I lived there during college could have imagined someone walking down the street with such a weapon.
Kristin
Btw, I just really looked at the pictures. The guy in the hat is the epitome of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders. If someone else had walked up to him and pointed a gun at him, he’d probably pee himself and run instead of shooting.
Maude
@J.D. Rhoades:
#205
Today in Aurora, CO, in court, a father of one of the victims yelled out, “Rot in hell, Holmes.”
Never is too soon.
cckids
@WJS:
Professor Mad-Eye Moody would tell him that he’s going to lose a buttock that way.
Jax6655
@gogol’s wife:
Me too.
You folks on the thread who keep getting your jollies with this fantasy, Talk to me like I’m stupid here.
Troubled white men get assault weapons and kill (mostly) white people. Angry, spitting white men get on tv and talk about more guns, freedom and the 2nd Amendment. Others open-carry assault weapons around (mostly) white Portland.
And the solution [what would be really cool] is for African Americans to arm up, march around and scare people.
Why are you saying/joking that armed Black people are any more scary than armed white people??? Where the hell is that coming from. You snort and chuckle and don’t realize how OFFENSIVE that is to many AAs. **
Plus, these folks scare me quite enough, thank you.
ETA: **frankly I hope everyone is put off by this idea.
Rathskeller
@The Other Chuck: fantastic. stealing that.
gogol's wife
@Betty Cracker:
I’m sposed to be a Christian but this is making me laugh way too much.
MattR
@Jax6655:
Because to most right wingers, it is absolutely true. I wish it were not so, but it is.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jax6655: it is one thing as a thought experiment, but, as a real proposal, it is a remarkably bad idea.
jp7505a
@Joy: Maybe take out the family jewels at the same time?:-):-)
Jax6655
@MattR:
MattR
You’re missing my point which is that the “non-right wingers” joking about it on this blog also think it’s true.
MattR
@Jax6655: I don’t see that at all. I have not seen people saying that they would be more scared of an armed black person than an armed white person. They are saying that the idiots who applaud these two white guys would freak out if they saw two black guys doing the same thing so maybe if black people started doing this en masse it will cause those yahoos to rethink their position about unfettered gun ownership.
BTW – As Omnes said, I think it makes an interesting thought experiment. But as a white guy there is no way that I am going to suggest that a group of minorities risk their lives to fix this problem. To me, that is the offensive part of the suggestions – that they are being made be people who will never have to deal with the risks that the idea entails.
TR
@Jax6655:
From the reality that the overlap between gun nuts and racists is pretty considerable, and from the history that California had an open carry law in the 1960s, but as soon as the Black Panthers starting marching around the state capitol with rifles, Governor Ronald Reagan pushed through one of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation.
Rathskeller
For what it’s worth, I was discussing gun control with a very aggressive person on Reddit this morning. We had some back & forth. After a while, I checked his comment history which was short and 100% focused on guns.
This is just a suspicion based on that type of account history, how he was arguing, and some internal contradictions I noted, but I think he was a paid troll. I imagine the gun industry will be pushing every lever they have available.
TR
@MattR:
I don’t think the comments are serious, but point out the fact that when conservatives praise “a gun-owning public” they imagine that public as looking just like them — white, and largely middle-aged.
Put it this way — Wayne LaPierre was really vocal after Sandy Hook in saying that the solution to gun violence is for the potential victims to be armed too. Odd, but I don’t remember him saying that all black teens should be armed too after Trayvon Martin was killed.
jp7505a
@TR: And for the freakout of a black man with any kind of weapon, see faux news and the new black panthers. In 2008 it was two guys with a stick. In 2012 it was one guy holding the door open for voters
Jax6655
@MattR:
Thanks for this thoughtful response. It is closer to what I’m saying.
Not only that but I hesitate to believe they even understand the risks. Not really.
johnny aquitard
@Omnes Omnibus: What pisses me off is why these guys were doing it. They were doing it to frighten people in order to get attention for their NRA agenda. Or as they disingenuously called it ‘educate people’. ‘Open carry’ is just legal cover.
Seriously, how the fuck is this any different from what terrorists do? Same methods, same goal — use violence or the threat of violence to advance their agenda.
Jax6655
@TR:
No.
The suggestions on this thread and others are not coming from Reganites.
ranchandsyrup
@John Cole: Was my reference too oblique or you got me pied? I feel bad for ice T. His gigantic assed old lady has been doin him wrong.
redshirt
FYI: After a dude did the same thing in Portland, ME on Christmas Eve – with similar results – a group of sheriffs have organized a meeting for 1/22 to discuss the issue of open carry in their towns. The tide is turning.
There will be more of this, of course, as copy cats follow. Soon it will be common. Get mentally ready – because as of now it’s legal in a lot of places.
IowaOldLady
The laws allow this sort of thing because it never occurred to the rest of us that anyone would actually do this.
I’m originally from Detroit. My reflexes are still such that I’d be diving behind a barrier if I saw these guys.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
Personally, I’d be much more frightened by a white man with an AR-15 than a black man. I’d get the fuck away from both, of course, but the white guy is much more likely to be a spree killer.
AxelFoley
Fuckin’ Cole with some old school Ice-T!
MattR
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire: Reminds me of this Chris Rock bit. “I was just in my hotel on my way down here and I’m getting in the elevator and these two high school white boys tried to get on with me so I just dove off.”
vole
@JMG: These yahoos pulled their stunt in Sellwood, a quiet old part of Portland known for cute shops and antique malls…probably the safest, least-threatening area of the entire frigging city.
Clowns…cowards.
They should have headed up to far North or Northeast or certain other neighborhoods and walked around with their popguns. Their experience with the folks who lived there would likely have been quite a bit different.
Evolving Deep Southerner
This is one of the few issues that I’m pretty well 100 percent with the Law Enforcement Industrial Complex on. And it will be the one that cleaves the “law-abiding” wingnuts from patriarchal authority. To what result, I don’t know, but once the gun-toters stop putting their “I support the X State Sheriff’s Association” bumper stickers next to their NRA stickers, you’ll know the time is ripe.
Mnemosyne
When my father passed away last week, he left one of my brothers two very nice handguns (I didn’t see them myself, but apparently one of them is a Colt Python).
Because my brother is an actual responsible gun owner and not a Responsible Gun Owner (TM), his first thought was, “Which local gun shop here will ship these across state lines to my local gun shop for me to pick up when I return home?” Because, being a responsible adult, he realizes that you need to take precautions when transporting guns.
Anna in PDX
@Jimmi the Grey: Yes yes yes. Esp Felony Flats where my mom lived for a few hair-raising years.
JWL
“When did the crazy people get the upper hand in this country”?
That would be the first Tuesday of November, 1980.
gorram
Translation: I am a White guy and I so fully embrace my privilege I can’t even fucking see it.
Beaten to it by CitizenX, but yeah.
LanceThruster
If their actions were actually legal, the question about whether others were upset by it is somewhat moot. For myself, I’m still trying to get my head around how so-called “Free Speech Zones” and the 1st Amendment co-exist so seamlessly.
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. ~ John F. Kennedy
Trakker
@Jax6655:
Well said!! As I read all those comments about how we should get a bunch of blacks to march through white neighborhoods and all of a sudden the laws would change, all I could think of is: “man, this is exactly the kind of wet dream those gun nuts have had every night since puberty, the day they get grab their gun and “protect their neighborhood” from armed black thugs trying to raid and rob their homes (what else would armed black males be up to?)!”
Haven’t we already had enough lynchings and dead dead black kids?
And how come no one is directing their anger at the idiots in Oregon, and other states, who’ve passed laws specifically giving gun owners near near universal rights to carry firearms in public? All they cared about was appeasing the gun nuts, they don’t give a damn about public safety or that someone can now carry a semi-automatic into a mall and until they start shooting no one can legally stop them!
gelfling545
@Evolving Deep Southerner: Many years ago when I was still marries, my ex received a bumper sticker from the NRA (he’s a life member & was a police officer) stating “I’m NRA and I Vote. He infuriated me by putting it on our one and only car so I made myself one that said “I’m Not and I Do, Too” which I promptly placed next to his on the car. It did not go too well with the ex but passers-by got a lot of amusement from it.
TerryC
I hope someone is taking seriously the possibility that this may have been a dry run, to draw out defenses and predict behavior for the real thing.
Just Some Fuckhead
gunhinged
add it to the lexicon
Oregon guy
Active duty Army here. Let me just say that both of those jackasses are carrying their weapons incorrectly.
Blondie is better, slung over the shoulder with the muzzle down. That is an acceptable way to carry a weapon in most cases, except the trigger housing can get caught on your clothing, causing a negligent discharge.
The tubby brown-haired guy is just 16 different flavors of wrong, with his muzzle in the sky.
First things first. Slings should ALWAYS go across the body. Never just over one shoulder.
Second, the muzzle should always be toward the ground.
Third, you should have one hand on the assembly of the rifle at all times, in order to ensure that clothing or a belt loop or something does not get tangled up with the trigger housing and cause a negligent discharge.
Fourth, you should actually be CARRYING the weapon, not letting it hang from your shoulders. If you can’t carry the weight, you shouldn’t be toting around the fucking rifle.
I’ve had the pleasure of living in the one place in the world where it is positively required to carry a weapon on your person at all times – an Army FOB in Iraq. On the FOB, we were required to carry our weapons as described above at ALL TIMES. Also, weapons on the FOB were unloaded. You kept a magazine on your person ready to insert, lock and load as needed but unless you were on perimeter patrol or tower watch you did not have a loaded weapon on the FOB. Why? Because negligent discharges happen, and people get hurt or killed.
When leaving the FOB on a mission everyone would “go red,” which means we would insert magazines, lock and load a round into the chamber of our weapons. To be honest, I never even chambered a round because the risk of negligent discharge was too high, so I figured that I would rather chamber a round if I needed to. Of course, I was the guy inside the armored vehicle, not the guy standing up ready to respond to contact.
When we returned from missions, immediately inside the FOB there were clearing barrels, basically 40 gallon oil drums half filled with sand, and with a circular opening cut into the top.
We would dismount our vehicles., walk to a clearing barrel under the supervision of another soldier, drop our mags, eject the round from the chamber, and lock the bolt back so the weapon could be verified as “clear.” Then, and only then, could we proceed into the FOB which was filled with unarmored people.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is what a “well regulated militia” does.
West Oakland original
These guys are headed into a sad adulthood of Keyboard Kommandos Klub, like the nitwit Marchifava in Baton Rouge.
Oregon guy
These British soldiers are displaying proper carry technique.
Gex
@Ash Can: Their entire shtick is based on the idea that if someone wants to harm you, there isn’t time to do anything but pull your piece and act. So if they want to walk around posturing like that and brandishing weapons, they should realize that others who insist upon exercising THEIR rights maximally should be shooting them dead on the spot out of principle. I mean, you don’t know when they will open fire. IT’S ALREADY TOO LATE TO CALL THE POLICE!!!
kay
What a fucked up way to encounter the world. Do they not realize that the weapon changes every interaction? How terrified of other people do you have to be to put a gun between yourself and everyone you see?
brettvk
@Oregon guy: Thank you for that very clear explanation of what properly handling weapons entails. IMO, I wouldn’t care what gun hobbyists collected or purchased if they were as careful and serious about the objects of their fancy as, say, the average fly fisherman or cat breeder. What’s scary is the psychopathology they so often display, and apparently with no self-awareness whatsoever.
trollhattan
@Oregon guy:
Dead thread but I laud your post–reasoned, informative, and completely lacking weapon-infused testosterone. (The Medford Flashers would probably call you a fake, but whatever.)
And thank you for your service.
J R in WV
@Amir Khalid:
In most places you don’t need any permits at all to have a rifle and carry it outside. Well, in the woods you need a hunting license, because that’s how the Natural Resources departments are usually funded, from hunting and fishing license sales.
Permits are required for concealed carry of pistols in 47 out of 49 states, Vermont never required a permit for concealed carry and Arizona no longer requires one, and Illinois prohibits concealed carry under all circumstances. So far.
RSA
@Citizen_X:
I suspect that if someone had first videoshopped the tape so that those guys looked black, it would have been on Fox News, accompanied by a freak-out, within hours.
Mnemosyne
@J R in WV:
Illinois is one of the few states that requires all firearms owners to be licensed by the state, so I doubt they’re going to allow concealed carry anytime soon.
(My brother up at #282 who was having his newly inherited guns shipped from an Arizona gun store to an Illinois gun store? He knew that was what he was supposed to do because he has an FOID.)
mainmati
@Oregon guy: Outstanding. That’s what the Founders meant a well-regulated militia, i.e. US Armed Forces and the State Militias. Not random people running around crazy terrorizing people.
mclaren
20 January 1981.
Davis X. Machina
@Oregon guy: I’d like to add a picture of British foot patrolmen demonstrating proper carry technique
StringOnAStick
@Oregon guy: Thank you for that description and explanation, and thank you for being a member of the military that votes something other than hardcore rightwing. My other ex-military friends tell me that when they were in, about 25% of military personel were liberal/democratics voters; I wish the % was higher, but it gives me hope.
My $0.02 on the idea of “let’s have a group of black people march around with weapons like these two twerps, and by golly that will change things right quick”, is: are you fucking insane? These GOB’s are marching around with guns now because their lizard brains are in hyperdrive with fear, and you think that a bunch of black people exercising open carry rights is going to make them LESS fearful? Or make them decide “yeah, I hate my tyrannical gubmit, but blacks having gunz too is just too much so go ahead and regulate/confiscate them all; here, take mine first.” Really? REALLY?
dsale
@MCA1: You’ve raised an important point here — there is a substantial amount of gun fetishism that arises as a reaction to the “unforeseen” consequences of the War on Some People Who Use Some Drugs. From what I’ve read, the use of no-knock warrants and asset forfeiture are particular bugaboos of the pro-gun types. Oddly, their …concern… does not seem to extend to similar law enforcement overreach in the War on Terra, but it’s a potential starting point for productive discussion on both issues, guns and dope.
Meanwhile, I actually feel that “open carry” is a trend that should be encouraged… mainly because it forces the would-be defender of 2nd Amdt. freedumbs to reckon with the “external costs” of habitually carrying a lethal weapon in public, in a way that concealed carry allows them to avoid… Those costs being (as this thread exemplifies) mockery, public shaming, criticism from other gun owners and a variety of negative reactions from police and the general public, all well-deserved IMHO.
Remember, guns don’t kill people – people (who consume authoritarian propaganda that they can liberate themselves from a system of socio-economic injustice through symbolic acts of violence) kill people!
Kilkee
theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/09/the-secret-history-of-guns/308608/
Black guys with guns = gun control. Ask Reagan.