The very serious, not-at-all-racist Open Carry Texas SXSW “demonstration” got a certain amount of discussion in the comments today. It’s barely news, but it does have some inadvertent entertainment value. Here is Sam Biddle, at Gawker, “The Armed Open Carry Zealots Roaming SXSW Don’t Care If They Make You Uncomfortable”:
This year’s annual “South By Southwest” conference of upper-middle tier social media managers and brand ambassadors will be interesting for two reasons: Barack Obama will be there to get out of going to Nancy Reagan’s funeral, and there will simultaneously be a lot of men with handguns.
Open Carry Texas is a group whose mission is as simple as its name. They believe that as many people as possible should own and carry loaded weapons. One of the larger, non-legislative obstacles to this ideal is the fact that many Americans have the deeply rational stance that guns are dangerous, in that they make it very easy to murder someone and also pose a great risk of accidentally murdering someone. According to OCT, people only believe that because most people are not around guns very often—and if you force people to be exposed to guns, they’ll gradually lose their natural fear.
This plan was complicated when a member of OCT’s 28,000-strong closed Facebook group posted a threat against Obama…
Reached by phone, [OTC group leader C.J.] Grisham* downplayed both Kriss Elliott’s comments and his own, saying that the former was probably an outsider “plant” placed by anti-gun activists, and that his own “this may get interesting” remark referred to nothing more than Obama-induced traffic jams in Austin…
He was also quick to point out that this will be the third year OCT attends SXSW—so why the fuss now? This year is the first since Texas legalized the open carry of handguns, sure. But the piqued national interest is probably because, no matter the reasoning, a group of (largely if not entirely white) armed men who despise Obama showing up to a place Obama is visiting is generally Not A Good Look…
You can read the whole story at the link, but mostly I wanted to highlight the very first comment:
As a San Franciscan, this feels a lot like when we have the Folsom Street Fair and a bunch of older white guys are walking around with their junk hanging out.
Whip ’em out, fellers! Show us whacha got!