Here's the way Mike McIntire of the New York Times sees it...
"Across the country, openly carrying a gun in public is no longer just an exercise in self-defense — increasingly it is a soapbox for elevating one’s voice and, just as often, quieting someone else’s."
Okay, it is one thing to stand on the corner armed to the hilt trying to stare down a voter. But it is quite another thing to confront your opponents swinging an AR-15 in their face. It is clearly a threat and that is exactly how it is meant to be. Here's a recent headline from The Guardian, "Six million Americans carried guns daily in 2019, twice as many as in 2015." This study by the American Journal of Public Health continues...
"The new estimates highlight a decades-long shift in American gun ownership, with increasing percentages of gun owners saying they own firearms for self-defense, not hunting or recreation, and choosing to carry a gun with them when they go out in public..."Responsible Gun Owners Don't Use Guns to Intimidate...
I don't buy this "self defense" crap when you are out in public, but it sometimes can be valid at home when you are threatened. Authentic statistics that confirm gun carriers have been instrumental in stopping a gun confrontation or saving a life are hard to find; I am sure there are some but this hardly justifies the coercion of innocent people with an assault rifle, as is depicted in this NYT article. And the Editorial Board of the Washington Post wants us to be honest about guns...
"The mass shootings that plague this nation are a uniquely American jumble of contradictions. Each new one horrifies, and yet fits into a depressingly familiar pattern. Communities count the dead — nearly 50 so far in November — and tally the gruesome details. The country vows to honor the lives cut short. And then it all fades from the headlines and people move on, leaving behind thoughts and prayers but no concrete policies to stop the next bloodbath."
The month of November will be over tomorrow and there have been "nearly 50"
"A landmark supreme court case this summer overturned a New York law that placed strict limits on public gun-carrying, ruling, for the first time, that Americans have a constitutional right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home."
The Guardian says an estimated 16 million adults...
"saying they carried a loaded handgun in public at least once a month, and an estimated 6 million saying they did so daily..."
It may be legal to carry guns in public, even for those who have no training on how to use them, but the time is coming when a comatose public will finally wake up to the horrifying innocent deaths due to gun violence in the U.S. and wreak havoc on this insane gun culture. Better sooner than later!