Before OC became available, I wrote a letter to the chief of police in my town. I suggested that he and maybe some of officers might not be happy that that Texas legislature passed that legislation but I didn't see how a holsered firearm made their jobs any more difficult. There are not many criminals who carry in holsters and I suggested that there have been zero cases of criminals OC in holster. Lastly, I suggested that rights not exercised are rights that are lost. I spoke with him later and he remembered my letter.oohrah wrote: ↑Sat Apr 29, 2023 10:23 am Reminds me of the guy in a road rage incident. He had an NRA sticker on his back window. His antagonist called the police, saying he had brandished his weapon and was waving it around.
The guy in fact had a firearm in his vehicle but he had never exposed it in any manner. The other driver just made a lucky guess. The police stopped him and found the weapon. The guy wound up suffering the full extent of the law. IIRC, he was finally exonerated after several years.
There is a lesson here. And one of the reasons I never OC.
One one level, the agitators have stripped you and I of our right if we never OC. While I understand that there are risks for doing it, and as your story points out, there are even risks of displaying an NRA sticker. But at what point to we completely capitulate and stop doing all of it. I'm not anxious to poke at someone but I perceive at time, very soon, where might be impossible not to poke at someone because THEY determine that they have been poked and there is little that you and I can do about that. If I'm going to die on a hill, I'd rather ti be the OC hill than the pronouns one.
I'm NOT going to stop carrying my cycling shoes in my NRA bag. If the NRA logo gets someone's panties in a twist, so be it. And will I limit my OC time, I have not eliminated it. Going into a store like Wal-Mart or Kroger where they have told me that they don't want me OC doesn't make sense. But I still to OC in the public spaces especially walking trails in warmer weather. If it is t-shirt day, it might just be an uncovered OWB holster day too. If a problem develops, I will have to deal with it. I can honestly say that when I was OC a lot more than I do today, I never had a negative comment directed at me and had many positive comments and discussions. I think the people who I interacted with are still out there and I doubt that they have changed their minds about me and what I do.
I am trying to understand my fellow citizens. I don't see how so many of them work so hard a denying reality and I understand even less the "Karens" who very actively want to foist their own distorted reality on others. I have no intention of being ruled by them even by default. I accept the risk of making sure that they understand that.
But the underlying question for me is what had energized "those people" so much recently? My opinion is that the assault weapons ban got passed at the Federal level using the same kind of messaging from the politicians. Perhaps I was just uninformed then but I don't remember individual citizens willing to confront strangers over it. I often refer to the Women's Christian Temperance Unions who managed to force the 18th Amendment. They marched together but, again, I never saw stories of individual confrontations. This feels more like Germany in the 1930s where it was definitely citizen against citizen. The earlier poster who referenced the Strategy of Tension seemed to be on to something.