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Friday is my cycle (spinning) class day at the gym. I have special shoes which "click into" the pedals on the studio stationary bikes. I don't want to wear them to walk more than necessary because they have a plastic cleat on the bottom so I carry them into the gym in a small black canvass bag. The one that I use has an yellow NRA logo on it.

A quick background setup to my story is that the gym is posted 30.06/07 like most gyms. The signs are huge and unmistakable. While they cannot be seen from outside the building, they are eye-catching upon moving through the outside doors.

I was in line this morning, waiting to have my gym ID scanned for entrance to the facility. when over my left shoulder a woman addressed in an almost to close manner with "so you are a big gun guy, eh" in a tone dripping with sarcasm. I'm never at a loss for words so I responded
Yes, mam" with a big smile. She walked away, shaking her head. I looked down at my bag and the NRA logo was facing my leg. Normally, I would applaud someone who was looking at their surroundings but she had to work at it to see that logo and then confront me about it.

So here is my question: what does the militancy of suburban women come from? I'm as passionate a person about my causes as anyone but I don't go around confronting total strangers about logos on their clothing or accessories. I could name several of the organizational logos of which I don't approve but I would never consider calling out someone in public for wearing them.

I'll be honest. I used to OC more than I do today. One of the main reasons is that I have a concern about these type of people making up some total lie to go along with the confrontation. Our local police chief has coached dispatch to ask questions about someone who reports seeing a gun. What concerns me is that a women brazen enough to make a call to eh police over a gun could easily say "he had it out, waving it" because she knows that a holstered gun is not going to get a police response. The burden of proof shifts to me to prove that I wasn't doing what was reported and I don't want to go there.

This morning's topic was guns but I've seen the same or greater militancy over a host of other controversial topics. What fires people up that much? It is not like the NRA has been in the headlines a lot recently.

They are under the impression that they are shielded from any possible repercussions for their actions. These are the same people who think we should give up our guns because the police will protect us. They think they can say whatever they want, and they will never face consequences. That sad thing is that they are usually right. The people they are attacking are the most law-abiding, polite, conservative segment of society, by and large. We will usually respond the way that you did, with grace and decency.

chasfm11 wrote: ↑Fri Apr 28, 2023 10:55 am This morning's topic was guns but I've seen the same or greater militancy over a host of other controversial topics. What fires people up that much? It is not like the NRA has been in the headlines a lot recently.

Mostly brainwashing.

There are many women who have fallen victim to the ongoing Strategy of tension

Strategy of tension is a policy wherein violent struggle is encouraged rather than suppressed. The purpose is to create a general feeling of insecurity in the population and make people seek security in a strong government.

For example:
"The Blood Is On His Hands": Giuliani Slams Soros After Billionaire Claims DAs Aren't To Blame For Crime Wave

Uvalde school police chief Pedro “Pete” Arredondo

His decision to treat the gunman as a barricaded subject and not confront him effectively left all the students and teachers in Classrooms 111 and 112 for dead. It was one of many times he did not follow the training and protocol for an active shooter.

Arredondo stuck with that choice for over an hour, even when he thought he heard the gunman reloading and after it was confirmed children were trapped – injured and alive as well as dead – with the shooter.

Hoplophobia is also thing.

Jeff Cooper on Hoplophobia:

“Fear” is not a good word to use. Fear is a word to lose by. Our wartime President told us that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself, and this is still true. If liberty and light lose the struggle for the world, it will be because we succumbed to the fear of evil rather than to its power. Individually, we do not bear arms because we are afraid. We bear arms as a declaration of capacity. An armed man can cope—either in the city or in the wilderness—and because he is armed he is not afraid. This is the root of hoplophobia. The hoplophobe fears and, yes hates us because we are not afraid. We are overwhelmingly “other” than he, and in a way that emphasizes his affliction.

I've met people who honestly developed hoplophobia due to gun accidents. That is one of the reasons I like to teach firearms safety, as a way of reducing accidents.

Did she have a mask on?

anygunanywhere wrote: ↑Fri Apr 28, 2023 2:26 pm Did she have a mask on?

Lol!!

My wife listens to the MSM national news. If you do that, guns are bad. Assault weapons are the worst. We need to take all the guns away from everyone, if we did, everything would be lovely.

So blame the MSM. They have head it so long that it is the gospel truth. The idiots who commit mass shootings don’t help.

The liars who concoct statistics to prove guns are the leading cause of death for children haven’t helped either with women.

philip964 wrote: ↑Fri Apr 28, 2023 5:48 pm

anygunanywhere wrote: ↑Fri Apr 28, 2023 2:26 pm Did she have a mask on?

Lol!!

My wife listens to the MSM national news. If you do that, guns are bad. Assault weapons are the worst. We need to take all the guns away from everyone, if we did, everything would be lovely.

So blame the MSM. They have head it so long that it is the gospel truth. The idiots who commit mass shootings don’t help.

The liars who concoct statistics to prove guns are the leading cause of death for children haven’t helped either with women.

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.

I think the answer to the "why" of militancy has a few common causes:

- Empty lives looking for something to be passionate about
- Anger as the only emotion they've ever experienced with passion
- Psychotropic drugs taken to "alleviate" anxiety or depression
- Mass formation psychosis

Her: So you're a gun guy????

Me: It's easier than carrying a police officer. I've got a bad back.

Was her name Karen?

Chas, like you, I tend to OC less frequently than previously when I’m out and about, specifically because I don’t want to have to deal with people whose brains are located in their 4th point of contact. That said, I do frequently OC at work, because it’s inside a gun store, pretty much everyone else who works there OCs, and more people are there to shop/shoot guns than there are people who come to get fingerprinted.

It being a gun store, and this being Texas, nearly all of the people I interact with either don’t notice when I’m open carrying, or they simply don’t care. That said, infrequently but once in a while, I have to interact with a customer who is genuinely teed off that they have to enter a "merchant of death trafficking in military-grade weapons of war" in order to be fingerprinted. Despite my not having asked them for an opinion about anything not having to do with their reason for being there, they make sure to bless me with their opinions about guns. Some of it is incredibly stupid, but I always listen patiently with a fixed smile plastered to my face. Whether it’s at work or somewhere else, I f it seems appropriate at the time, I'll answer something like this:

"Mam/Sir, I get it. Guns aren’t for everybody. Some people like them, and some don’t. And that’s fine. That’s what liberty looks like…at least to me. One of the wonderful things about our Constitution is that it preserves ALL of our rights, whether or not we choose to exercise them."

That usually stops the conversation from heading any further down that particular road. I have had some interesting conversations about the 2A, and AR-15s in particular, that have developed in a different (good) direction after having said the above. I think that if you acknowledge without condescension the other person's distaste or discomfort about firearms, it’s much easier to get them to hear you out and actually listen to what you’re saying. But I’ll admit that this is rare. Most people these days are pretty cemented to their ideologies, and it leaves no room for learning anything that doesn’t fit their particular narrative.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I've never open carried and never will. It's great for anyone who wants to, and no offense but it's idiocy for my own personal point of view. Bad guy comes in to have a look around, sees me open carrying, decides I'm the first one to shoot. No thanks. Karen or Kevin come in, see me, come get in my face being their annoying selves and spoil my lunch or whatever it is I'm doing. No thanks. Junior (someone else's junior) comes over "mister, mister, show me your gun, what is it, how much does it cost, have you ever shot anyone, is it really loud, how fast can you shoot it, etc etc etc". No thanks. No open carry for me. Helps avoid the crazies.

LDB415 wrote: ↑Sun Apr 30, 2023 3:15 am I've never open carried and never will. It's great for anyone who wants to, and no offense but it's idiocy for my own personal point of view. Bad guy comes in to have a look around, sees me open carrying, decides I'm the first one to shoot. No thanks. Karen or Kevin come in, see me, come get in my face being their annoying selves and spoil my lunch or whatever it is I'm doing. No thanks. Junior (someone else's junior) comes over "mister, mister, show me your gun, what is it, how much does it cost, have you ever shot anyone, is it really loud, how fast can you shoot it, etc etc etc". No thanks. No open carry for me. Helps avoid the crazies.

Pretty much how I feel... OC, for me, just lowered the threshold for how much I need to care about concealment... Down to near zero.

RoyGBiv wrote: ↑Sun Apr 30, 2023 8:23 am

LDB415 wrote: ↑Sun Apr 30, 2023 3:15 am I've never open carried and never will. It's great for anyone who wants to, and no offense but it's idiocy for my own personal point of view. Bad guy comes in to have a look around, sees me open carrying, decides I'm the first one to shoot. No thanks. Karen or Kevin come in, see me, come get in my face being their annoying selves and spoil my lunch or whatever it is I'm doing. No thanks. Junior (someone else's junior) comes over "mister, mister, show me your gun, what is it, how much does it cost, have you ever shot anyone, is it really loud, how fast can you shoot it, etc etc etc". No thanks. No open carry for me. Helps avoid the crazies.

Pretty much how I feel... OC, for me, just lowered the threshold for how much I need to care about concealment... Down to near zero.

I'm in the same crowd. I fully support OC; I do it on my own property and for short walks in the neighborhood (the neighbor I'm most friendly with is thoroughly accustomed to it and I go across the street to his house OCing all the time; and I often give a friendly nod to people I see OCing and who catch my eye...kinda like the days when I had my Norton Commando and motorcyclists would give a little wave to each other simply in recognition of shared knowledge.

It's just that I view OC as a less than optimal solution tactically. I'm in no hurry for it to be too obvious that I'm carrying a firearm until the time comes for it to be very obvious. I'd say 90%-95% of what practice I do is from concealment. I don't even own a good barbeque holster...though I surely wouldn't be adverse to having one for, say, a forum get-together at someone's ranch.

But what OC has done for me is mostly remove IWB carry. The exception there is that, if I feel I need deeper concealment--but short of having to go with only pocket carry, e.g., in business slacks and a tucked-in shirt--I go IWB appendix carry with one of the smaller of my EDC options. Otherwise, it's OWB but covered. And I'm less finicky (again, depending upon where I'm going) about the volume and obfuscation of the covering. I OWB at three o'clock and, several years ago, I wouldn't have done that with just a T-shirt or knit polo.

I like me some NRA merch, but generally don't wear or carry it anywhere I wouldn't OC...meaning around the property or someplace specifically gun-friendly like the range. It isn't so much about the Karens; I've never been confronted over an NRA logo. It's more, again, about announcing to those with bad intentions that I may have a gun. I'm in no hurry for my truck to be broken into because I have a Benefactor Life Member logo in the window.

I do have an all-black, no-text, small raven logo from Gunsite in the back window, though. I kinda doubt the average thief is going to have any clue what that is. Heck, I haven't even had any friendly, shared-knowledge waves about it that I know of.

RoyGBiv wrote: ↑Sat Apr 29, 2023 7:39 am Her: So you're a gun guy????

Me: It's easier than carrying a police officer. I've got a bad back.

very good answer


but this reminds me of the blend in mode of operations that i have used more and more the last few years.

you may see me, then forget me as quick as that.
to many nuts trying to make good guys bad, with out any provocation.

i stopped open carry for many of the reasons in this post
i prefer to conceal and move about my daily life without some karen getting in my business because she moved from WA< CA or CO and now feels people in texas are threats because most of us are armed, or she or he sees a bag with a label on it they may or may not like or agree with.
most of my bags have bostich, stanley, ford or some other tool name. good will has tons of them for little money.
or lowes around fathers day
no NRA stickers on my cars, etc.
no nra t shirts, jackets etc.
this may seem obstinate, but it has become survival in the big cities now with all the "NEW" lefties moving in to escape the very mindset they bring along

we live in very rural area and most here are all onboard for police protections, and people being held accountable for their actions
but as more and more arrive and they see how nice rural living is, our area is threatened by the KARENS