Gun Owners ‘We Don’t Like Your Kind Here’ – When is a Civil Right Not a Civil Right?

By David Cole

No White Gun Owners
Are these signs really any different?
Gun Rights Magazine
Gun Rights Magazine

USA –-(Ammoland.com)- There’s a story bouncing around the internet lately which I think sums up the attitude of many towards gun owners:  “Go sit at another lunch counter, we don’t like your kind in here.

In this incident, three men were charged with disorderly conduct while legally open carrying rifles at a San Antonio Starbucks.  On one hand, I think these types of open carry “demonstrations” harm our cause, as they frighten and inflame people who might otherwise support us.

But on the other hand, I find the treatment these men received to be just as bigoted as some of the treatment of blacks before the civil rights movement.

I often remind my concealed carry students that, “just because it’s legal doesn’t make it the right thing to do.”  We should also remember the reverse, “just because it’s illegal doesn’t make it wrong.”  The patchwork of state and local laws known collectively as “Jim Crow laws,” made illegal all sorts of otherwise legal conduct…when practiced by blacks.

The men in Texas were not charged with weapons offenses, nor with any sort of violent or aggressive behavior, but with “disorderly conduct.”  Of course, if you read Texas law you will see that the relevant statute permits a charge of disorderly conduct if the offender, “displays a firearm or other deadly weapon in a public place in a manner calculated to alarm.

Never mind that Texas law also permits carrying firearms in the manner that the men in Texas did…but this otherwise legal conduct can get you charged with a crime if it bothers someone else.

The men in Texas were essentially charged with the crime of making someone else feel uncomfortable.  If this is the only bar that must be cleared in order for a law to be acceptable, then what was wrong with a Jim Crow law requiring “those people” to go eat their lunch somewhere else?

Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks

You might say, “Hold on a second, Dave!  That’s not the same.  People with guns can be dangerous!”  Sure.  But the vast majority are not, just like the vast majority of black people are not dangerous.  Yet the law allowed them to be banned from many public places due to unfounded fears of the ignorant…just like legal gun owners are banned today.

You might go on to say, “Dave, that isn’t a fair comparison at all.  You can choose whether or not to carry a gun.  A black person can’t choose to not be black.”

That is true.  Then how about refusing service to Christians?  Jews?  Muslims?  Those are all choices as well…and just like the freedom to choose your religion, in this country you are also free to choose to go armed.  Should exercise of any of these rights mean that you can’t go certain places, simply because it makes someone uncomfortable?

To go armed is just as much a civil right as the right to sit anywhere on the bus you like.  Rosa Parks could have chosen to just sit at the back of the bus, couldn’t she?  No one said she couldn’t ride the bus, they just asked her to sit somewhere else.  But we all agree that it was an infringement on her right to ride the bus, despite the fact that it was the law in Montgomery, Alabama that she sit in the back.  It was the law.  And the law was wrong.

How is it less of an infringement to say that you can bear arms if you like, just do it at the back of the bus? A civil right is a civil right.

About Gun Rights Magazine:
Gun Rights Magazines goal is to present a positive image of responsible gun ownership. Contrast the benefits and costs of civilian disarmament in human terms. Tell the story of free states through the eyes of the victor and areas with gun control laws through the eyes of the victim. Visit: www.gunrightsmagazine.com

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Becker

The biggest problems with open carry of any weapon, in public, gives the criminals the jump on us. They know who they have to pull their weapon and shoot before they can rob and murder anyone else. I don’t want anyone to know I am carrying until they have been shot by me.

joe

amen,……

TEX

I guarantee ya turds w/o a CHL will enter that propery to rob their asses,maybe the fools should post that too.

Ivan Pistov

Since when can a charge of “disorderly conduct” be interpreted as “making someone uncomfortable”? Nobody has any way of telling just when they might make someone uncomfortable, regardless of the gun issue or some other issue. “Disorderly” implies to me some form of physical activity, resistance or yelling or confrontation. These men were doing none of that. I would bet there is NO LAW that says you cannot make somebody uncomfortable. This law needs to be repaired.

VA six-gunner

Do you remember the debate about the Thune Amendment a couple years ago? It was about reciprocity of concealed carry laws. When the Senator from California took the floor,(you know who she is), she just flat out said ‘we don’t want those people (concealed carriers) in our state!’ I don’t know if anyone other than myself even noticed. I don’t know why a gun owner would want to go to California in the first place.

VT Patriot

I have my own way of handling this insanity. If a business doesn’t want to have me as a customer, I go next door or across the street, make my purchase, and go back to the first. I make it very public that this business is against my and your rights to defend yourself while in their place. However, the place next door respects your right to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness”. Pi$$es off the original store, as I stand there for a few minutes and greet and turn away their would be customers.