Georgia‘s Open Carry law, allowing people to carry loaded weapons, including assault rifles, around with them went into effect yesterday, July 2, 2014.
I am appalled.
People can now carry loaded AK47s with them to church, to school, to the store, and even in bars.
Let me be clear about the insanity of this law:
I do not trust the judgement of a person that would feel a need to carry a loaded assault weapon around with them. Such a person does not have a mature, adult, concept of what is dangerous versus what is not dangerous. Their carrying around a loaded assault weapon is far more dangerous than anything going on in church, in school, in the store, and on the vast majority of Georgia’s streets. When is the last time you sat in church and thought, “Damn, I wish I had my loaded AK47 with me. I would be much safer!”
Such a gun-totin’ person, in my humble opinion, can not be trusted to make a reasonable assessment of threat level when trying to decide if s/he should use a loaded firearm or even threaten to use it. The armed Open Carry person either feels some danger or threat exists where such a danger/threat does not1, of s/he feels a need to show off and/or play power/intimidation/bullying games with those around them. In any case, this adolescent conduct is dangerous and creates a more dangerous public space as basic good judgement is already compromised by immaturity.
The whole objective of resolving conflict is to use strategies that de-escalate conflict and promote listening and least-force resolution. The emotionality that typically swirls around conflict can easily escalate into acts of violence. Heated conflict is far more likely to escalate to deadly violence when a loaded weapon is at hand than when a weapon is not present.
Just having a loaded firearm on your shoulder when no real or perceived threat even exists at all escalates the possible of deadly violence in ordinary, day-to-day situations in which words and other conflict resolution strategies would effectively prevail. A trivial example: a person has been stuck in crawling traffic on 285 for an hour, has had a horrible day at work, is going through a divorce, and now the person behind them sends them into road rage by accidentally bumping into their bumper. The simple squeeze of a trigger…
Target has already stated that open carry weapons are not welcomed in its stores. Apparently, already, some fool left a loaded handgun on top of a stack of boxes of toys in the children’s department. Thank goodness a child did not find it before store employees did.
Public Notice: If I ever see a person carrying a weapon in any place, I will turn around and leave that place. I will never return to it again. I will write to the media and that establishment informing them that I will never visit that business, school, or church again—at any location, for any reason, ever! I’m voting against this insanity with every penny I have or will ever have. I invite you to do the same.
Sixty percent (up to 70% depending on the survey source) of Georgians oppose the Open Carry law. But the gun lobby got this law passed anyway. This is further evidence of the fact that corporations own American and state governments and not the citizens those governments are supposed to serve.
This is wrong.
No one could have imagined this possibility during the Reagan administration. How far will this lunatic fringe continue to go? What laws are they planning next? We all know that people don’t matter. The only thing that matters: increasing the profit margins of these companies by selling more guns!
Related articles
- Georgia ‘Guns Everywhere’ Law Nearly Results In Deadly Showdown On First Day In Effect (addictinginfo.org)
- Georgia is about to become the Wild, Wild East as gun laws are relaxed. (ukprogressive.co.uk)
- Georgia Business Owners & Residents React to Gun Bill (newschannel9.com)
- ‘Guns Everywhere’ In Georgia: The Dangerous Consequences Of Today’s “Unprecedented” New Law (publichealthwatch.wordpress.com)
- Some Augusta religious groups oppose Georgia’s new gun law (chronicle.augusta.com)
If a threat did exist, a mature person simply chooses not to go where danger may be. ↩