Just Because You Can

I haven’t written to this blog in a long while because I haven’t been angry enough about something in particular to do so. Well today, I have something at which I can direct some energy.

There’s a pernicious cliché I hear almost every time I talk to someone who doesn’t like Open Carry (which is the practice, in those states--free states--where it is legal to openly carry a firearm): Just because you can doesn’t mean you should, or another variation, Just because you can, does not mean you have to. I suppose one can also add, Just because you can doesn’t mean you must.

As with many such clichés, it seems to say something profound but actually doesn’t as I propose to show forthwith. The reason I dislike clichés is that they are a shortcut to critical thinking. In fact, it may be more true to say that clichés are short circuits, an endrun around having to think too deeply about things. By the way, if you want to see a thoroughgoing disassembly of cliché, I suggest you read Jonah Goldberg’s The Tyranny of Clichés.

So let’s make things a bit more concrete, shall we, and rejigger the mental circuitry, take apart this vapid saying, put some meat on them bones. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should … is an incomplete sentence, it’s a phrase. There are things missing, aren’t there? Let’s add stuff:

“Just because you can eat ice cream doesn’t mean you should.” (Noted, and thanks. I’ll go ahead and eat ice cream. I like ice cream.)

“Just because you can kiss your wife goodbye doesn’t mean you should kiss her goodbye.” (Noted, and thanks. I’ll go ahead and kiss my wife goodbye, because it shows I love her and she likes it.)

“Just because you can pet your dog doesn’t mean you should pet your dog.” (Noted, and thanks. I’ll go ahead and pet my dog, because I like doing it and my dogs likes it, too.)

You see what I mean? As you start adding specifics, it starts to approach inanity. It actually doesn’t tell you anything at all. There’s stuff missing, important stuff: the phrase is meaningless because it doesn’t give any reasoning & with that goes meaning, and meaning is vital to reason. In fact, it does mental damage beyond that. Let me illustrate:

“Just because you can exercise your First Amendment right to petition government does not mean you should.”

Woah now, come again? Why not?! It’s my right to petition government, are you saying I should not? Why not? Why don’t you want me to exercise my right to petition government, what's your motive? What do you have against my exercising the right to petition my government?

See the scorpion’s tail in that seemingly innocent cliche? It gets people comfortable with doing nothing. In fact, the counterargument can be more correct: Just because you can means you should! Also in fact, this is the way better phrasing: it is positive, it is a call to action. Of course, it keeps out a bunch of things as well, but I’d much rather defend a positive position than the negative. One’s making an argument, the other is merely making a critique. One is the sun, the other is the eclipse.

In the case of our civil rights, just because you can exercise your civil rights, means you should! A right not regularly exercised atrophies. A right which falls out of common use is a right effectively lost. A right which no one cares to exercise soon becomes easier to forget, and even to legislatively abrogate.

And here’s the reason I wrote this today: I hear this nigh meaningless phrase uttered in reference to Open Carry so here it is, the missing information: “Just because you can Open Carry doesn’t mean you should.” To which I counter, why ever not? It is a valid expression of our right to keep and bear arms! Those who contend that we shouldn’t or mustn’t are trying to sell you on letting go one of your most important civil rights, just as surely as they’re trying to sell you on any of the others you do have.

I have been told that the Supreme Court has decided on a slim margin that there is now a right to same-sex marriage. All well and good, and it is now the law of the land. One of the arguments on the side of the SSM crowd was that it was a civil right, and any attempt to water it down with civil unions or any other facsimile of full on marriage, is oppressive. Do not tell me when, how, and with whom I can exercise my civil rights! If it makes you uncomfortable that I want to exercise my right to same-sex marriage, I suggest you go pound sand (or go to jail in that Kentucky case). You cannot debate my civil rights away! You know what, I agree.

“Just because you can marry a man if you’re a man doesn’t mean you should.” Try telling that to the SSM supporter and be excoriated, and rightly so. We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.

I support Open Carry, it’s part & parcel of the “bear arms” section of the Second Amendment. If it makes you uncomfortable that I am OC, I suggest you go pound sand. I don’t care what you think or, to be precise, what you feel. Your insecurity about when I choose to exercise my civil rights doesn’t matter.

Some people don’t like the light it throws on all gun owners when certain gun owners act up. How they look while OC. It makes society at large think worse of us all gun owners. Some people say Open Carrying at people (whatever the hell that means, I’m guessing posturing aggressively) is wrong--we’re here, we’re queer, get used to it?--and yet others go on about how our rights will be curtailed by voters when people misuse it.

That’s the thing about rights, you see. They can’t be voted on; an opinion about a revoking a natural right is meaningless. I refuse to have the actions of a person who happens to be in the same category as me define who I am. A person who misuses their rights gets individually punished. If it is not against the law to OC then leave the man alone who OCs. He’s no more breaking the law than is the man who is eating breakfast at a cafe. Leave him alone.

That it happens to be a gun and not a breakfast sandwich is meaningless. Stop trying to convince me to stop exercising my civil rights because you don’t like the form in which I’m doing it or what I'm wearing while doing it. We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.

I could add that I usually don't Open Carry often as a choice because of strategic & tactical reasons (I don’t have backup, I don’t have a radio connecting me with a ton of other armed citizens who will arrive to help me if I get in trouble, etc.). But to make a point of it, to exercise a right which needs exercising, to condition the populace to being comfortable with the Second Amendment, to spit in the face of those who wish to make me feel like a dirty, broken person, belonging in the back of a closet: Just because I can, I will.

Open vs. Concealed Carry

A storm in a teacup, so the saying goes, and there's no bigger one than that currently raging between the advocates of so-called Open Carry and Concealed Carry. The carrying is of weapons, by the way.

Begging your pardon, it's not so much a storm as a bleeding hurricane. And it's all for naught. Why must people act as if those two modes of carrying a firearm are somehow mutually exclusive? Let me repeat this question:

Why must people act as if those two modes of carrying a firearm are mutually exclusive?

Because, pssst, they aren't. There's nothing that says that in jurisdictions where the two modes of carry are legal, you must choose one or the other! And once you have chosen to carry in one mode, you can never, ever, ever again carry in any other mode. Nonsense, stuff and double nonsense. Yet, to read the "debates" raging on various Facebook pages, twitter, and blogs, you'd think this was a problem beyond all cognition.

In Idaho, we are able to carry openly without a permit. With a tax permit, we are also able to carry concealed in town (you may carry concealed while outside city limits). We are currently trying to replicate what Vermont--of all states!--has had since 1791, so-called Constitutional Carry. This means that if you're a law-abiding citizen without adjudicated mental infirmities, not prohibited from owning firearms, you ought to be allowed to carry in whatever mode you desire. The Second Amendment describes it as carry but not in what mode.

And this is crux of the issue: in jurisdictions which both modes are legal, carry as you wish! I choose not to carry openly most of the time because concealed carry affords me the element of surprise if, God forbid, I ever have to deploy a firearm to defend against a forcible felony. Open carry is less strategically sound and were I to openly carry, I would very likely be doing so in a group of friends so we can look after each other. Cops who carry openly have backups, partners, access to long arms within reach and a radio for tactical reasons, and so would I want as well.

However, there's no law that forces me to carry one way or the other. And I refuse to impugn my fellow citizens' right to carry as they wish. The two modes of carry are not mutually exclusive. Good people can and do both!

I have more to say about this, but I wanted to keep this post short. However, I am going to take this opportunity now to address the brain-dead who insist in various ways all asinine, that those who carry openly are making it hard to know the difference between good guys with a gun and a bad guy with a gun.

One woman on Facebook put it this way (and by "way," I mean batshit cuckoo):

This is how you argue, folks! pic.twitter.com/HTrkxZytmy
— Salty Codger (@fwoodbridge) March 10, 2015

Ignore for a second her incredible assertion that someone exercising their legal rights necessarily leads to you standing over "your dead child's grave". What I want you to notice is this line:

You people are making it impossible to tell the good guys with guys [she must mean guns] from the bad guys with guns. And just one more thing [as if she's ready to drop some mad knowledge, yo!] ... 100% of all bad guys with guns were good guys with guns before they committed their first crime.

Get that? She is unable to tell, just by looking at someone (who happens to be bearing a pistol in a holster or a rifle slung over the shoulder) whether that person will commit a crime or not. Gosh, wouldn't that be swell? If you could somehow tell, just by looking, whether or not someone will cause harm in the near future? Well, we could start by employing Pre-cogs. That'd be a good first start. Until then, how about you stick to reality?

Let me put it another way to this woman: two men are walking towards you. They are both men, as you can easily ascertain, which means they both have penises. Which means that either man could conceivably (heh) rape you. But, just by looking at these men, how can you tell who's a good man with a penis and who's a bad man with a penis?

And just one more thing, 100% of all bad men with penises were good guys with penises before they raped you.

The Low

I find my blood pressure spikes every time I read stories of people like Shawn Glans, the bully thug in a police uniform who assaulted & battered a citizen unaware he was being recorded.

Official United States Bully, Shawn Glans

You can imagine how I felt reading yet another similar story, this time from Alabama. A Police Department Training officer named Eric Parker and his trainee came across a supposedly suspicious person whose crime started and ended there. I have yet to see where it is a crime to be a suspicious person in any ordinance or edict in any city or state.

"Found guilty of being a suspicious person, Abraham Lincoln of Springfield Illinois was today sentenced to two months' jail time. He was rigorously reprimanded & the accused promised never to be suspicious in the future."

Eric Parker will end up costing the citizens of his city millions of dollars, but worse, he will solidify the visceral hatred of the police that ordinary citizens continue to harbor. The chief of police stated that Parker did not exhibit the "high standards" of that city's police department. Sure, chief, that's why he's a training officer.

How dare you be a suspicious person!

If you don't know, (now ex-) Officer Eric Parker accosted an Indian grandfather who had been reported as suspicious. The law requires that a crime be currently & actively investigated before an officer may detain a citizen and in this case, that crime was being suspicious, you see. Alas, the frail Indian gentleman did not understand he was committing this crime, and after he added on the veritably hateful inability to speak English, paid for it by having his neck broken in a takedown befitting the felony crime of being suspicious.

As bad as that is, there's something far, far worse at play here, and is the reason these two jerks acted the way they did. I've already touched on this topic in my other post, In Mala Fide. It is characterized by the following statement: someone somewhere once did X therefore everyone is guilty of X until they prove otherwise.

These officers are trained to ensure that every interaction with the citizenry holds within the potential for violence. Because of this, it conditions these simpletons--and I use this term advisedly, because for too many police officers it is unfortunately true--to act as if the citizen is already guilty of the crime of executing a police officer and it is their job today, right now, to stop their own murder from commencing.

They deal with citizens in bad faith, assigning the worst intentions to every person until that guilt person has proven otherwise. This is the same thing the TSA does: everyone is guilty of trying to blow up airliners until they've proved they won't. Someone once tried to blow up an airliner by smuggling a bomb in their shoe therefore everyone thenceforth is guilty of trying to blow up an airliner with a shoe bomb and must prove they won't by taking off their shoes for inspection.

Once you think of it like that, everything snaps into focus. The Newtown board set up to Do Something about the shooting there just came out with even more restrictions to be placed on the sale & transfer of not only firearms but cartridges as well. None of this would have prevented Newtown from happening, as even a laudatory ("courageous!") newspaper editorial points out. Nevertheless, proceed full speed ahead, guilty citizens one and all.

Seen through the filter of bad faith, it makes sense why these simpletons would call for further restrictions on erstwhile law-abiding citizens. Let's see how it fits into our bad faith template: Adam Lanza committed a crime with guns therefore every citizen in his state is now guilty of committing a crime with guns and must prove they (i) have not (ii) are not now (iii) will never commit a crime with guns. The burden of proof lies with them.

Aside from the fact that it is in a 180-degree direction from how our system was designed to operate--the presumption of innocence, in case you missed it--it is actually a completely worthless approach to law enforcement & safety. This is likely the reason why our Founders designed the system in that way! Who would've thought. While it is straightforward to prove I have not committed a particular crime, it is quite difficult to prove that I am not currently committing said crime and further, just about impossible to prove I will never commit that crime.

We treat each other with the basest of assumptions, assigning the worst possible to our intent, locking us away in virtual jail cells until we have each proven to one another that we are not guilty. If you want to exercise your Second Amendment rights, you are guilty of trying to murder someone. So you must prove you haven't and aren't currently by undergoing a background check. If not that bad, then you are certainly guilty of negligence. You will leave your weapon unattended and someone will get hurt. You will kill your wife and children with that weapon. You will shoot up the local elementary school.

Some other examples, in passing: men who sit with their legs open in subway cars are guilty of patriarchal oppression and must be shamed & punished. A mother brings in a child to the ER who hurt itself falling off a high chair; she's guilty of Munchausen-by-Proxy until she proves she isn't. That guy who made a joke about Asians is guilty of racism and must be prove to our collective sense of justice that he is not a racist; until then he is to be punished. Eric Eich once gave money to a cause therefore he is guilty of hating homosexuals and must prove his innocence; until then he is punished.

Someone suspicious once walked the streets casing houses for later burglary. Therefore the frail Indian gentleman is guilty of both being suspicious and casing houses therefore he must prove to Officer Parker's finely honed sense of justice that he is not guilty of that crime, but in the meantime, will be handled like a guilty criminal until such time as he has proven he's no threat.

Do you see how nefarious this is? Low-trust societies do not survive long yet this is exactly what we're positively encouraging each other to do. It is brutal if you're the person caught in the headlights of the oncoming Guilty Train for the simple reason that it is very difficult if not sometimes impossible to prove a negative, to prove something isn't there. Asking me to prove there are no black swans requires an extraordinary amount of work on my part because I must search every corner of the earth for a negative, as you sit there actively punishing me.

Guilty of rara avis!

Bad faith.

In Mala Fide

There are a great many people out there, including police officers unfortunately, who feel (not think) that the mere presence of a gun implies evil. In the case of the police--like this unfortunate meathead Idaho sheriff, who actually shot himself--the presence of a gun screams criminal!

What tosh.

The Idaho Supreme Court, in a case from 1909, includes this diamond of a quote among a long and rather dry analysis of an appeal before it:

A man may need a gun for a great many things other than that of shooting his neighbor. In fact, it should be presumed in the first instance that a man is going to use his gun for a lawful purpose and that he is not out gunning for his neighbor. [Emphasis mine.]

 Well there you go. Our system works on a presumption of innocence; even in the case of a clear-cut case against a violator with many witnesses, the burden of proving guilt lies with the prosecutor only.

It is the same way outside the courtroom as well. More people are pummelled to death by hands and feet than get shot by so-called assault rifles (AKA a black rifle) yet this doesn't make anyone afraid for their safety simply walking by a man equipped with those tools of destruction. One commences in life by placing good faith in their fellow citizen that they will not suffer battery at the hands (and feet) of passersby. In other words, unless and until you have good reason to believe you will be battered, proceed as usual.

Another quick example: chances are, you get into your car everyday and drive wherever you need to go. You do this without living in crippling fear that an oncoming vehicle's driver will swerve into your lane and take you out in a head on collision. Since you have no good reason to believe that the 2000 pound weapon under the control of your fellow citizen will be used with malice against you, you proceed as usual. (Need I point out that more people die in vehicle accidents a year than get shot?)

We presume that everyone around us will act in a lawful and peaceable manner.

Except, of course, if that person were carrying a firearm. In which case, small-minded, scaredy cat, safety-first-last-always folks will assign the worst motives.

Common sense ain't.

Restraint

Watch then think what you'd have done. I'd have lit the fucker up.
Kudos to the kop.

Also, we all need cardiovascular exercise.

Post by Evansville Police Department.