Posted on 06/14/2014 9:28:01 AM PDT by holymoly
On street corners and in rallies, the Texas gun rights crowd aims to accustom the public to guns.
DALLAS — “One of them said, ‘You’re going to wish you had a gun, boy, when I fill you full of holes.’ ”
A 35-year-old former Marine, Henry was fresh from an encounter with an increasingly common phenomenon in North Texas: an Open Carry rally, where advocates gather in public places with semi-automatic rifles.
Henry said he simply wanted to make a video of the Memorial Day demonstration by the small but well-armed crowd. Then tempers rose and some curses flew. He left, and before long, he said, hostile phone calls began rolling in.
Thus far, Henry said last week, no violent action has followed. But he and many others worry about the combination of inflamed passions, heated arguments and loaded weapons.
“You know what’s going to happen,” Henry said. “Sooner or later somebody is going to start shooting. … Someone is going to get killed.”
HOTBED OF THE MOVEMENT
Opponents and advocates agree on one thing: Texas has emerged as the hotbed of the open carry movement. Its adherents stand on street corners and parade in other venues with their rifles and shotguns. One of their intents is to accustom the public to the routine display of firearms – even military-style semi-automatic rifles.
Semi-automatics can be fired rapidly because they load from a multi-round magazine. In Texas, no permit or training is required to own or use them.
Open carry activists say they ensure that their gatherings are safe and civil. Participants are urged to practice gun safety and avoid hostile encounters.
“We’re under a microscope,” the organizer of a recent Tarrant County rally warned those about to march. “Our enemies are watching us.”
But some of their tactics –such as entering stores and restaurants with their rifles on full display – are seen by some as needlessly provocative. “Is that the person you want standing next to you at Target?” said Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.
She, too, believes violence could erupt soon. “I think it’s only a matter of time before something horrific happens.”
Open Carry organizers dismiss Watts and her supporters as extremists who fan irrational fears. “They’re dishonest,” said C.J. Grisham, founder of Open Carry Texas. “They’re emotional activists.”
Grisham said his group, now at 18,000 members, has mounted a public relations offensive, encouraging press coverage of its rallies. “We’re trying to get the real story out there,” he said. “We’re just trying to counter the negative perception that we have.”
Open Carry Texas supporter Robert Beverly of Fort Worth echoed the message. “These guys aren’t nuts,” he said. “We’re not loons. We aren’t dummies.”
Yet many open carry jamborees are thick with those who, while not seeking armed conflict on city streets, are ready for it. Beverly, 54, said he has joined a militia, through which he has received tactical and weapons training.
He is concerned, he said, about widespread civil disturbances or extensive societal breakdown. “I want to be able to respond to any incident,” he said.
Another Open Carry member, Mark Thompson of Garland, had similar thoughts. “Say if there’s ever a coup in the United States,” he said. “We would have the means to protect ourselves.”
Others worry about threats that, though smaller in scale, may be no less lethal.
“This is the safest corner in America,” Robert Perez declared as he waved a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag late last month at a rally in Haltom City. He was joined there by a dozen or so armed compatriots. “There’s nobody getting robbed here,” he said.
Perez, a 45-year-old auto mechanic from Arlington, carried an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle on his back. The chamber was empty, but he kept a loaded 30-round magazine attached to this gun. He could squeeze off multiple rounds in a matter of seconds.
READY TO FIRE
“I do have ammo just in case,” he said. “We have a lot of people who take issue with what I’m doing.”
Firing on attackers, Perez said, might be his only option. The doleful roll of American mass murder sites — Sandy Hook, Aurora, Virginia Tech, Columbine – often is invoked in the debate over semi-automatic weapons. Gun control advocates use them as rallying points. A semi-automatic rifle was used in the Connecticut school shootings in which 20 children were killed.
And how did they know this guys name, much less his phone number? Is there any independent verification of this?
Semi-automatics can be fired rapidly because they load from a multi-round magazine.
Lol. And what does this ignorant imbecile think many/most bolt-action rifles load from?
He could squeeze off multiple rounds in a matter of seconds.
O Nose!!! (I can do exactly the same thing with my No4 Mk2 Lee Enfield.)
These idiots think muzzleloaders are semi auto.
They are when you attach the 30-round high capacity magazine to them. And don’t forget the bayonet lugs that are integral to these things. Attaching a bayonet makes them fully automatic.
There was but the e-mails that prove it were inadvertently deleted.
He seems to not be aware that handguns are semi-automatic
Doesn’t the Lee Enfield have the fastest bolt action known to man? I’ve fired ten rounds from my No.1 MkIII* like nobody’s business without taking it from the shoulder.
But I do have a question: this liberal nutcake’s panicky screed aside, why don’t we see more open carry people toting some of the classics: Springfield, Mauser, Enfield, Garand, even Vietnam era SKS? Why do nearly all those shown carry AR-15 or variants?
But, but some of them are FIFTY CALIBER and can shoot down airplanes! :-O
Or so I’ve been told by the faint hearts. ;-D
“Sooner or later somebody is going to start shooting. … Someone is going to get killed.”
You have legally armed Americans on one side, also exercising their freedoms of speech and assembly, and in a peaceable manner; on the other, an obnoxious, unarmed screwball, `marching to a different drummer, filming them, `egging them on’ and threatening them with gun confiscation, but too cowardly to call it what it is, so he uses the weasel words: “gun control”.
He may be right, there may be shooting.
I think the AR-15 variants are just popular these days but there are plenty of people who prefer the classics.
One of the big cases in Michigan in recent years was the kid who was arrested for carrying the M1 he got for his birthday. He won his court case BTW.
Overtime this is probably the best strategy.
The only way people are going to stop fearing the presence of guns irrationally is to get uses to them.
ROFL! Just as there's no permit or training required to use a word processor despite the fact that Doug J. Swanson cranks out such stupid stories with them.
There are some straight-pull bolt actions (I.E. Schmidt-Rubin) which may be faster.
As far as the Enfield, Wikipedia states: "The current world record for aimed bolt-action fire was set in 1914 by a musketry instructor in the British Army—Sergeant Instructor Snoxall—who placed 38 rounds into a 12-inch-wide (300 mm) target at 300 yards (270 m) in one minute."
Good question. My first choice would be my SKS carbine (which the ignorant media refers to as an "assault rifle"). Still, I wouldn't hesitate to carry my No4 Mk2.
I fired my SKS on the farm yesterday. No accessories, no tacticool, not even a butt pad.
The Lee Enfield’s got some slap but not this one, I add it to my list of guns that will make me use up ammo just to enjoy firing it.
Best for comfort when shooting 5.56mm? The Israeli Golani. All steel except the buttstock.
(Need more caffeine.)
“Is that the person you want standing next to you at Target?” said Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America”
Why yes I do. :-)
Open carry is educational.
The number of incidents of people being harassed by police here in Michigan seems to be going down. They still show up and ask a few questions but its only because people hiding in darkened houses call them.
I think one of the best PR campaigns would use an old technique: teaching women’s self defense. But with a twist.
“Do you have a restraining order against an abusive or dangerous person? You need a gun and to know how to use it. Let us help.”
This works in several ways. For example, the anti-gun people have no effective way of attacking it. “No, you must rely on the police to protect you.” “No, they will take your gun and use it against you.” “No, if you shoot them, you will make them mad.”
I viewed the opening sentence this way: (some words replaced by me)
“...the national gay rights crowd aims to accustom the public to gay sex.”
Sounds a bit like someone who supported the desensitization of one issue complaining about the same effort with respect to the 2nd Amendment right.
Using the rules and methods of the left somehow upsets the left. Go figure.
Uhhh, they’re not?!
I happen to agree.
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