This is great! I go to (a very expensive private) school in a pretty lousy area, where you can't take a walk at night without being accosted by a mentally ill person or threatened by someone probably high on something. Cars were stolen from our parking lot repeatedly, and our house was broken into at least once. I definitely learned situational awareness, though my calculus is rusty to the point of uselessness. If I and my friends, mostly pro-gun conservatives, libertarians, and liberals, were allowed to properly arm ourselves, the environment would be much nicer.
Dear NYT:
It's actually much better that: our new law not only prevents localities from enacting new anti-gun regulations, it also removed all of the existing "granfathered" local regulations from the books. Two birds with one stone.
And it put localities into line by requiring that a temporary concealed carry permit be issued on the spot should that locality exceed its 45-day statutory issuance deadline. No more footdragging.
And 14 other new pro-firearms laws.
Gotcha.
And it probably stays crime-free within their immediate vicinity.
The NYT are a bunch of sissy-girl gunophobes.
The NYT should exercise its first amendment rights by not printing its paper.
I asked a cop I knew about it, and he said that he would probably have to arrest anyone who was carrying openly if there were complaints, as the person would be contributing to a breach of the peace, even if he was doing nothing else illegal. The charges would probably be dismissed, unless the complaintant really insisted, at which point the person arrested would be deemed innocent, and then could probably sue the complaintant for malicious prosecution.
Mark
I was sure this was gonna be about tattoos. It's spelled that way in the original, too. No hint of irony seems to be intended.
This simply can't be accurate. Can some Virginian check? If inaccurate, we need to demand a correction from the Slimes, or, better yet, demand they print a letter to the editor from someone in Reston or Tyson's Corner who packs.
IF Catch-22 was to be relevant to this article it would have to go something like this:
Virgina Weapons Laws, Catch-22 Every resident of Virginia who is mentally competent (not crazy) has the RIGHT to carry a firearm in public at will. However, if one desired to carry a weapon in public he must be crazy, therefore he is prohibited from carrying a firearm.
"That's some Catch, that Catch-22" (Yossarian)
The flaunting ritual is a tribute to "open carry" gun laws on the books in a score of states. Outcries from the unarmed public usually go unheeded. In Utah, university administrators worried over students' wearing guns in dormitories were overruled by the legislature, which defended gun rights — even to the point of packing in class.
You'd think Virginia citizens concerned about weapons in public would be able to seek comfort in the primacy of local controls. Alexandria, for instance, has barred open carrying. But that was before the very latest Catch-22 in Virginia law: effective this month, state law bars any locality from enacting gun regulations. Gotcha.
If this had to do with burning the flag, protesting a Republican president, "marrying" someone of the same sex, etc., etc., the Slimes would be celebrating the actions in question, advocating that more people did the same and decrying opponents as Neanderthals, etc.
In a phrase, the editors of the Slimes (many of whom have NYC concealed carry permits, which are all but unattainable for the "unwashed masses") are hypocritical b@stards. In another phrase, phuk them.
Bravo for the citizens of VA who are doing this - every time they do it without incident, they are reinforcing in the public mind the idea that ordinary citizens can carry safely and responsibly. They are also putting doubts into the minds of the pond scum of that area regarding whether ordinary folks are an easy mark, and are thus helping to decrease crime.