The message is clear. If you don’t exercise your rights, you don’t have them, and it does not require the intervention of politician to take them away.
Controlling the Herd
Man Open Carries AR-15 Through Atlanta Airport
If you saw someone openly carrying a firearm in a public space, how would you react? It’s an important question every gun activist has to ask themselves at some point, because in regards to open carry, gun owners are often faced with a catch-22. For instance, where I live in California, the laws are very strict, but you can still openly carry an unloaded rifle or shotgun in public. But because it’s so rare to see, anyone who might try to do this is taking a huge risk.
Nobody is used to seeing an average citizen carry a gun, so most would be quick to call the police. Since the police don’t encounter this situation very often, they might assume the worst. That means walking down the street with a rifle over your shoulder, legal though it may be (depending on local laws), is a pretty easy way to get yourself shot.
And there’s the catch-22. Since open carry is such a risky endeavor, very few people exercise this right, which in turn creates an atmosphere where most people are unfamiliar with the sight of an armed citizen, thus making it more dangerous for anyone who might want to open carry.
The message is clear. If you don’t exercise your rights, you don’t have them, and it does not require the intervention of politician to take them away.
And that appears to be the thought process Jim Cooley had, when he and his wife went to drop their daughter off at the Hartsfield-Jackson Internation Airport in Atlanta, Georgia, also known as the busiest airport in the world.
And this applies to all rights, not just the Second Amendment. If you voiced a critical opinion of the government to somebody who had never heard a single criticism in his entire life, do you think he’d report you to the DHS?
If you lived in a society that had never known privacy, and you tried to protect yours, would your peers brand you a criminal?
If you tried to plead the fifth to a judge who had never read the Constitution, would he hold you in contempt?
This is the price we pay to live in a free society. People are going to step on each other’s toes. They’re going to scare and offend each other from time to time. But you know what’s worse than that? Living in a society that punishes people for the “crime” of making their peers nervous. A just society only punishes its citizens for actually hurting people, not for standing around and looking intimidating. And if everyone is too weak kneed to do something that might offend, then someday, they won’t be allowed to.
When Cooley was being interviewed by a journalist, he was asked “Yeah, you can do it under the law, but should you do it?” He replied “If you don’t exercise your rights, the government doesn’t have any hesitation taking them away.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
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Contributed by Joshua Krause of The Daily Sheeple.
Joshua Krause is a reporter, writer and researcher at The Daily Sheeple. He was born and raised in the Bay Area and is a freelance writer and author. You can follow Joshua’s reports at Facebook or on his personal Twitter. Joshua’s website is Strange Danger .
