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Presidential town hall and gun show
Boy do I have a bad feeling about this.
This is probably the first time I really have to ask what usually strikes me as a lame question: can you imagine what would have happened if anyone pulled this shit around our previous president?
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But it's this ambiguously worded sentence that distracted me:
At Obama's town hall there, one man was arrested for having a gun hidden in his car after the Secret Service found him at Portsmouth High School hours before Obama arrived carrying a pocketknife.
Based on context I assume the it was the man who had a gun hidden in his car, not Obama, who was carrying the pocketknife. But that's not what it says, so it gave me a "sheesh, *giggle*" moment.
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Guns don't vote
I have to say that it is because Obama draws fire from the extreme Left and Right that I like him.
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The thing I find interesting about the discussion is that the presumed "liberal" who is claiming that carrying guns is inconsistent with Alinski's position has apparently suffered the exact same kind of failure in his or her ability to use abstractions that we've seen so much of in right-wing nutjobs in the past eight years: they are arguing that because Alinski doesn't say, "Carry guns" that carrying guns is inconsistent with their position, even though Alinski does say, "Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat."
To anyone who still has a rudimentary capacity for dealing effectively with abstractions, the concrete tactic of carrying guns in this way is clearly consistent with Alinski's position, as they are clearly an intimidation tactic by the right wing of the Party to try to regain ascendancy in the public eye and mind.
The right wing of the Party is made entirely of cowards who run scared or lash out psychotically when the threat of violence looms, so it is natural that if they wished "to cause confusion, fear, retreat" they would use implicit threats of violence to achieve that end (part of the right wingnut mythology is that everyone else is a bigger coward than they are, so of course they can't imagine psychotic lashing out as a response.)
Pardon me...
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But what I wonder is -- if someone had reacted to the right-wing protesters violently, what would have been the result?
And if the armed protesters had opened fire, for any reason, what would be the public outcome?
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But let's be honest -- no one let the armed protesters near Obama either. I doubt he was even within range of those rifles.
Still -- it's disturbing that the right-wing feels they needed them at all. We're debating healthcare for fuck's sake. They're the ones making it sound like everyone is going to die if anymore legislation passes. Overreaction is a key sign of a coward.
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It's just that Bush took it too far: putting those 'zones' many miles away from his speech locations, using them at almost every chance, for nearly everything imaginable.
Odds are, those armed protesters were in a location mandated by Arizona state law -- which was probably no-where near Obama.
Even still -- you have to wonder about the frame of mind that believes you need an AR-15 assault rifle to disagree with Obama. They were happy when Bush stepped on the little people, now that Obama is in charge -- they must be assuming he'll use all the same tactics as the Bush administration. How very telling of the last eight years.
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The Right Tribe would have claimed that the Left were hypocrites and that it proved the need to keep and bear arms.
The Left Tribe would try to blame the gun-carriers for their own victimization.
The Party would use the violence as an excuse to further crack down on domestic freedoms in Amerika.
[Note: I believe all this "for analytical purposes only". I go through my days trying to make sense of the incoherent mess that is the modern United States, the rich, heavily armed psychopath of the international community, and trying to make sense of it in purely Orwellian terms is a kind of literary exercise, although also depressingly plausible.]
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Kostric (NH Carry person) is a Free Stater, who are most frequently Libertarian, if they associate with a party at all.
I'd be willing to bet that the AZ people carrying would most likely associate as libertarian or independent before they associated republican.
Personally, I like Kostric's interview with Matthews where he essentially dodged Matthews repeated question of "Why did you bring a gun" by deflecting it as a "I was there to have my voice heard... oh, I had a gun? Yeah, that's my right" (not a quote, even though I put quotation marks around it).
Seeing it as a non-issue would be the way to deal with it. Sadly, like some of the commenters in the article you link to might be right, it could mobilize the anti-2nd-amendment people to ban more instances of gun rights in more locations.
Me? I'm waiting to see what the presence of our new chief of police from LA does to open carry in Portland. Should be interesting, once it is tested.
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They could also shown up at the town hall with T-Shirts and signs that said "YOU TRY ANYTHING AND I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU", and I'd feel the same way about it.
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I see zero threat of violence. It's not the people open carrying that you have to worry about. It's the people illegally carrying concealed weapons that are the ones to worry about.