An Armed Society Is a Polite Society. Because I Fucking Said So.

As I said, Roy sums this up (with links!) but this really has it all. These are the same people who line up behind every business that doesn't want to serve The Gay because FREEEEDOM!!!, but irony does not exist in Winger land. I'm not saying the Venn diagram is a perfect circle, but there's a shitload of overlap. They weren't even told they Couldn't bring their guns to get their coffee. They were just told that the owner would Prefer it if they did not. And that's got the armed and aggrieved masses all out of joint.

However, this is pretty easy when you understand how the persecuted gun nut sees this situation. Now, the average person understands that when two parties are having a conversation, and only one is armed, the unarmed party might feel a little uncomfortable. This is especially true if the parties are strangers to each other and live in a country that celebrates its FREEEEDOM every month with a mass shooting. But, Wingers can not understand this, because as near as I can tell, to a person, they view themselves as the heroes in this crazy world. They are the Thin Red Republican Line between all us peace-loving hippies and complete lawlessness.

So, when an unarmed person looks at them and thinks, "Well, there's a guy with a gun, my chances of dying just went up by some percentage from just a moment ago, And I Don't Know What that Percentage Might Be," that person is just an ungrateful hippie who doesn't understand that the Aggrieved Gun Nut is not only wearing the gun for personal protection, but Also for Your Protection, you ungrateful Peacenik! And shut up that's why. For me, the simple analogy would be, let's say, leaving your kid with a complete stranger. Now, I'd say 9 out of 10 people, hell, 99 out of 100 people, you could leave your kid with for an hour and your kid would be fine. But, do YOU want to take those odds? With your kid? How about 999 out of 1000? Of course not, because it's your kid and you don't know the potential wacko you're handing little Jimmy over to. Wingers thing that this is a matter of education. If we just understood the guns were there for our own good, we'd all just accept random people walking around with them.  But no amount of education is going to make the feeling of unease go away. Ok, so I talk to one gun nut, and I determine that that particular gun nut is not dangerous. How many people do I have to talk to every day just to get my coffee? Just to feel at ease? And how do I know that one of the people I DO know didn't suddenly go nuts?

In Roy's article some nutjob has the audacity to say (paraphrasing) "Well, Tattoos make me uncomfortable, but I deal with them, why can't you deal with my Lifestyle choice?" The complaint that springs to the the normal person's mind, "Well, because Your 'lifestyle choice' might fucking kill me" really does not enter their heads. Apparently, there are photos of some of these idiots posed in booths with their guns out and their lattes in the other hand; this is a fantasy world where guns do not accidentally go off, where nobody gets shot but the target, where introducing a gun into a dangerous situation always improves the situation, where nobody unarmed dies because you can't buy a fucking cup of coffee without your fucking dick substitute on your hip. And, of course, the problem is always that you are unarmed. Uncomfortable? Arm yourself. I've been told the difference between a person with a tattoo and a person without one is that the person with the tattoo doesn't care that you don't have one. But these people care, you are not exercising a God-given right and that's your fault. An armed society is a polite society, probably because everyone's afraid to say jack shit out of fear of getting shot. That is until everyone decides to start playing the odds.

I really don't have a problem with personal ownership of firearms, but these people keep trying to portray themselves as the very picture of personal responsibility, and no doubt some of them are, but others are clearly delusional lunatics, consumed with fantasies of being the hero, or more likely, never, ever being the victim. The level of persecution and personal aggrievement is astounding with some in this crowd. Somebody's going to get shot. Try and not let it be you. But, fortunately, these people are completely predictable, and Starbuck's mild request to leave the firearms to home has brought the predictable promises of taking their gun-totin' business to establishments that by-God Understand the Fucking Constitution. So, my advice, stay out of Dunkin' Donuts, apparently that's where the armed masses now feel most comfortable.

Anyway...