General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Rattled and shaken after seeing open carry in a grocery store [View all]MsJaneFuzzyWuzzy
(58 posts)in order to try to make a point.
The OP was not distressed by the sight of a gun ("common legal object"
.
I think the OP made that plain: her household has guns.
The OP was distressed by an activity: a gun being displayed by a customer at a busy store where she was shopping with children, where families commonly shop.
It really is not common for people to display guns on their persons in busy department stores, surrounded by families and children. None of the dozens or hundreds of other people in the store seems to have been doing that, and the OP had evidently not seen this done at any time in the past, although she shops at this store regularly.
This makes the activity, by definition, not common.
Probably there are things that would distress you if you saw someone doing them in a busy department store. If you spotted someone masturbating in the pet food aisle and were distressed enough to speak to the manager and post about it at DU, I would hope that no one would suggest you see a therapist since you appear to be distressed by a perfectly natural human activity.
(Probably necessary disclaimer: Masturbating in public and displaying a firearm in public are not offered as being analogous on any basis other than that both are activities that many people do not expect to see going on at WalMart and would be distressed by. The fact that one might be legal and one not is completely irrelevant to the appropriateness of either, or the distress that either might cause.)