Rattled and shaken after seeing open carry in a grocery store

[Squinch]

400. There is a poster up thread who talks about the fact that he

conceal carries all the time, but he assures us that he is a really reasonable man. For example, he says that when he bumps someone with his shopping cart, he's careful to apologize so that the situation doesn't escalate to where he needs to pull out his gun. He feels that a supermarket bump might possibly escalate into a situation where he needs his gun. Imagine what goes through his head if someone steals his parking space or calls him an asshole.

Someone open carrying in Walmart, to me, is proving that he is even more unbalanced. I am sure you will disagree, but open carrying in Walmart indicates to me a person with an enormous chip on his shoulder, someone just itching to prove his dominance to the rest of us. Someone who needs to do this is, to my mind, proving he is not mature enough to be carrying a gun.

Though no one is saying that carrying a gun in public spaces causes massacres, it certainly does increase the likelihood of the many accidents we read about all the time in which people are shot because of rank and shocking stupidity. A guy who needs to display his toy to the other Walmart shoppers is showing that he lives at that level of stupidity.

But the real damage, I think, is in the attempt to normalize the appearance of guns in every area of life. This has caused an increase in the number of guns the average gun owner owns, and has enriched the gun manufacturers. This makes it worth their while to fund the lobbies that work their asses off to make sure that no laws are passed that will actually make any of us safe from gun nuttery.

I don't think she's over-reacting. I have been affected by more than one situation where guns were pulled by irrational men for slights that would have had no repercussions if no one was carrying.