I’m sure by now you’ve all heard about a certain man carrying a certain AR rifle at a certain rally. Well this story has brought forth the wrath of the drama llama. People in the gun community are talking about this more than those not in the community and the opinions are varied. Well I’m throwing my opinion in the rink. But first I draw your attention to Rob Allen’s post. It mostly sums up my views on this as well.
I’m completely for the unnamed man carrying that AR rifle because of two things. The first is the simple fact it’s his right and society should never feel there are times when it’s not appropriate to exercise your rights. Sure if you don’t like guns and a person is carrying a gun on your property you can tell him to leave, it’s your property but this was being done on public land hence nobody should be able to tell him to leave.
But my second reason why I’m for this is exposure. We are always talking about open carry protests, picnics, and other assorted gatherings. It is believed that these gatherings will raise awareness and hopefully desensitize people to the sight of guns. It appears to be working as more and more people are saying they are for carry laws and I’ve noticed less people are freaking out when they see somebody with a gun. Well why should we change our tune on this when it comes to “evil black rifles?” How often do you hear us pro-gun people say guns are just tools and nothing more? If that’s what we truly believe then we need to be consistent and treat all guns as tools.
I do understand where the pro-gun people who are against this man come from. Yes he could be bad PR for our movement. But as they say in industry no publicity is bad publicity. The bias media is going to turn any pro-gun event into a threat to man kind style event. This is not something we can control, period. What we can control is how people perceive gun owners. If they see many of us walking around with rifles over our shoulders peacefully they will eventually realize we are peaceful regardless of the type of weapon we are carrying.