The sheep see the violence that a sheepdog is capable of on the nightly news in Iraq, Afghanistan, the local police force and in self-defense stories. Similar to the wolf in nature, human sheep can not tell the difference between sheepdogs and wolves from a distance, this scares them. Currently most civilian sheepdogs carry their weapons concealed to blend in with the flock, partly to make wolves question their actions, but honestly one predator can typically spot another. In reality, they try to blend in to avoid spooking the sheep.
Sheepdogs need to work on educating the sheep and helping them understand the risks they face and exposing them to the sheepdogs tools. Helping them understand that gun or a knife is just tool that a person can use for or against evil. Pulling the canines teeth will not make the flock safer from the wolf when the balloon goes up.
Balloon Goes Up
October 20, 2011
Baa, Baa, Woof… What?
[This has been expressed differently by many other people but this is one of the more succinct versions.—Joe]
The thing to remember about sheep is that stupid in sheep is often mistaken for gentle.
Sounds like a bleat for O/C to me. In the ideal world, we would need no sheepdogs or personal weapons, because the society would universally accept politeness and individual rights, and wolves would be extinct.
Since society is far from ideal, and getting farther, we need weapons. As a cop for 25 years, I truly believe it was my uniform, and the authority it stood for, that intimidated people, not the firearm openly carried on my hip, especially since I was trained to “blade away” my strong side from potential threats and not front up the pistol.
Now that I’m retired from that copping rat-race, I’m still the beneficiary of all those years of learning about the seamy side of society, so I carry arms. I have no wish to carry them openly, as I do not believe that any advantage will come to me from that mode of carry. I am mindful also that open carry has a few safety drawbacks which concealed carry doesn’t.
When you lay it all out, Joe, all there is to recommend O/C is the theory that somehow, it will habituate those “sheep” to seeing arms. It won’t CHANGE the sheep into sheepdogs, or reduce the population or distribution of wolves which prey on the sheep.
Continuing on this sheepdog line, then, if you succeed, and all the sheep get used to seeing your O/C arms, will the sheep not also be used to the arms carried by the wolves? Can sheep being less afraid of wolves because of habituation to their arms be a positive development? I say no, but what do YOU say, Joe?
“It won’t CHANGE the sheep into sheepdogs, or reduce the population or distribution of wolves which prey on the sheep.”
But apparently it does preemptively change the behavior of wolves for the better, as reports from OCers keep indicating, and therefore does functionally reduce the wolf population and distribution.
Rivrdog, can you explain to me why the OC skeptics so consistently refuse to address that point? For example, the way your own narrative framing here not just completely but conspicuously ignores the potential affects of OC on wolves?
Because AFAICT, the only justification any OCer needs is “I think I’m safer this way.” So far I have seen absolutely nothing from OC skeptics that can counter this, let alone trump it.
But then I’ve never seen an OC skeptic try.
Or even just acknowledge the point’s existence ITFP.
I know what it usually means when people behave like that. Do you?