I almost always carry concealed, but Saturday I forgot my Hawaiian shirt as I left the house. “Oh well; I’ll open carry”.
I had my daughter with me in the supermarket, when she said we should get some bananas.
We were discussing the amount of bananas we’d been going though lately when a guy standing very close to us blurted out; “Speaking of bananas…!” and then walked off quickly before I could make sense of it.
“I wonder what that was supposed to mean” I said to my daughter.
“I have no idea” she said with a chuckle. Then I realized that the guy probably was responding to the gun on my hip, and the spare mag carrier on the other. So I’d gotten a drive-by criticism. It was a “drive-by” or a “hit and run” because a charge was made with no possibility of a response.
At the risk of over-analyzing; I’ve often said that the left were cowards, and this response reinforces that assertion. The hit-and-run commenter could make the case that he was afraid of confronting an armed man (but then why say anything at all?) but I say he was afraid of what he himself might do in a straight-up conversation.
Two points then. One; the haters simply cannot help themselves– they’ll blurt out their hate reflexively, without hesitation. Two; they’re afraid, both of themselves (they know they’ll embarrass themselves by their own behavior) and of a fair contest in which their assertions might be challenged and laid bare. When you point out a hater’s hate, they hate you for it. Their hate is projected upon you, so as to make you the source of the hate…
In fact of course he had nothing at all to fear. I would simply have said something like, “Do you keep a fire extinguisher in your home?…”
In my experience, this kind of hit-and-run cowardice isn’t delegated towards any particular political persuasion. Yellow is a color all it’s own.
Not to argue with your point about projected hate and these hit and run instances, but as I started reading the set-up and before I got to his running off, my mind started jumping to the Monte Python bit about defending against a homicidal madman who is armed with a banana. How? Force him to drop the banana (Cleese shoots the man) and then Eat the banana, disarming him and rendering the attacker helpless.
On the topic itself, I see less of this hit and run behavior in East Tennessee. When I or friends have open carried, people are usually oblivious. If they notice the gun they either accept it and go on with their day or quietly run off. The only place I’ve seen anything close was hateful leftists at universities. E.G. the “liberal”and “tolerant” head of the Issues Committee who sent an internal e-mail to the group complaining about criticism of the committee by a libertarian Sikh who wrote in the school paper–called him a raghead. (The e-mail was leaked, and nothing happened.)
I did notice that once I taught one classmate at law school to shoot, within a week or two, everyone knew I was a “gun guy.” They spread the word quickly. After that, nobody made any hit and run comments about guns around me (other topics, yes, but never guns). They didn’t act scared around me most of the time, but if they suspected carrying when we were off campus (usually the suspicion was raised by my pocket knife which I carried at all times, but they connected to guns), or if the topic of guns and self defense came up, I could detect Great amounts of tension. Around here, the hit and run seems to be self-stifled when it comes to guns because the leftists around here seem to be in abject terror of guns and those with them.
Fine by me–it left me to deal with more creative an humorous hit and runs involving my having been homeschooled.
I still havent gotten any of these, despite over a year of consistent oc in the grocery. The most I’ve gotten in that store was a very open discussion from a guy who was curious about oc, and another case where I had a guy discreetly inform me that my gun was showing. “Yeah, I’m OC on purpose,” says I. “No problem, says he, that happens to me sometimes, so I thought Id mention it.” In other news, two well armed men meet at a grocery store and totally fail to go crazy and shoot up the place. Its like the antis are WRONG, or somethin. Huh.
While the Monty Python skit referenced above is undoubtedly apposite, so is the John Belushi as Freud skit from Saturday Night Live. “Sometimes a banana is just a banana,” as the punchline goes from that skit.
UTLaw; This is a university town. We have people from all over the planet and all walks of life. At the supermarket, you may see two jet-black Kenyan men holding hands, and an Indian woman in a colorful sari with the jewel on the forehead (very attractive, IMO). You name it.
I have OC’d several times in public without any comments or side-long looks. This time I got one of the rare, extreme birds chirping away. Luck of the draw. The most strident leftists are often the University profs and their ilk.