150 years ago, no one would have given someone a second thought, who carried a firearm openly, wherever that may be.
I don't believe that to be true at all. Yes, you could go many places in public while carrying a weapon with some legitimate purpose -- walking out to your hunting grounds, walking through the city to go shoot rats at the dump, heck, in Wilkes-Barre, PA (at least) the shooting range was a field right in the city! But to say no one would have taken notice of someone walking into a store or restaurant (or bank?) openly carrying a gun is simply not true. In fact, more than a few towns and cities banned the practice entirely (for their law-abiding citizens anyway
).
However, because of phobic political correctness, people who exercise one of our basic rights, are excoriated even by people of say they support the Second Amendment.
Well, not because of phobic political correctness, at all, actually. More because of the direct, present, immediate damage that those actions are proving to cause, again, and again, and again. "Let's keep doing this until EVERY STORE has officially decided to prohibit us!!!" is a really bad strategy.
The management of Target, Chipotle, and other corporations are acting as reactionarily as those who hide behind "gun safety" as a ploy to disarm citizens. Target is stupid to believe that they're creating a "family friendly" environment by attempting to ban the open carry of firearms in their stores.
You miss their point. They don't particularly care WHAT the environment in their stores is, so long as that environment is friendly and welcoming to the greatest number of average lower-to-middle class 20-30 year old women. Period. Anything at all that makes any of those lady shoppers the least bit uncomfortable and unlikely to return and spend more money is going to be unwelcome. Target can ignore the occasional disruption to field-hockey-mom bliss, but not a repeated "movement" of such events, and certainly not once what claims to be a 400,000 member strong posse of them sends an official "either they go or WE go" notice.
It isn't about family-friendly, or safety, or god and apple pie. It's about whatever their customers seem to want. Heck, they spend millions on focus groups to find out what color of toilet paper in the ladies' room will encourage their shoppers to linger, or how large and heavy the shopping carts should be to balance a housewife's average strength against the largest pile of expensive crap she can pile in it without stalling it out in the aisle. All to get a tiny edge on pulling in more shoppers. If they get a hint that some ladies might not stop in because you keep showing up with a rifle? Bingo, you're not welcome any more.
As has been stated repeatedly, when the bad guys know that people are unarmed, they will take advantage of the unarmed. It's that simple.
Meh. Show me that any significant portion of Target shoppers WAS armed before, and you might, maybe have a point. There will be exactly ZERO increase in the rates of violent encounters at Target stores because of this.
The guy who comes in with an AR15 slung over his shoulder is far less a threat than the sicko who posts his hostility on Facebook.
So what? Target's management doesn't care about that. Nor should they, really. All they care about is SHOPPERS. Lose a shopper to some fringe issue someone's making a political statement about (like by carrying a large weapon around in the store) and they will change the policy so that doesn't happen.
Folks shouldn't be unnecessarily aggressive in their posture or actions. However, those who are within their rights to openly carry a firearm shouldn't be ashamed to exercise that right by meekly kowtowing to those who want to disarm everyone.
All actions have reactions. Whether it is your right to act a certain way or not. You/we don't have a Constitutional protection from
consequences.
If the aggressive open carry movement causes 20 or 30 or whatever more major chains to "fall" to policies like this, is that ok? Is that a good thing? What has been gained? If several million of your neighbors say, "I used to be neutral on the guns issue but gun guys are STUPID AND DANGEROUS! Look at these morons with assault rifles in a public store!" Are you ok with that? Is that an acceptable loss to balance what we've "gained" here?
