Are you referring to? A kidnapping that involves 75 to 100 people at a restaurant does not ring any bells.

Was it in the United States? When did it happen?

Personal anecdote that has nothing to do with US crime, gun law or gun "culture".

Still I do agree with your base premise. People are people and should be treated as such, equally.

...even considering the source.

I definitely don't want him to own guns. I don't even want him looking at pictures of guns.

...you are a mixed ethnicity hetero couple?

My apologies if I am wrong.

I have no idea of the background of your premise 'same as an AR-15' having only been here for 2 months.

I assume you mean that people have treated you worse than gun owners expect to be treated when they carry in public.

I cannot account for Chicago, never having been there. I was to Niagara falls twice. Not impressed by the people (the merchants) but the falls were fantastic.

I do not know the location of the incident in the diner, the cliff rules out the incident in Nassau County, NY about 30 (??) years ago in which two criminals with guns took over the restaurant and brutalized the patrons.

Your essay is very moving, and I will respond with two separate thoughts:

1) If you have been mistreated due to being a mixed ethnicity couple, I would like to welcome you to my area of this beautiful state, the Catskills region of upstate New York. From Niagra Falls, head east to Syracuse, south to Binghamton, and about two hours east from there. It is beautiful country, and was the east coast home to the 'peace and love' revolution of the 1960s. You can still hear the music echoing across the hillside.

2) As for criminal acts, these people were criminals. Plain and simple. They used guns. So did many people who were on the wrong side of history - the British during the Revolution, the Nazis during WW2, the Viet Cong, the Taliban, etc.

Firearms can be used for evil purposes, the same way technology can, religion can, nationalism can, and so on.

I am not going to trot out worn tired cliches, and no, I do not believe that one lone good guy with a gun can reliably stop a bad guy with a gun, unless he is extremely lucky. He will probably be killed in the process.

I carry a sidearm (one that is considered by many to be obsolete and ill-equipped for the modern world) only after years and years of training and periodic re-qualification. I am trained to the level of a police officer, know the laws of legal carry and of deadly force better than most cops, and meticulously mind my own business.

I don't know if I will ever be in a situation again in my life in which I have to come to the aid of a civilian that I do not know.

I do not want to sound brave, I don't want to sound macho, but as the carrier of a licensed handgun, I believe that I am part of a social contract. Some may disagree....

I believe that if god forbid I am somewhere where I can make a difference, I will be running toward the problem, not away from it.

If it costs me my life, then that is the price I pay for living in a society whose rules and laws are more important than myself.

Best wishes;

CFS

....in your essay?

I had been to the diner in Nassau county several weeks before the incident.

It is one of the reasons I obtained a license to carry, which, on Long Island, is even more difficult to get than in other parts of the state except NYC.

I still think about that incident, playing 'what-if' scenarios in my mind, for the past 34 years.

To my dying day - this is the one time I would have wanted to be somewhere I was not - to do whatever I could have done.

Watch out, contains some disturbing information....

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/28/nyregion/prison-release-recalls-horror-li-diner-1982-rampage-led-law-raising-felony.html?pagewanted=all

dont mean that as a personal insult, I have friends who have guns but it is what I believe.

Having said that, when I go to a movie theater now I spend most of my time wondering if I am going to be shot.

This is the fault of Scalia and company purposely misinterpreting the 2nd with Heller.

I should have the right to live in a state where we can outlaw guns as the 2nd clearly allows us to do, guns that are not part of a well regulated militia.

So guns have made shit SO bad here, that what you are doing almost makes sense.

I'm in NY.

From there we can take a look at the laws and information that you may find of use to you regarding this topic

the 2nd, which we clearly wont agree on, guns are making things worse.

Agreed?

...a coherent conversation with someone who lives 'in the world somewhere.'

I wrote an essay this morning on open carry.

If you read it, look at the map I included, and keep in mind some of the corrections I noted, you will get a sense of the states in which you are more or less likely to see a handgun being carried openly.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1172191586

What you must bear in mind is that the vast majority of the laws that you and I and everyone else obeys on a daily basis are state laws.

Unless you are in a business that is under heavy federal regulation, most of us only deal with the federal government on a day to day basis when we go to the post office.

Heller did not change much. Yes, it was a symbolic victory (or defeat depending on where you stand) but most laws regarding firearms - except for point of purchase background check and the dimensions of a rifle - (barrel length, overall length)...

........Most laws are state laws.

You can affect state laws in several ways..... voting, supporting certain candidates, or even moving to a state you feel suits you needs and political viewpoints better.

If you live in New Jersey or Massachusetts and don't like guns, well, that's a good fit.

If you live in Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky.....

state with more non gun folks than pro gun folks, then just about all guns could be outlawed other than those in the militia.

I could then not have to worry about being shot, as much.

Sure, people would bring them over state line, so as long as there is ONE gun in this country, the risk is there.

the BoR restricts the government, not the individual.
It has always been an individual right, there has never been a SCOTUS case saying anything different.
There is no historical or legal evidence to support that nonsense.

....you are talking about New Jersey, which is a gun banner's paradise.

Only problem, the bad guys don't obey the laws, and Camden, Trenton and Newark are some of the most violent places in America.

HBO has one with "Breaking Bad" star Bryan Cranston and Rob Reiner is doing one where Woody Harrelson plays LBJ.

I was 13 y/o when in ended.

He was a morose and brooding character when it came to international politics and war, yet he was a civil rights crusader in his own right.

Unsung lampshade mineral.

While the person legally carrying is ordering his dinner and you're running for the hills, what do you think your waiter will be doing? Will he be (a) dialing 911 because you ran off without paying, or (b) relaxing because he knows you're a good person who just got spooked by the big bad gun and will be back eventually to settle his tab?

I'm going with (a), Bob.

....in upstate New York in November.

(In the restaurant)

Oh shit, men with guns, I'm running....

Guy runs outside..... Pause.....

Guy comes back in.....

Starts counting.....

Excuse me, sir, what are you counting?

I'm counting the number of guns in this restaurant......

Because there are even more outside!!!!!

I have no way of knowing if they are good guys or bad guys. My 1st reaction to danger is to leave.

don't go during Schützenfest

To see the older guys with their K31 Schmidt Rubins with their families laughing and heading for a range with a picnic lunch.

OTOH, maybe if we had that on the Chicago EL it might be a whole lot more peaceful and safe.

Funny, I didn't see a single panicky Swiss citizen running out on their bill in the whole city? Maybe they just are calmer than folks from Iowa?

I was running away. I'm alive. I can't prove I wouldn't still be alive if I took another action but I can prove I'm alive now. It was a split second decision and I was sure I was going to be shot in the back but apparently it's harder to hit a moving target. So maybe it's ptsd or something but I'm not sticking around.

And your personal tale of terror has what exactly to do with Schutzenfest in Switzerland?

there are black and gay folks at the range I go to. Some of them have ARs, mostly pistols. Why would I treat them different than a straight or other color person?

Question is, would YOU treat a black or gay person with and AR differently? How about a lever or bolt action? What if he has a TAVOR? AUG?
I've stood in lunch lines with people who had loaded machine guns. I don't know if they were straight or not. Didn't care, since they were on my side.

...to prove a point about culture.

I am sure Iowa is gun country, isn't it?

There's certainly nothing wrong with "black folks," "gay folks" or people who legally carry AR-15s in public, so why should we be worried about them? Nobody is breaking the law by being "black," "gay" or openly carrying an AR-15 (assuming permitted in the locale) so why are you making this comparison?

This is why I have heard of many who have taken to carrying firearms in self defense.

But I am familiar with the holosight on the AR.

If the battery dies, you're screwed.

I do like a couple of his posters. Like this one

IIRC, he is an immigrant from Russia. It might have something to do with translation. It could be if gun geeks were as violent as some fear mongers claim, there wouldn't be any gun control activists. Think about it.
BTW, Columbia and Venezuela ban all private ownership of guns. How is that working out for them? Sort of like Mexico and Brazil isn't it?
BTW, heroin kills more people than all homicide weapons combined in the US. How is that ban working out for us?

most of them are not legal. I must correct myself on one thing, there is legal gun ownership in Columbia, but I seriously doubt cartel types bothering to get licenses and registering their guns anymore the gangs in Newark, Detroit, Chicago bother to.
http://www.as-coa.org/articles/explainer-gun-laws-latin-americas-six-largest-economies

There are a lot of guns where I live. Over half of the households have at least one firearm in my state. The last gun murder was two decades ago in an armed robbery. The last murder was an infant being beaten to death.
This is another good one, and shows the dicotimy of guns. BTW, since skeet is growing in popularity in high school sports, what if your kid wants to try out for it? How about pistol or rifle in college or Olympics? Biathlon?

And weird leaps of logic. You contend that Zimmerman is a "cold-blooded murderer" and then have this strange post about "black folks," "gay folks," and those who legally carry AR-15s and then attempt to argue that two unrelated threads are related?

On edit, I went back and read the posts and am even more flummoxed - you say I was "explicit" about something - what was I explicit about?

What does everybody understand?

Setting aside your inability to answer straightforward questions, you do agree that Zimmerman was tried and found not guilty by a jury of his peers (comprised of 6 females) and that the Department of Justice determined there wasn't enough evidence to bring hate crime charges, correct?

But not if you are going to keep ignoring facts. Please answer the question from my previous post about Zimmerman's trial. If you refuse to acknowledge undisputed facts then not sure why we should continue this discussion.

And I have to edit again - please point to the post where I openly supported Zimmerman. You called him a "cold blooded murderer," and I pointed out that in fact he was absolved by a jury of his peers of any crime. I asked if you disagreed with that fact and you ignored it. Then you went on to say I "support" Zimmerman and insinuated that I'm a racist. I try not to make unsubstantiated accusations myself.

This post is primarily about race and racism in everyday social situations. While interesting and unfortunate, the story belongs elsewhere on DU as it does not fit the SoP of the Group.

Regards,
Krispos42, Group Host