Gun-rights group distances itself from open-carry incident

[SecularMotion]

The president of a Maine gun owners group said he and his peers were troubled by a gun-rights activist's decision to walk with an assault rifle in Portland Monday, an incident that drew a police response but did not result in any citations or arrests.

Monday at approximately 11:03 a.m., the Portland Police Department began receiving calls about a white male in his twenties walking in the West End of the city carrying a rifle.

"He was an open carry activist and just wanted to do it because he could," explained Portland Police Commander Gary Rogers in an interview.

The man was found to be carrying an AR15 style assault rifle with a high capacity magazine, Rogers stated in a press release. "The individual identified himself as an open carry activist who was exercising his Second Amendment rights to openly carry a firearm," Rogers stated in the press release.

http://www.portlanddailysun.me/index.php/newsx/local-news/8347-gun-rights-group-distances-itself-from-open-carry-incident

[Remmah2]

1. I do not approve of open carry.

Nor do I approve of open mouths.

[iiibbb]

17. with some one can't win anyway

open carry, rifle

concealed carry


in actuality it's "carry" they object to.

but I agree concealed is more polite and less disruptive

[jeepnstein]

2. Some folks' sense of timing is impeccable.

Doing an open carry protest with an AR, last week? Wow.

[ileus]

3. OC has it's place IMHO.

Rural areas, outdoor activities in rural settings, ect...

I wouldn't recommend it around large populations, most people aren't that progressive when it comes to 2A rights.

[ehrenfeucht games]

4. The idiot should have been arrested and all of his guns permanently confiscated. (nt)

[AtheistCrusader]

5. For breaking what law?

[holdencaufield]

6. He had a gun ...

... isn't that enough justification?

(Satire?)

[ehrenfeucht games]

7. I'm not a legislator, but there are probably quite a number of laws...

...that could reasonable be drafted to deal with idiots like this.

[AtheistCrusader]

8. Could be, yes.

That state apparently has no law on the books by which he could be arrested and have all his guns confiscated. One could be crafted, and that's cool, I take a dim view of what he did.

[ehrenfeucht games]

9. I still remember this guy who showed up at an OCCUPY emcampment with his AR-15...

...and was allowed by the police to intimidate and threaten OCCUPYers without interferience, due to lax gun laws.

There could quite easily have been a massacre at that OCCUPY emcampment that day. Everybody in the area was put in extreme danger of such a massacre by the police inaction.

This sort of intimidating and threatening behaviour simply should not be tollerated.

It should lead to immediate arrest and confistation of all weapons.

This was a massacre just waiting to happen.

[iiibbb]

10. That video just contains two morons IMHO

[AtheistCrusader]

11. I would have challenged that guy to do PT with me.

friggin meathead.

[ehrenfeucht games]

12. He's dead. He killed himself after massacring 4 people, including a 15 month old baby girl (nt)

[AtheistCrusader]

13. Oh shit, he's THAT guy?

I did not recognize him in that video.

[ehrenfeucht games]

14. Yup. JT Ready. (nt)

[Agschmid]

16. Wow. n/t

[Glaug-Eldare]

15. Ehhh, I'm sort of on the fence about this.

First off, he didn't shoot anybody or anything, he wasn't threatening anybody with it, or do anything aggressive. In the absence of an enclosed box or bag, this is the correct way to transport a rifle. I don't want to write the law around making sure nobody's ever exposed to things that frighten them, but this dude has done nothing but demonstrate that some gun owners are so goddamned callous that they will never recognize a good reason to be discreet, even for a little while.

Rifle carry has produced virtually zero problems in the jurisdictions where it's legal, though, so I wouldn't want to base a law on fear of "what might happen someday." On the other hand, states have the power to regulate these things to a certain degree. If a state chooses to restrict carry to handguns, that satisfies me so long as there is a lawful way to transport a rifle without a car. If a state chooses to restrict carry to handguns inside urban areas, that satisfies me, too. Rifles create more apprehension and have far less utility in an urban environment than handguns, anyway.



The whole thing kinda reminds me of when I got the police called on me for wearing an empty holster at a fast food restaurant.