Question for Open Carry Advocates: What if Muslims Start Doing It?
Jon Stokes 12.16.14
I’ve been thinking recently about the way that the Satanists are having a field day with so many laws that Christians are passing under the “freedom of religion” banner: stunts like putting a statue of Satan next to the Ten Commandments, or Satanist plans to hand out literature to school kids in Orange County. What if, I wonder, certain groups were to exercise their open carry rights in the same manner.
What if there were a group of Muslim open carry advocates who called themselves “Sword of the Prophet” and whose avowed mission was to bring Sharia law to the US, and they took to showing up armed and in large numbers outside of churches on Sunday, the way the OC guys do at the state house. Or what if there were a group of hispanic activist OCers, maybe an offshoot of La Raza who liked to organize armed protests at police stations and court houses, and who openly advocate the “reconquista” of the Southern US?
Regardless of what OC advocates would answer to any of this, I’m pretty sure the general public would be none too pleased.
What I also wonder is if those who are pushing for open carry, or “constitutional carry” as they’re now calling it, have thought this through. This isn’t a rhetorical question; I’m really dying to know.
And not only is it not a rhetorical question, but it’s not a theoretical question, either, because this will happen. Part of the impetus behind gun control laws in the 70’s was the fact that the Black Panthers were the original “open carry” advocates, and the sight of black radicals walking around openly armed contributed greatly to public support for gun control laws. In describing this phenomenon of the late 60’s, lefty historian Rick Perlstein writes:
Things shifted, of course, when the Panthers started patrolling rich white neighborhoods, including the one where a right-wing supporter of Ronald Reagan in the state assembly, Don Mulford, lived. When the assembly debated Mulford’s subsequent bill to ban the carrying of loaded firearms in public places, Panthers strolled onto the floor of the state assembly fully armed. The Mulford Act passed right quick after that—and, ironically, one of the nation’s first high-profile gun control laws was signed by Governor Ronald Reagan.
So again, I ask, what happens not just to open carry but to the current wave of support for looser gun laws, when avowed revolutionaries tool up and tell white America to “come and take it?”
Update: This post has generated a lot of apparent confusion about what I actually think, with half thinking that I’m a Muslim-hating redneck and the other half thinking that I’m a liberal. Well, let me clear it up: I’m a pro-2A liberal, and I think that if open carry is the law then Muslims should absolutely be allowed to carry. Nowhere in this post do I even hint otherwise. The question I’m asking here is not, “should Muslims be allowed to carry”, but, as the title says in bold letters, “what happens if they start carrying?” In other words, what happens to the public’s support for loosening up gun laws if they see armed Muslims walking the streets?
I have yet to see a single commenter actually address the question that I asked, and I’ve been doing this long enough to know that when that happens, it’s my fault for not being clear enough in the post. So again, let me be clear: I take it as a given that if OC is the law, Muslim citizens will and should be allowed to exercise their 2A rights, so the question I’m asking is, can the American public handle the sight of armed Muslims walking the streets?
