Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) claimed that if people could bring their guns to the movies, they could have prevented the movie theater shooting in Lafayette, Louisiana, Thursday evening…. “These concepts of gun-free zones are a bad idea. I think that you allow the citizens of this country — who have been appropriately trained, appropriately backgrounded, know how to handle and use firearms — to carry them,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper Sunday. “I believe that, with all my heart, that if you have the citizens who are well trained, and particularly in these places that are considered to be gun-free zones, that we can stop that type of activity, or stop it before there’s as many people that are impacted as what we saw in Lafayette.”…. Such a provision “makes a lot of sense” under the Second Amendment, the 2016 presidential hopeful said.
I can handle people coming up with bad ideas; we’ve all done that at one time or another, right? Something that seems like a can’t-miss ends up as an unanticipated abject failure- nothing ventured, nothing gained…right? When bad ideas become potentially deadly, that’s when “bad” becomes stupid. When stupid ideas are put forth by politicians looking to gain political advantages despite the potential consequences of a truly, egregiously stupid idea…well, in my mind that could only be described as criminal stupidity. So it is with Rick Perry’s assertion that allowing guns in movie theaters would be a GREAT idea, and could only result in saving innocent lives.
To Right-wing politicians like Perry, I’d ask only one question (OK, actually several): What do you think happens when people begin firing weapons in a dark theater? Do you believe the bullets will magically find and fell the “bad guy”…and ONLY the “bad guy?” Despite numerous studies that thoroughly debunk the contention that “The only thing that beats a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” you’d honestly advocate for allowing guns in a movie theater? Do you not think a shooter would be counting on the element of surprise and confusion caused by opening fire in the dark? Do you honestly believe that armed moviegoers would automatically and without question react appropriately? Have you never considered that a shooting situation, particularly in a darkened theater, is a horrible mélange of chaos, and the act of opening fire would create such a shock to the senses that few people would react “appropriately” and take out the gunman? And what if there’s more than one shooter, thus increasing the chaos and confusion exponentially?
It’s one thing for Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes © to demand that we “enforce the laws already on the books”…while conveniently neglecting to mentions that in many cases the reason(s) such laws aren’t enforced (at least in their minds) is that Conservative state governments have hamstrung enforcement. They get to claim that laws aren’t being enforced…all while hypocritically being the reason such laws go by the boards.
When will self-interested demagogues like Perry recognize and admit that MOR GUNZ!!! © isn’t the answer? An armed society isn’t a polite society, it’s a frightened and paranoid society. The Right’s romanticized notion that happiness is a warm gun is as fallacious as it is deadly. You simply can’t talk about firing a gun in an enclosed space and treat it as if it’s some sort of dispassionately academic exercise. Bullets don’t have moral standards, they don’t care about “good guys” and “bad guys;” they travel where they’re aimed. When bullets begin to fly, especially in a dark enclosed space, chaos is guaranteed to follow.
What Rick Perry is proposing may be red meat to Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes ©, but it’s as dishonest as it is wrong. Allowing guns in movie theaters won’t save lives; indeed, it will probably COST lives…not that Perry particularly cares about the truth. For him, it’s all about convincing Teapublicans that he’s the Presidential candidate who’ll protect their 2nd Amendment rights. That innocent people will very likely die if this comes to pass is merely a cost of doing business. As long as it’s other people burying their loved ones, it’s an abstract concept, right?
