Dallas mayor Mike Rawlings joined John Dickerson on Sunday’s “Face the Nation” to explain the problems that surfaced Thursday night as police were attempting to subdue the shooter…. “You know, in dealing with the law of gun holding, you can carry a rifle legally, and when you have gunfire going on, you usually go with the person that’s got a gun,” Rawlings explained, explaining why many people were arrested that night. “And so our police grabbed some of those individuals, took them to police headquarters, and worked it out and figured out that they were not the shooters.”…. Therein lies the biggest problem with open carry laws. “But that is one of the real issues with the gun right issues that we face, that in the middle of a firefight, it’s hard to pick out the good guys and the bad guys,” he said.
One of the greatest and most egregious fallacies of the gun control debate is the “only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun” argument. Grounded in self-serving propaganda and unproven talking points (there’s no hard data available to back it up), Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes © can treat it as Gospel without being burdened bh inconvenient things like “facts” or “evidence.”
Here in the real world, things are a bit murkier when it comes to “good guys” vis-vis “bad guys.” As Mayor Rawlings stated, when the shooting starts it can be tough to sort things out in the chaos and confusion. When no one knows who the shooter is or where the shots are coming from, separating “good guys” from “bad guys” is virtually impossible. It’s not as if union rules require shooters to wear an “I’m a bad guy” sign when they opens fire on innocent civilians. In fact, most shooters do their best to remain concealed or at the very least as difficult to identify as possible. Shooters want to deal death, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to a desire to die themselves. They generally want to inflict maximum carnage and then disappear undetected and unharmed. Yeah, it’s rather cowardly, but people looking to kill indiscriminately aren’t going to feel bound by the laws of war.
Open carry laws are exceptionally effective at exacerbating the difficulty of identifying and neutralizing a “bad guy” before they’re able to create mass bloodshed and carnage. If multiple people are carrying weapons, how do you sort “good guys” from “bad guys” once the shooting starts? You can’t, of course- which only makes the job of law enforcement exponentially more difficult.
While Mayor Rawlings was referring primarily to protesters with guns contributing to the chaos that ensued once the shooting began in Dallas, his point is true in virtually any public situation. When citizens are allowed to openly carry weapons virtually anywhere they choose, the potential for a tragic misunderstanding can’t be minimized or ignored.
Not that Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes want to hear anything that runs counter to their narrative, of course. In their fantasy world, “good guys with guns” will ALWAYS defeat “bad guys with guns.” Then they’ll ride off into the sunset on their trusty steed and peace and tranquility will reign through the land.
If only real life actually worked that way.
