Comments

1
"The Portland Police Bureau asks that members of the public who see people armed with guns to immediately call 911." Really? Because there are groups of men and women regularly meeting in the Starbucks down the street from my house who carry guns. And pepper spray. And batman utility belts. And dress in paramilitary outfits. They even have matching cars with shotguns in them. I think the one guy said his name was Officer...something. Should I call 911 if these folks show up again?
2
There's a clown that goes around Oregon doing Open Carry named Markedguardian on Youtube. I'm 90% confident it was this guy.

If it's the same guy, he's not doing the community any service, plain and simple. I mean, I would love to support this guy and what he's doing, but clearly he's not advocating for people's rights, he's harmless and looking for attention.

It's not a dick move if the cops tell you that you're creating a disturbance and you continue doing what you were doing. I was threaten for arrest for making a disturbance while standing on the sidewalk holding a sign, so the cops will lie. It would be interesting to see data about how many people actually called the police.

There's far more peaceful and practical ways to do Open Carry in Portland: http://jldunn.blog.com/
4
@Steve - You're the one making racist conclusions.

http://www.youtube.com/user/MrColionNoir
5
It is NOT legal to open carry in the city Portland, oh, unless it's unloaded, or if you have a CHL. This lil' fact seems to be absent form this article. My god, could people and editors stand to become more educated about open carry laws 'in Oregon'? How quaint.
6
Wait, but if it is visible on their back, then isn't it inherently not concealed?
7
@fidelity: that's not what white privilege means.

Police generally treat armed groups of young black men as gangs, instead of approaching them and politely requesting they take their assault rifles back inside. These guys didn't feel like they needed to worry about that.
8
LET'S SHOW THEM CITY FOLK HOW DUMB WE 'R'
9
Who cares, they're just guns. All this gun hoopla lately just proves how susceptible people are to the media stories about guns.
10
I recommend that next time these guys are strutting around, everyone in the vicinity strip naked.
11
Stopped for Open Carry in Eugene, OR:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7UMdniHWkI
13
Um, who possibly thinks that calling 911 to report lawful activity makes any sense? Besides, open carriers are free to ignore the police and continue about their business. Absent reasonable suspicion of crime, the police have no power to seize or otherwise detain anyone.
14
@Arenit People are also susceptible to bullet holes. Those little buggers can really dampen your day!
15
@Majstoll I KNOW, RIGHT!?! I mean, there was a guy at Clackamas Mall a few weeks ago carrying weapons openly. He wasn't breaking any laws. It's a good thing no one called 911...someone could have been hurt.
16
@majstoll At what point DO we get concerned about jackasses walking down the street with assault rifles? When they're 50 feet from the doors of a school and have them drawn? When they've actually opened fire?

Great that they "educated the public". I hope someone educates them that humans have a justified fear of weapons that kill with ease, and that they're not making any friends or changing any minds by walking around with assault rifles a few blocks from a middle school less than a month after one of the worst mass shootings in US history.
17
What a couple of Dickheads. I am fuckin sick and tired of gun nuts throwing the 2nd amendment up in my face--you fucks don't even know you're own Goddamn national history. Walking around Sellwood with rifles on your back and pistols on your belt? Are you fucking kidding me? Why don't you two do yourselves and EVERYONE ELSE a favor and join the fucking Army? It's a great organization; you get to carry guns and shoot people. Of course, in the Army other people get to shoot back--not quite the thrill of wandering around a neighborhood filled with MILFS with baby strollers and labradors tied to the handles.
The gun lobby has the entire nation held hostage because of their fucking paranoia and warped interpretation of an amendment that was drafted before their was fucking electricity!
I have guns, I have been in the military and I have been shot at. And even I do not feel compelled to walk around with a weapon concealed or not. There is no gun big enough and no magazine large enough to soothe your ridiculous fears or compensate for your micro penis.
18
@Keyser - I take it you didn't serve in the US military?

Because I've got the phone numbers of 80 OIF/OEF/Vietnam veterans in my cell phone, and nearly all of them are peace activists, some of them pacifist, and still the vast majority of them support the 2nd Amendment and they don't take any sort of pride in the military's killing machine. Nor do I believe any of them would view firearm ownership as compensation for ā€œmicro penis.ā€

Did you join the military because of a micro penis?

Do you own guns because you have a micro penis?

I think youā€™re just projecting your own problems. Further, if you did join the US military, you took an Oath, and you were never relieved of that Oath. Would you ever replace the words, ā€œI am fucking sick and tired of these privacy nuts throwing the 4th amendment up in my face.ā€ I doubt it.
19
@fidelity_axiom

So, a few things. First, I was in the US military. Second, from the content of your comments my politic is probably not too far from your own and lastly; irony and satire is something most people learn to identify in a high school composition class.

Having said that and blown off a little verbal steam at the two children walking around Sellwood with their pop guns I would like to say a few comments--in all seriousness.

I am a patriot, I have taken said oath and defended this country. I just choose not to cram it down other peopleā€™s throats. My love of country is a private matter--I quietly take my hat off at ballgames and I vote.

In a rational discussion of the constitutional amendments most scholars fall into two general categories; "Originalists" and students of the concept of a "Living Constitution." Justice Scalia would be an example of an "Originalist." That is he believes, as he has often stated, that he interprets our constitution as our founding fathers intended it. As if the document itself is frozen in its language and married to an 18th century sensibility. This strict interpretation allows him to divorce the document from the zeitgeist of the time. Some hold this interpretation as the "correct" one. An analogy would be a Creationist interpretation of the Book of Genesis. Since God created the world in seven days, 5000 years ago, dinosaurs and giraffes must have existed together--sounds kinds crazy doesn't it?

The Living Constitution enthusiasts believe that the founders wrote the document in broad, malleable language that would allow the document to evolve over time with the culture of the nation. Some argue that this is inherent in the idea of Amendments itself. The constitution can be edited, amended and changed by the people to suit the needs of the nation as a whole. Examples of course are the 13th Amendment which abolished slavery--a concept that was such an anathema to half the country that we had a civil war over it but, in retrospect generally considered a good idea. The 18th and 21st Amendments--what a small but very loud group thought was a good idea but then a larger group later thought better. And, of course the 19th Amendment, boy were people pissed about THAT one!

I personally fall into the latter category of constitutional scholarship and believe that the 2nd Amendment was written in a time when we had no standing Army and needed a "well REGULATED Militia" to ensure that the British, French, Spanish and other powers of the day could not just walk in stomp all over our fledgling country and rights.

However, as this country has grown geographically, by population size and (dare I say it) intellectually, the 2nd Amendment AS IT IS WORDED no longer serves the best interest of our nation. It serves the best interest of a relatively small group of paranoid rubes and needs to be changed.

I DO believe in individual American citizens have the right to bear arms; rifles, shotguns, even pistols. I believe we as a nation need to have a rationale discussion to better ourselves. I don't believe responsible gun owners should drop everything to come to the rescue of irresponsible assholes. I don't believe anyone save the military and the local police should have the right to walk around with said guns whenever they DAMN WELL FEEL LIKE IT. Those two idiots are doing more damage to your coveted right to bear arms than any liberal politician. As you quoted the 4th Amendment to me--if you really feel our government is gonna come in and take your shit--you got your gun on your property--have at it cowboy!

At any rate my micro penis serves me just fine.
20
MAY SOMEONE'S GOD BLESS YOU, Keyser Sƶze...
21
@Keyser ā€“ Thanks for the reply. My micro penis hasnā€™t been working all that well, itā€™s all itchy and smells weird.

I can definitely appreciate the desire to amend the Constitution to better fit within our modern world. Personally, I study law and public policies (Iā€™m a long time political activist) and so Iā€™m really cautious about how policies are written and who they benefit. I think we would be in a better position if 2/3rds of this country actually supported gun control enough that an actual amendment to the Constitution could be made, but the reality is that half of this country (and you know several of them) who are batshit paranoid about the government coming from their guns. Gun sales flew up 800% in the last two weeks, so I think thereā€™s not much consensus around this country about what to do regarding guns.

Regarding open carry, itā€™s truly a difficult subject and a hard thing to reconcile. I struggle with it a lot. I am absolutely sure that there has to be mechanisms in place to allow things like the Battle of Athens, or the Black Panthers, or ground-level resistance from oppression. At the same time, I find nothing more terrifying than prospect of armed and angry men walking down the road in black masks. Thankfully, open carry is not often abused like it easily could be.

I provided the 4th amendment because there legitimately are people who say that the government has an absolute right to spy on us, spy on our phone calls and emails, spy on us in our homes, spy on us everywhere. There are people who say ā€œyouā€™re just a civil liberties nutā€ and if we donā€™t spy on you then the TERRORIST WILL WIN, TRAITOR. I asked the question just to test the waters. Thank you for your answers.

Hopefully I can buy you a beer someday. Welcome home.
22
@ steve Have you ever heard of an anti-racism campaign that targeted any non-White group as having "privilege"?
Of course not. They ONLY attack White "privilege" (a future for White children) in ALL & ONLY White countries.

All you anti-Whites ever do is make excuse after excuse to turn every White country into a brown mix of this and that.

All you anti-Whites ever do is justify innocent White children living in poverty as minorities in every country their ancestors built.

All you anti-Whites ever do is justify genocide of White children; a future without White children.

Now you see why anti-racist is a codeword for anti-White.
23
I can understand why some people get a little scared when they see someone open carrying. That doesn't make open carry wrong. This attack on guns is politically motivated and all the liberal citizens that agree with there efforts need to understand what the seconds amendment really means and until then shut the hell up...
24
@fidelity: We both seem to agree that there is a rump of people who seem willing to try to start a civil war if any real attempt at gun control happens. In the other thread we were talking about using an executive order as an end run around Congress (which would get slapped down as unconstitutional in a heartbeat), but I can easily imagine the same reaction no matter the legitimacy of the process (because those people don't accept liberals as full citizens, essentially).

It's my opinion that allowing those people to dictate policy for the rest of the country is perverse, and that what they're doing is terrorism (using violence or the threat thereof to achieve a political end). To me, protection against government tyranny has always been the most compelling rationale for the right to bear arms (hunting, really?), but by allowing such a buildup of the tools of war in private hands, the government would essentially be forfeiting its monopoly on the use of violence, and the state would cease to be.

But I don't see any way to convince the gun nuts of my point of view, so we're basically stuck in a situation where many states are doing away with legal consequences for the application of lethal violence in confrontations of one's own making, and potential mass shooters find it easy to either acquire deadly arsenals legally, or simply steal improperly secured assault weapons. Legal attempts to decrease injuries due to firearms accidents are DOA, and legal liability for one's gun going missing and later being used in a crime are actually decreasing. All these things are because a small minority threaten to overthrow the government if you require their guns to be stored somewhere safer than a closet, and they want to carry a gun with them in case someone looks at them funny.

Where can we even go from here?
25
@ eldepeche:

"Where can we even go from here?"

Another country, that's where. One with fewer armed, adult-children who are paranoid about non-existent threats. And, while we're at it, one where i can get and treat cancer without going bankrupt.
26
@human - you're welcome to GTFO. I think fellas like eldepeche and I have invested too much into this country to simply leave it behind.

@eldepeche ā€“ Iā€™m very pessimistic about the outcomes of our government, as theyā€™ve demonstrated over and over again that theyā€™re not willing to work for even the partial majority of the people (i.e. the 99%, or whoever). The people who the federal government actually look out for have much to gain by seeing the vast majority of the people reduced to poverty, imprisonment, and slavery.

Where can we go? That all depends on what you want to do. I work with a team of veterans who are concerned about building permaculture, peace, and security for ourselves and our greater community ā€“ so, I have little need for the government in Washington DC. I worried about their motives and schemes for the longest time, I wrote letters, lobbied, worked 90+ hour work weeks (full time job + full time activism). Iā€™ve been on TV dozens of times, publically spoken at events, even organized the largest political rallies and groups on the West Coast....when all that failed I started doing direct actions, confronting the schemers in their face to protest and stop their plans...with all that hard work, nothing changed. The largest anti-war activist groups asked me to take on senior leadership positions, and for a while, I was responsible (with a team) for directing national campaigns on various issues. Again, with all of this hard work, nothing changed at all. One group again ask me just Wednesday night, because I am an effective leader ā€“ but...sadly, I see nothing changing by working with them.

So, for me, thereā€™s no ā€œwhere can we go?ā€ because Iā€™m not concerned about the overall ā€œweā€. For me, Iā€™m going to contribute my thoughts on the matter, but ultimately Iā€™m going to my garden and turning my compost, Iā€™m thinking about the spring crop, and the next land I will transform and grow food on. You are welcome to join me in this world, as itā€™s a lot more care-free. My community is about building new, healthy, and real lifestyles ā€“ not this consumerism, jingoism, and vanity. Itā€™s not a collective, itā€™s people making their own lives better.

The great thing about my community is that there is no imperative to ā€œconvince the gun nutsā€ to do anything at all. I leave them in peace, and they in turn do the same.
27
eldepeche - why would anyone have "legal liability for one's gun going missing and later being used in a crime?

If someone steals your car and runs somebody over are you liable? of course not.
28
Exercising your rights is never a "dick move". There appear to be a lot of ignorant liberals posting in this thread who are dick heads though.

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