It won't be you or me, and it won't be the antigunners who ultimately decide the fate of gun rights in this country. It will be the general public. We can be right and still lose. (That should be obvious from the events of the last 30 years as we have lost time and again.)
Consider this episode a friend told me about. He was in the parking lot of a gun store in a major city. Another customer pulled into the lot and got out carrying a couple of rifles, not in cases. A mother who was walking with her small son down the sidewalk recoiled in fear at the sight of the guns
Inside the store, my friend mentioned the mother's reaction to the other customer and suggested that next time it might be a good idea to carry the guns in cases.
"But it's my right!" the man replied.
Yes, it is, but if you continue to alienate the public that way, you won't have the right forever. Much like draping a dead deer over the hood of your car, our actions in public can have a positive, a negative or a neutral impact on those who see us. You may never know that someone was watching, or what the reaction is, but that person just may go tell others about the "man with a gun" in the parking lot, and when the measure comes before the city council to ban gun stores in that town, he or she may be there to speak against us. As with other aspects of firearms ownership, we must take responsibility for our actions. ~ Tom
Tom Gresham
Author, outdoorsman, gun rights activist, and firearms enthusiast for more than five decades, Tom Gresham hosts Tom Gresham's Gun Talk, the first nationally-syndicated radio show about guns and the shooting sports, and is also the producer and co-host of the Guns & Gear, GunVenture and First Person Defender television series.
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