"someone who feels the need to tote a shotgun
while walking down the street, and carry it into
a public meeting."This wasn't just "a public meeting" any more than I am just a blob of protoplasm.
This was a session of a legislative body.
So he had "a legal right" to do what he did. Some people see things as they are, and ask why. Like me.
Let's leave aside the "disassembled part", since I would assume that there are some people here who believe that people have/should have the right to carry assembled firearms into the place where a legislative body is in session.
Why
should anyone have a "right" to carry a firearm to a session of a legislative body??
Someone did it in Canada once.
I believe you can see film here:
http://www.montreal.cbc.ca/tv50/1984may.htmlhttp://www.parl.gc.ca/infoparl/English/07n3_84e.htmCanadian Parliamentary Review, Vol. 7 no 3 1984
On Wednesday May 8, 1984, at 9:45 a.m. a person dressed in army commando fatigues and armed with a submachine gun, burst into the National Assembly building by the door situated on Grand-Allée Boulevard. After shooting a messenger (who subsequently died) and seriously wounding a receptionist the armed man ran down the hall leading to the Speaker's Gallery.
He proceeded to the first floor where he entered the main chamber of the Legislature. A committee of the Assembly was preparing to hear the Chief Electoral Officer's budgetary estimates for 1984-1985. He fired three more rounds wounding several people, two mortally. One of the those killed and several of the wounded worked for the Chief Electoral Officer. The other person killed was a page who had worked for the National Assembly for several years.
While the gunman was still in the Assembly chamber the Sergeant-at-Arms, René Jalbert, attempted to negotiate with him. The following account of the incident was given by the Sergeant-at-Arms during a press conference held on May 9, 1984. ...
The interview with the heroic man who negotiated the surrender after persuading the armed man to come to his office and talk ("Sergeant-at-arms" usually looks like a ceremonial office in Canadian parliamentary institutions) is a fascinating read in itself, for anyone interested.
When someone shows up at a legislative session carrying a firearm (and doesn't shoot the receptionist on the way in), how can anyone know what his/her intentions are?? Is there really not very good reason to think that a higher proportion of such people might be intending to cause some serious mayhem than of people who carry their firearms into, say, a bar? What sane, legitimate
reason would someone have for carrying a firearm into a legislative session??
The armed man in question in this instance was a member of the Armed Forces with access to firearms and a lot of personal problems -- that should indeed probably have been recognized by the Armed Forces and his access to those firearms cut off. Because his access to firearms was known to authorities, this could actually have been done.
There are lots of other people with access to firearms, and the kinds of problems and states of mind that might well lead them to use those firearms illegally, about which no one knows. A firearms registry would make it possible, once a person came to the authorities' attention (including through information relayed by a member of the public), to determine whether the threat to public safety was
sufficiently serious to constitute justification for confiscating those firearms temporarily, pending, of course, a more in-depth investigation and determination in accordance with the due process rules that might apply.
But enough of the tangent. ;)
A legislative body is at special risk of this kind of attack by people with either political or personal motivations. Legislative bodies are the locuses of the expression of the will of the public. Intimidating a legislative body is a serious assault on democracy. And I don't see much reason for carrying a firearm into a session of a legislative body
other than to intimidate it ... except for whatever reason a loon who carries a firearm around because he thinks the rest of the world is a threat to his personal safety might have, and whatever that was, I fail to see how it would be good enough to justify carrying a firearm into a legislative session.
(Gimme a break, whoever it was who said that the police reports of this guy's 600 near-misses with careless drivers should have been investigated. Do we seriously imagine that he made reports -- or that the police continued to take them after the first, oh,
127? Don't let's be disingenuous. He was clinically paranoid. I met a lot of them in my law practice (and also trained on a forensic psychiatry ward in law school). One day, after the latest case of "Eastern European syndrome" had left the office with his bag of "proof", I remarked to my secretary: "there goes another paranoid schizophrenic." "How can you tell?!" she asked. "You too can tell," I said. We can all tell. Even denizens of the gun dungeon, and even if they don't acknowledge it.)
"Some people are better messengers for the pro-gun message
than others. This guy was a poor messenger, IMHO."Shouting fire in a crowded theatre doesn't necessarily, or even probably, make anyone a "messenger for the pro-freedom of speech message". Nor does carrying a firearm into a legislative session make someone a messenger for the right to carry firearms message, whether or not the person doing it is even sane. But certainly the sanity (or good faith) of anyone who regards this case as involving a "RKBA" issue could be questioned.
The "fire" shouter may really just be insane, or a person intent on causing a disturbance in a public place that may lead to personal injury ... and so may the person carrying a firearm into a legislative session just be insane, or trying to intimidate the legislators. What either of them is doing may have not the least thing to do with carrying a message about their "rights", any more than the drivers our hero claims almost hit him (any who actually were engaged in reckless driving) were carrying a message about theirs.
And whether or not the "fire" shouter fiercely advocates free speech or the reckless driver fiercely advocates personal liberty,
and whether or not the firearm carrier fiercely advocates gun rights may really be regarded as utterly irrelevant;
what they are doing can still be completely unacceptable in a society that values and protects public safety and values and protects the democratic process.
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