By way of a follow-up to my column yesterday, 40 Gunmen Armed with Assault Rifles Terrorize Gun Control Group at a Texas Restaurant, I thought I’d address the pro-gun meme circulating Facebook and the comment section of Banter.
In response to the article here, along with the ThinkProgress post about the incident, various pro-gun trolls and Tucker Carlson’s The Daily Caller have been circulating the following image:
The point? Honestly, I have no idea what the hell the point is. Somehow because they posed for a group photo in the midst of deliberately intimidating four activists inside the restaurant makes the intimidation permissible? Sorry, no. And to suggest that it was a “peaceful protest” totally stretches the definition of “peaceful.” The people inside, not just the MDA members, were terrified that the gunmen (gunmen = peaceful?) were going to ambush them. Go figure, considering the blight of gun massacres occurring with deadly regularity.
So by this logic, if, say, a group of Muslim youths appeared outside a restaurant wearing bulky backpacks, dark glasses and baseball caps, brandishing semi-automatic firearms, there’d be no reason to be alarmed as long as they snapped a grinning group photo? Nonsense.
Yes, around 40 members of Open Carry Texas spent two hours outside a lunch meeting of four gun control activists from Moms Demand Action, openly and flagrantly brandishing military-style firearms, which might or might not have been loaded (only the gunmen knew for sure), for the sole purpose of terrorizing four women inside.
In fact, a smiling group photo makes the Open Carry thugs appear worse, as it captures how proud and giddy the gunmen were to be terrorizing four gun control activists at a harmless luncheon. Good job, gun nuts.