Compensation on Display

After my little post yesterday about Gun Appreciation Day, Juanita Jean went ballistic, so to speak, taking the gun nuts to task and renaming their celebration "I Have A Small Winkie Day".

While she was pondering the size of these crazy guys' privates, more evidence of her theory was being recorded in Oregon. A pair of 22 year olds, one from Medford so familiar to police that top officials know him by name and the other from Gresham. They took a few strolls- through downtown Gresham and Southeast Portland- with assault style rifles slung over their backs- an AR-15 and a similar long gun, plus a handgun on one guy's belt. The men marched up and down Powell Boulevard, passing West Gresham Grade School, the post office and other stores several times.

Why? The young man from Gresham was happy to oblige interviewers and get his 15 minutes of fame. The guy who declined to comment says it all on his FB page: He was home schooled (not very well, if you count all the spelling errors) and is "a full flesh libertarian and a gun right extremest. We the people should control our government and bring us back to when we had and own our Life, Liberty and Property."

Their intent was "to educate the public and open their eyes to something they could come up and talk about." And you know, open lines of communication with the cops so they don't over react to someone with a gun. And they video their adventures in education to post on youtube. Just to help educate us.

Yeah, right. I'm gonna walk right up to two young guys with semi automatic assault weapons on their backs and ask if I can touch one. I can just hear what Juanita Jean would say...

Well, it worked out really well, for the demonstrators of their Second Amendment Rights anyway. No one was hurt. No charges were filed because they were not doing anything illegal. Both have concealed hand gun licenses. They were simply making a political statement.

For the general public, and the police department, not so well. Their strolls prompted 10 calls to 9-1-1, scared the you know what out of customers (including mothers with young children) in a coffee shop, sent a shop owner and employees into hiding after locking the front door, and sent a day care center into lock down. No harm done.

These boys have a life threatening case of Stupid. Just because something is technically legal doesn't mean you should be doing it.