“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 5

5 comments

1. George Smith

   January 14, 2013 at 3:45 pm

   It’s a good point, one I’ve seen made a few times. Lots of things are fun. Driving over 150 mph is fun. Some people find watching videos of women in high-heels crushing mice to death a fun rush. Neither are legal. 
   Here’s a guy, much like the Yeager maniac, into the insurrectionist porn thing.
   http://www.wweek.com/portland/blog-29629-guy_toting_an_ar_15_in_southeast_pdx_does_this_all_the_time.html
   He videotapes himself walking around various suburbs of Portland carrying an assault rifle, which is apparently legal there, and uploading the result to YouTube. Of course, whenever he does it some locals always assume he might be violent and nuts so they call 9/11 and the police, who now know who he is and why they’re being summoned, have to go and check it. And if you look at his YouTube channel, that’s what it is, videotapes of the police coming to see him on his ‘walks’ after neighbors have phoned. And he gets a perverse thrill out of it; it’s gotten him notoriety. And it also qualifies as the behavior of a very objectionable repeat public nuisance wasting taxpayer resources for his insurrectionist 2nd amendment thing. And I still think a lot of our politicians and average people, particularly in the white middle class, are loathe to look at themselves and confront what it is they have allowed to fester. In England they have a way to get curb these people. It’s called an ASBO, an anti-social behavior order, which are dispensed to squelch people like Warren R. Drouin patrolling neighborhoods with his assault rifle. In England, he’d get one and that would be the end of it, period. You’d have the initial expense of having to drag him into court and making the case that he was engaged in a practice he knew would cause fear in people in quiet neighborhoods but chose to do it anyway and that it has nothing to do with the freedom to bear arms. 
    

    
2. George Smith

   January 14, 2013 at 3:52 pm

   Here’s an excerpt from the web on the fellow:
   “Rifle toting activist in Portland area is well known to Medford police
    Medford police have received at least 67 complaints about Warren R. Drouin openly carrying a semi-automatic rifle or handgun in a wide range of public settings between June 2011 and December 2012, according to agency records. One episode generated more than two dozens calls to police. At least one Medford business barred him from the property because of his behavior. View full size A bystander snapped this picture of two men carrying assault rifles through downtown Gresham on Wednesday. Police later identified the pair as Warren R. Drouin and Steven M. Boyce. No charges were filed. Meghan Browne One of the men who walked with assault rifles through downtown Gresham and Southeast Portland Wednesday has an extensive history with Medford police over his practice of openly carrying a rifle in parks, in businesses and other public places. Medford police have received at least 67 complaints about Warren R. Drouin openly carrying a semi-auto rifle or handgun in a wide range of public settings between June 2011 and December 2012, according to agency records. One episode generated more than two dozens calls to police. At least one Medford business barred him from the property because of his behavior. The 22-year-old Medford man is so familiar to police in the southern Oregon city that top officials in the 103-member police force refer to him simply as ‘Warren’ when describing their interactions with him. Officers receive training specifically on how to approach Drouin and others in the so-called open carry movement, which promotes the ability to openly carry guns. Tim Doney, Medford’s deputy police chief, said department officials have emphasized to officers that not everyone openly carrying a weapon will be as benign as Drouin. ‘We go out on every one of these calls,’ Doney said. ‘And who knows? The next one may be the one that is an active shooter.’ On one occasion, Drouin was briefly detained and handcuffed when he showed up armed at the Medford City Hall complex.”
   And there’s something very fundamentally wrong in a society that can’t control this kind of profoundly corrosive and malicious behavior. 

    
3. Frank

   January 14, 2013 at 4:50 pm

   There seems to be an element of sadism in this.  It’s not about rights.  It’s about scaring people with his big gun.

    
4. George Smith

   January 14, 2013 at 6:21 pm

   Well, yes. And I would think that some police officers are really quite sick of the guy. Paradoxically, one element of the gun nut/would be Ted Nugent demographic is the belief that they are patriots and that if they launch an insurrection the cops and national guard, hey — everyone except the liberals — will be on their side. I’m reminded of the end of Falling Down when the character played by Michael Douglas realizes what he has done and says to the retiring policeman, ‘I’m the bad guy,” and Robert Duvall tells him, yes, he’s the bad guy. But that never seems to occur in reality.

    
5. Frank

   January 14, 2013 at 6:48 pm

   I remember in my youth when the more deluded campus radicals would speak of “the peasants and the workers.”  I never did understand the blindness it that.

    

   They failed to see that the “peasants” didn’t realize they were peasants and that both the peasants and the workers hated campus radicals.

    

   Cops don’t like people who make their jobs harder.  Why should cops be different from anyone else in this?