My brother was in South Carolina last week on some daily wandering when he stopped into a coin store. Now, you might have assumed that a store like that would have a sign or three out front dictating policies, and you would be right, of course.
One, though, did catch his eye. This was the one from the owner that let his customers know that if they carried concealed weapons under a license, they were absolutely welcome in his establishment. None of those "no guns in here" signs there, mind you. If you carried, you were a welcome customer.
Naturally my brother was intrigued and happy at the same time, and took a few minutes to chat with the owner about his policy. Nothing strange about it, the owner told him. "I want my customers to be armed!"
I hope that notion isn't counter-intuitive to you, or that it is, depending on what "intuitive" means in that context. Either way, it certainly should make sense once you think about it. After all, the places with the worst gun violence in the nation are the places with the tightest gun laws -- New York, Chicago, you get the idea. The more the armed citizen is suppressed, the harder it is for citizens to arm themselves for protection, the easier life is for the bad guys.
The owner of that coin shop was absolutely right, of course. He has made his shop a microcosm of the USA as far as firearms policy is concerned. That stands in stark contrast with the various stores that make "no guns here" a visible policy but not a reality for those who would cause problems. Criminals do not fear where the threat of the armed citizen is removed.
You know, of course, that there are air marshals on airline flights routinely in this country. Not only is it not a secret, the government does not want to keep it a secret. The knowledge that there is likely someone on board to keep the bad guys from pulling anything on the plane is not only a substantial deterrent to anyone trying to do something evil on a flight, but it is also a comfort to those passengers who know that their presence is an added layer of safety.
The store is doing just fine, thank you. Being where it is, of course, the patrons in general are perfectly happy, exactly like the passengers on those flights. They know that it is extremely unlikely that anyone is going to try to do anything in the shop when they can't be sure that the guy looking at old silver dollars isn't carrying.
Now that's logic. Let's have more of it.
Copyright 2018 by Robert Sutton
Like what you read here? There's a new post from Bob at
www.uberthoughtsUSA.com at 10am Eastern time, every weekday, giving new meaning
to "prolific essayist." Appearance, advertising, sponsorship
and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on
Twitter at @rmosutton
The only way you could wish to allow people to carry weapons into your store is if you can think more than one step at a time.
ReplyDeleteThis ability to follow a multi-step chain of reasoning is necessary if one is to understand the possible solutions to many problems facing us today...as well as the shortcomings of many proposed ideas.
My lovely wife classifies those on the left (but not exclusively) as "stage 1 thinkers", i.e. people whose thinking stops at the first step. If a murder happens, ban weapons...full stop. If there are poor people, redistribute income...end of story. If you don't follow the next few steps and try to apply some knowledge of human nature, you will miss several important points: 1) as you mentioned - if people know that no one is armed, they know that they are easy pickings....2) if you ban weapons, there are still people who will posses them illegally....3) a source of free money changes peoples behavior for the worse - hence the concept of moral hazard...etc.
I believe there are more problems in thinking, but this is the worst. So many issues require deeper thinking to arrive at adequate answers. Climate change is a big one, because so many on the left are willing to spend trillions of dollars, enact policies that will severely hurt our economy, and not impact carbon levels in any meaningful way.
You can't fix people. Having our educational system dominated by left wing teachers doesn't help...because young people with no idea of the wider world and how it works are very susceptible to lousy ideas that are only refuted by long thoughtful chains of logic.
In the end, we depend upon an adequate number of people to grow up and think their way through things as they discover more about the world. I think that many millennials are going down that path. I hope there are enough.