Op-Ed: Group carries cause to an extreme
May 15, 2004
Cleveland Plain Dealer
by Sam Fulwood III
Ohioans for Concealed Carry PAC is an organization of gun-toting activists who believe that well-dressed citizens should accessorize their wardrobes with loaded weapons.
A 9 mm pistol goes beautifully with camouflage fatigues, which are the rage nowadays. But what do you carry when you're strolling the boulevard or just having a bite at that popular greasy spoon?
Just a minute, pardner. Some restaurants, movies and other businesses are discriminating against people who carry guns - no matter how well they're dressed.
Yes, that's true. Apparently some businesses don't want people with guns rubbing elbows with their unarmed customers and employees. So they post signs asking everyone to leave their weapons elsewhere.
Even though the state last month began issuing permits for citizens to wear weapons under their clothes, a provision in the new law allows businesses to effectively outlaw guns in their establishments.
The signs started sprouting everywhere, seemingly overnight, after the concealed-carry law went into effect on April 8. There's even one at the entrances to The Plain Dealer.
Jim Irvine, a spokesman for Ohioans for Concealed Carry, said the Cleveland-based political action committee wants to send a message to those businesses.
"We want them to know that they're losing a valuable customer," he said, adding that people with gun licenses are among the most law-abiding people in the country. "They're the next best thing to having a law enforcement officer in a store, God forbid something does happen."
The group posted a "Do Not Patronize While Armed" list on its Web site. More than 300 Ohio businesses are named. More are added every day, when members notice a sign and e-mail the store's location to the group.
Of course, The Plain Dealer made the list. As did the Rock Hall, the Pro Football Hall of Fame and all Fifth Third Bank offices. So many hospitals made the list, it's "too numerous to itemize" them all, the site said.
Few businesses seem fazed at being targeted.
"We're a museum with families and young children in an atmosphere that's not conducive to people carrying guns," said Jack Horrigan, vice president of communications at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton. "So far, nobody's complained."
Irvine claims what his members are doing isn't a boycott. Instead, he said, it's a public-awareness campaign, letting his heat-packing friends know where their money isn't wanted.
"The purpose of the Do Not Patronize While Armed list is to assist these stores," Irvine wrote on the Web site. "We wish to help [concealed-gun holders] know to stay away while armed, which is exactly what the stores are communicating on their signs."
But to make sure the businesses feel the pain, the PAC is selling "No Guns - No Money" cards - 10 for $2 - and asking members to pass them out where they see signs prohibiting guns.
"Deliver these to store managers and owners of these businesses to let them know they have just lost a customer," the Web site said.
While I detest everything Ohioans for Concealed Carry stands for, I agree wholeheartedly with its boycott. If those card-carrying, gun-toting folks hadn't told me, I wouldn't have known where to shop to avoid them.
I feel safer armed with that knowledge. Don't you?
To reach this Plain Dealer columnist:
[email protected], 216-999-5250
Commentary:
It would be tempting just to laugh at his ignorance about the issue, if it weren't so serious. Just last week, an Akron Dairy Mart, sporting new "No Guns" signs, was robbed in broad-daylight in front of six (defenseless) customers. The (defenseless) clerk was pistol-whipped.
Gun ban lobbyists like Toby Hoover are now claiming they "never painted lurid pictures of bloody shootouts in the streets", obviously aware that Ohioans are about to see that their well-documented predictions will not come to pass. But Fulwood seems not to have gotten the memo on the need for rhetorical revisionism, as referenced by his use of wild west slang phrases like "pardner", "heat-packing", and "guntoting."
Fulwood says he "detests everything Ohioans for Concealed Carry stands for." That's a pretty bold statement, considering that OFCC stands for the civil/human right of self-protection for domestic violence and rape victims, for persons who are attacked because of their sexual orientation or race, for those who are physically disabled, etc..
Fulwood thanks us "card-carrying, gun-toting folks" for preparing the Do Not Patronize While Armed list, so that he knows "where to shop to avoid them". He had better buy all he can from the 300 posted businesses (out of thousands and thousands and thousands who are NOT discriminating), since we receive word that more and more are removing their signs daily. Those businesses, some of which are also referenced on our website, are conspicuously not mentioned by Fulwood.
Overall, Fulwood views the Do Not Patronize While Armed list as "extreme". We can't help but wonder what course of action Fulwood, of African descent, would take if a different kind of discriminatory sign started popping up in Ohio businesses - but we've been there already in this country, haven't we?
align="right">
In fact, the very court cases which the Ohio Supreme Court recently relied on to uphold the 150-year ban on concealed carry were founded on racism. In a 1920 case which found a hispanic man guilty of carry a concealed weapon in his bed, Justice Wanamaker noted the seeds of racism that spawned Ohio’s ban on concealed carry:
“The Southern states have very largely furnished the precedents. It is only necessary to observe that the race issue there has extremely intensified a decisive purpose to entirely disarm the Negro [or "tramp", or homosexual], and this policy is evident upon reading the opinions.”
Related Stories:
What's race got to do with it? A LOT.
- 1197 reads
