The open carry gun groups sure are getting what they want. If what they want is more public pressure to put restrictions on gun rights.
“This is a complicated issue, but it boils down to a simple belief: Bringing firearms to Target creates an environment that is at odds with the family-friendly shopping and work experience we strive to create,” acting Target CEO John Mulligan said in a statement issued today.
And so it is that the latest public awareness campaign from the open carry guys has ended with Target asking gun owners to not bring weapons into its stores.
Target had been chosen as the, um, target by the open carry set earlier this year. These campaigns aren’t going well for the gunners, who don’t seem to get it that the photo ops that they set up for the media to get images of dudes carrying rifles on their backs in the middle of retail stores make them look like absolute friggin’ nutjobs.
Nor do they get that, damn, they’d already won the battle. The NRA, somehow, some way, has long since sewn up enough of Congress to make it so that nothing resembling gun control will ever again be part of the law of the land. Even liberal Democrats run kicking and screaming about Second Amendment rights away from questions about gun control, and have for years.
It’s to a point where politicians would rather be caught with the proverbial dead girl or live boy than even have to think about having to talk in public about guns.
Hubris is having already won the game and then dancing in your underpants in public on the victory lap.
Now we’re telling you to put your damn pants back on. Keep it up, and this 40-year blip of constitutional interpretation from conservative jurists who have rewritten what the founding fathers intended with their well-regulated militias will start down the track toward the dustbin of history where it belongs.
– Column by Chris Graham