{"id":185953,"date":"2014-07-07T18:34:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-07T23:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/07\/07\/time-for-some-schadenfreude\/"},"modified":"2014-07-07T18:34:00","modified_gmt":"2014-07-07T23:34:00","slug":"time-for-some-schadenfreude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2014\/07\/07\/time-for-some-schadenfreude\/","title":{"rendered":"Time for Some Schadenfreude"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was an open carry demonstration in Richmond, VA, and only two people showed up<\/a>:<\/p>\n

More than 300 people were invited on Facebook to walk down Cary Street on July Fourth with handguns, rifles and other so-called \u201clong guns\u201d proudly displayed.<\/span>

<\/span> Two showed up \u2014 and they were the organizers of the midday event in the family-oriented Carytown shopping district.<\/span>

<\/span> \u201cI don\u2019t know why,\u201d said organizer Jason Spitzer, 29, when asked to explain the low turnout for what he described as an Independence Day demonstration to \u201cspread Constitutional awareness\u201d of Americans\u2019 Second Amendment right to bear arms.<\/span>

<\/span> \u201cBut even if nobody came I\u2019d still walk,\u201d the Chesterfield County steel mill worker said, holding a large American flag in his hands, with a rifle slung over his shoulder and a holstered handgun on his hip. \u201cIt\u2019s the Fourth of July and I love my country.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span> But with turnout so low, the shoppers and diners along Cary Street weren\u2019t quite sure what to make of the two-man march, which might very well have gone unnoticed were it not outnumbered by two television crews and a photographer in tow.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

BTW, I’m with the Institute for Philosophy in Public Life<\/i> on the appropriate response if some of the open carry terrorists show up to your school\/restaurant\/laundromat, leave the area immediately without making an effort to pay<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The questions that concerns me now is how we bystanders should react when people come into a store with guns. There really is no legitimate way of determining intent. Even if the people with guns are carrying a sign claiming to be activists (which they do not do), they could be lying, just setting us all up for slaughter. And since there is no way to know what is on their minds, all we have are our instincts, but as we all should know, our instincts are often racist, classist, and frequently mistaken. So, what should we do?<\/span><\/p>\n

My proposal is as follows: we should all leave. Immediately. Leave the food on the table in the restaurant. Leave the groceries in the cart, in the aisle. Stop talking or engaging in the exchange. Just leave, unceremoniously, and fast.<\/span>

<\/span>But here is the key part: don\u2019t pay. Stopping to pay in the presence of a person with a gun means risking your and your loved ones\u2019 lives; money shouldn\u2019t trump this. It doesn\u2019t matter if you ate the meal. It doesn\u2019t matter if you\u2019ve just received food from the deli counter that can\u2019t be resold. It doesn\u2019t matter if you just got a haircut. Leave. If the business loses money, so be it. They can make the activists pay.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Following this procedure has several advantages. First, it protects people. Second, it forces the businesses to really choose where their loyalties are. If the second amendment is as important as people claim, then people should be willing to pay for it. God knows, free speech is tremendously expensive. If it weren\u2019t, I\u2019d be reading this on ESPN during prime time, not posting this on Blogger.<\/span>

<\/span>Third, this proposal has the added advantage of taking the activists seriously. Most gun-rights activists describe a world of tremendous dangers. Guns, they repeatedly tell us, are the only thing between home invasion, rape, murder, and government intrusion. Okay, well if that\u2019s true, then we bystanders should be equally afraid, and react instantaneously to keep away the chaos and the violence. We learned to be afraid from the gun-rights supporters. They have gotten everything they wanted.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is an unbelievably<\/b> appropriate response.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was an open carry demonstration in Richmond, VA, and only two people showed up: More than 300 people were invited on Facebook to walk down Cary Street on July Fourth with handguns, rifles and other so-called \u201clong guns\u201d proudly displayed. Two showed up \u2014 and they were the organizers of the midday event in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1055,1003,1049,1104,1019],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-185953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gun-laws","category-philosophy","category-protests","category-psychology","category-schadenfreude"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185953"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185953\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}