Gun Bloggers have been tra-la-laing recently about open carry and manners.

I think it started over at Breda’s place. Unc discusses more.

The thing is, do you view open carry as a political movement? Or just something to do, as normal as putting on your pants in the morning? If you view it politically, manners matter. You aren’t going to win people over to your side if you act like an asshole. Granted, you may not win them over if you’re well-behaved, but it does improve your chances. But if you view open carry as just something to do, or your God-given right, or whatever, then hey… if you’re normally an asshole, you’re still going to be an asshole with a gun on your hip or not. Frankly, I’m not going to tell anyone how to behave because we’re not all in this for politics. As well, as soon as I start telling someone else how to behave, that means they can tell me how to behave, and I’m not hip to that.

Furthermore, we have to remember that our little world of gun-totin’ folks is composed of a wide array of people. We aren’t going to all agree on everything, so before we start the in-fighting, we might as well stop because we aren’t all going to see eye-to-eye on how to promote, how to behave. And as much as we all love living free, that implies we also don’t care for other people to tell us how to live our lives. So if someone doesn’t want to be well-mannered well, that’s their prerogative.

Unfortunately, it can reflect badly upon the rest of us.

I do think you get further in life being polite and good to others; that whole flies and honey vs. vinegar thing. For instance, consider Linoge’s WizardPC’s story. And we have to remember that. In anything in life, any group, any movement, any thing… there’s always going to be some bad apples, there’ll always be someone who is a less than model citizen. So what should we do? Just continue to be the role model. In the end, most people are rational and will see that the majority are good folk and things are alright. Why? Unc said it best:

And that is why we should play nice. So the other side comes off as loons. Not us.