It’s brief, so in full. Glenn Reynolds:
SCENES FROM A NEW AMERICA: So I dropped the girls off at a movie, and — since the Insta-wife was lunching with her mom — stopped at a Sonny’s Barbecue for lunch. A man — late 40s, big, with a wife and a daughter — came in with an empty holster on his belt. As he sat down at the booth next to mine, the manager came by and asked him if he’d left his gun in the car. Yes, said the man, who had a permit but thought he wasn’t allowed to carry in restaurants in Tennessee.. Well, they’ve changed the law, said the manager, and if you want to go get it that’s fine with us. It’s legal now, and I’m happy to have you carrying — if somebody tries to rob me, it’s two against one.The man stepped outside and returned with a Springfield XD in the holster, chatted with the manager for a bit about guns, and then sat down and had lunch with his family.
Most of the time, it’s the gut response that separates us; horror or comfort at the sight or thought of a family man sitting in a restaurant with a gun on his hip. The political rationalisation follows.
I don’t think the guy would be any more likely to start shooting if he had a gun than if he didn’t. Unless there was a robbery. That’s why I feel comfort. Whereas the robbers… they have guns anyway.
I hope the coffee was on the house.
Via Tim Blair – who has also picked up on some Amazon one star book and film reviews:
Moby Dick, Herman Melville: “Too nautical for me.”
