Panic in the Parks

The city of Beaverton (in Oregon) www.beavertonoregon.gov/ has decided to outlaw the display of toy guns in public. The intent is to ban people from public displaying of any toy that might resemble a real gun. This includes those that come with with orange tips (done by manufacturers to avoid these types of laws, Beaverton does not care about that), cap pistols, basically anything that to a law enforcement person may think is a real weapon in the middle of the night in pouring rain at 50 feet with lights shining in his eyes.

 

All people - from the 114 year old in a walker to a 1 year old - if caught along any public right of way - sidewalk, park, road, front yard, will be fined not less than $200 the first time, 2nd time $500 and thence on with other penalties.

 

The old same argument that it is safer to ban everything so that way anything that a LEP sees he will assume is real and act appropriately.

 

Course right now they always assume that EVERYTHING is real and act that way anyway - they are taught that.

 

It would be better if people are just taught that if a LEP tells you to do something you just do it - wait - they already teach / tell people that. 

Human nature is that if someone yells at you the FIRST thing you do is turn around and face the person yelling at you - and if you had a toy or real weapon you would turn toward them anyways to find out why they are yelling at you. And if you are NOT doing anything wrong then you would ignore them since you would not think they are yelling at you (but likely would turn around to see what all the commotion is about.)

 

Now what this does allow is that anyone can now walk around Beaverton with real weapons since it is NOT against the law to carry around real ones in public (that I know of). Concealed requires a permit.

 

So if every kid who can legally carry a rifle or pistol walked around in the streets and parks with real weapons displayed (but of course with no ammo and cable tied so they cannot be used) what would the city of Beaverton then do?

 

This is the first "sounds good" step toward banning of everything for "safety" of both public and LEP and people have a short memory that eventually nothing would be allowed and they cannot remember how that happened.

 

"The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subjected people to carry arms." -- March 18, 1938
 Adolf Hitler