Summary: A Moms Demand Action type sees a bulge and gets all excited.
Paranoia
1. Psychiatry. a mental disorder characterized by systematized delusions and the projection of personal conflicts, which are ascribed to the supposed hostility of others, sometimes progressing to disturbances of consciousness and aggressive acts believed to be performed in self-defense or as a mission.2. baseless or excessive suspicion of the motives of others.
With commentary, in red.
Buckle your seatbelts and put down your beverages.
Why your gun makes me nervous
by Lynda Waddington
January 10, 2015
There’s a mantra quickly repeating in my head: “Please have a badge. Please have a badge. Please have a badge.” It’s a steady heartbeat as I begin a conversation with a shop clerk and reposition myself so I can peer over her shoulder.
Does this happen often?
I’ve already seen the bulge in his jacket, and it’s clear from the size and shape that he has a holstered gun. Now my eyes are quickly scanning, hoping to find a law enforcement badge clipped to his belt.
Really now? You must be more observant than 99.44% of the rest of humanity.
I’m in a local bookstore and there’s a sticker near the door asking patrons not to carry weapons on the premises. My two children scurried off the moment we entered, each in search of their own treasures.
The man with the weapon is as interested with the bookstore patrons as he is with the books on display. I’ve watched him watch others. The way he tracks them is unnerving.
I do not know this man, have no knowledge of his profession, personality or character.
Do you know this about anyone around you in public, ma’am?
I am unaware of his mental state,
See above…
of why he feels the need to carry a weapon into a bookstore. Frankly, I’m not that interested in his reasons right now. My mind is too busy filtering through the various scenarios that could be taking place. They flick before me like movie trailers, and I watch, casting some aside and mentally marking others for further consideration.
Was one of those movies trailers the one for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?
There’s no badge — at least not one I can see. And my inspection of him has not gone unnoticed. I rotate my handbag so that more of it rests toward the front of my body and gently pat it. It’s a tell by women who are packing heat in their purse. Many do it without thinking, a subtle check of hard steel through the leather. My touch is greeted by the bristles on my hairbrush, but no one else knows that.
Patting one’s purse is a tell by women who wish to communicate they are packing heat in their purse? I’ve been in the gun community for decades now and this is a new one to me. Generally, people who are packing don’t communicate their status in my world.
The man recognizes the gesture, his eyes briefly flicking to my own before he moves past us in the aisle.
Robert Ludlum, are you listening? She can really spin a thriller in her head, can’t she? Oh, that’s right. Author Robert Ludlum is dead.
I still don’t know him, and the movie trailers increase. He could be the stalker, searching for his mark. He could be contemplating a robbery, or seeking someone to abduct. He could be an off-duty police officer, or even one that is undercover. He could be paranoid, thinking the world is out to get him or knowing someone truly is. He could be a fugitive, a drug dealer, a rapist or the owner of a sporting goods store. He could be a million things.
Do you regularly see movies in your head. You should talk with your doctor about this. This man could be a million things, however, predator probably isn’t one of them or he would have zeroed in on the cray-cray woman staring at him, following him, and looking at his bulge. Maybe she’s a Mom Demanding Action and that’s why she spends her day looking at bulges under men’s clothing.
Thanking the clerk, I walk toward the YA section and my children. We won’t be spending money in this store today. We will be leaving as quickly as I can get them through the door, away from the man.
…I do not know the last time the weapon in the man’s holster was maintained, and state law provides no assurances he knows how to maintain it.
There’s no assurances in life, Lynda, except that you’re going to die.
You don’t have to be an unarmed victim, Lynda. Empower yourself. Get a firearm. Get Training.
Cuckoo is the right word.
Utterly ridiculous! While situational awareness is a good thing, making sh*t up is just dumb. As someone who “checks people out” on a regular basis, I have never once thought these things. I once had a job in sales with an embroidery company. We did logo’d shirts,jackets and whatnot. I still find my gaze gravitating to someone’s chest if they are wearing a logo’d shirt. No, I’m not staring at your boobs, moobs, or pecs, I’m trying to figure out if you are a former customer. And if it’s a good or bad logo job.
Now as someone who is married to a man that carries all time, I tend to check men out in a different way. Most of the time I can’t tell if someone is carrying or not. And if they were and they were “printing” I would assume they are a good guy. Why? Because the bad guys often don’t holster their weapons or try to conceal them. They also don’t “scan the aisles of a store” looking for a victim. They are more of the smash and grab variety. Also, who really has this kind of time to think up such elaborate plots while in the check out line? And, you let your kids run free in a bookstore???? Mother of the year there. There’s never creepy weird people that want to take your kids in a book store. (sarcasm)…
Women like this give the rest of us a bad name. And I have never once “patted” my purse to indicate I am “packing heat.” Please, who uses such phrasing? Women, don’t fall into this lame excuse for protection. Go out, get yourself some training. Do not let yourself be a victim because you don’t understand guns or are a bit intimidated by them. Ask someone that you know to teach you or go to a class with you, or to simply take you to a range and show you the basics to eliminate that fear of the unknown. You never know, you might enjoy it.
Wendala kicks ass and takes names.
Lynda, on the other hand, sounds like she’s straight up nuts.
John, you should tell folks to read the comments to this at that newspaper where it was originally on the net. The overwhelming consensus is that the author Lynda fabricated the whole thing.
I concur.
Sam
“He could be paranoid, thinking the world is out to get him”
Projection. Just because you are mentally unstable doesn’t mean the whole world is. I agree though, this sounds like the fiction people on the left are so fond of producing. Brian Williams would be proud.
I once worked with a guy who said he saw movies in his head.
He was a diagnosed nutcase on some pretty strong meds (Thorazine? Or maybe it was Stelazine?) just to keep him marginally in the real world.
How nuts was this guy? Crazy enough that one church asked him to leave and not come back as he was making some of the people there uncomfortable.
I bet Lynda has more cats than kids.
And that she’s a single mom.
She is Brian Williams’ sister?
I actually understand the mentality at work here. Its not so much the gun that she minds; what she minds is not knowing what kind of person is holding it.
I get that. I really do. On a emotional level, I support training requirements for gun ownership (on a moral, legal, and philosophical level, I am utterly against them), because unlike a car, what you are carrying is _designed_ to be a weapon.
It’s not the prospect of some asshole drawing a weapon in a rage that bothers me, that danger is easy to see coming; it’s the idiot whose gun malfunctions and discharges when he’s adjusting his belt because he took such poor care of it, and who decided to carry his gun at such an odd cant that the bullet hits someone.
And there are a lot more idiots than there are angry people.
But, again, this is a fear that I have that may be unreasonable; it is, after all, an empirical question as to how many gun-related accidents there are, and the fact is that such accidents are wayyyy down over the last 30 years, even as gun ownership has gone through the roof. AFAIK there are fewer _total incidents_ now than there were in 1990, when there were far fewer gun owners, fewer hunters, and at least 30% fewer guns.
So while idiots are the real problem, they clearly aren’t much of a problem. Lots of people have stupid opinions – just pick up any newspaper or read any blog to find a few, if only in the comments – but the fact is that people ought to have more respect for the good sense of their fellow man.
“Please have a badge. Please have a badge. Please have a badge.”
Really? Does anybody know any LEO that, while being plain cloth, are having their badge visual.
All of those that I know said; No, why should they?
While I detest this woman and moms demanding action (find a singles bar, ladies!), I feel the same way about most of you.
And while I love our Constitution and the Founders for having created it, the fact that it protects some of the likes of you scares the hell out of me.
You say that you love the Constitution.
How can you detest people who are standing up to protect it?
I don’t detest Moms Demand Action or Ms. Waddington. I feel sorry for them. All they can do is cower and hope an authority figure will protect them. That’s not freedom it’s slavery.
Obama, calling Obama. One of your sheep is in aisle three defecating on herself. Please get her under control and clean up the mess.!
Fake story or not. My constitutional rights TRUMP your hoplophobia