If you are in a restaurant or a Target store or ... well, wherever, ... and a guy (or several) walk in with a gun (or several) to prove that they can "open carry" all they want then there's a simple, philosophical response.
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.
But here is the key part: don’t pay. Stopping to pay in the presence of a person with a gun means risking your and your loved ones’ lives; money shouldn’t trump this. It doesn’t matter if you ate the meal. It doesn’t matter if you’ve just received food from the deli counter that can’t be resold. It doesn’t matter if you just got a haircut. Leave. If the business loses money, so be it. They can make the activists pay.
Personally, I love this. Not because I want to stiff some server, but because nothing else will get the business's attention so much as uneaten, unpaid for food, or a cart that needs to be restocked, or whatever.
The philosopher, a professor named Jack Russell Weinstein, posted this blog, which was picked up last year by Wonkette and is still being republished. He's done several followup blogs, and even some interviews, because of the intense debate that began raging in his comments section. Mostly supportive, some not so much. (surprise?)
Dr. Weinstein argues that this action protects people, forces businesses to choose their loyalties, and even takes the activists seriously (we should move quickly to be away from the fear and chaos they seem to expect). It speaks to a classic philosophical question - how do we know what others are thinking?
The gun-rights activists think that their intent is obvious and that everyone knows what they hope to do. They believe their minds are transparent. But this is because they are all extreme narcissists. It baffles them that we don’t all know exactly what they are thinking. It shocks them that we don’t know that Jim is a good guy, and that Sally would never murder anyone. But they are wrong. We don’t know them and we don’t know how they think. The only thing that makes us notice them at all is that they have guns and truthfully, that’s why they carry them in the first place. They want to be celebrities, heroes, and the centers of attention.
So, let’s give them what they want. Let’s take them as seriously as possible and run like hell. They’ll feel important and if they really care about gun rights, they won’t mind paying for the hundreds of meals that they inspired the innocent bystanders to leave behind.
The whole
pqed.org blog is excellent; I'll be spending more time there.