Reply #13: "everything's cool"

[iverglas]

That's certainly one way of describing an incident in which someone placed the barrel of a firearm on a stranger's forehead in a public place. Not how I'd describe it, but there you are. Tomayto, tomahto.

I think the point here is that if this individual had no known history of doing things like this in the past, he would have been able to obtain a permit to tote the firearm in question around. (As far as I can tell, we don't actually know whether he had such a permit.) He would've been just another one of those "law-abiding gun owners" ... right up until the point when he put the firearm to the head of a stranger whom he perceived to be an annoyance.

Of course, there are some who don't think he should even have required a permit in order to tote his firearm around, and who feel quite justified in flouting any laws that restrict their ability to do that. In their books, permit or no, and absent any previous record of criminal conduct, he really was one of those law-abiding gun owners ... right up until the moment he broke the law.

Everybody is born "law-abiding", eh? And as long as someone manages to get hold of his/her first firearm before becoming a scofflaw, s/he is a "law-abiding gun owner". Until s/he isn't.

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