Pro-Gun Group Backs Down After Chipotle Rally Backfires

[RandySF]

A Texas gun rights group has notified members that they are to "immediately cease" taking shotguns and rifles into private businesses unless invited to do so, backing down from a controversial strategy that has led several large restaurant chains to ask patrons to leave their guns at home.

The organization, Open Carry Texas, is one of many groups nationwide that advocate for the right of gun owners to wear and carry firearms openly in public. Photos from a rally by supporters of the group at a Dallas-area Chipotle restaurant went viral this week, prompting the burrito chain to declare that firearms are unwelcome in its restaurants.

On Friday, The Huffington Post reported that Chili's was also reconsidering its policy after a similar rally at one of its San Antonio restaurants. Video apparently taken by a participant in the rally shows a confrontation with a woman, apparently a patron, who scolds the men for bringing large guns into a restaurant where children are eating.

In the statement, also posted on its Facebook page, Open Carry Texas acknowledged that its tactics, which are intended to encourage broader acceptance of firearms in public, were having the opposite effect. Carrying rifles and shotguns into businesses is the approach that has "gotten the most resistance and suffered the largest setbacks," the group said.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/23/open-carry-texas-chipotle_n_5380338.html

[Cali_Democrat]

1. Gun nuts aren't known to be the sharpest tools in the shed. nt

[TeamPooka]

2. The "Let's look like dangerous fanatics who don't care about society" plan didn't work? I'm shocked.

[DFW]

3. "Broader acceptance of firearms??"

If I owned a restaurant in Dallas and saw some civilians openly brandishing guns walk in, I'd assume they were either there to rob the place or to kill someone they saw in there. If armed, I'd shoot first and call the cops later. Since guns are not traditional eating utensils, nor are they accepted forms of payment, there is no logical reason to openly carry them into an eating establishment unless you are a cop on duty and in uniform.

[RandySF]

5. Open carry is one of the dumbest things on earth.

I actualy have no issue with conceal/carry, but someone who openly brandishes a gun in public is asking for trouble they can't handle.

[DFW]

6. I agree, and apparently so do many of the gun nuts, indirectly

In the photos I see from back home, they rarely parade around alone--usually in small groups. Maybe they subtly realize how foolish it makes them look to be parading around downtown Dallas with rifles and shotguns slung across their backs, and feel secure only when there's someone along to back up their feelings of insecurity. In downtown Dallas, you need a gun for one thing, and one thing only, and that's to kill somebody.

[onehandle]

4. The seeds of the great backlash against gun nuttery are being sown. nt

[blkmusclmachine]

7. That group would LOVE Afghanistan. I hear taxes are real low, too!

[Exposethefrauds]

8. I know I do not support ANY Business that allows its customers to carry firearms

on their property now.

One thing I and a number of people I know now do is call the cops on the gun nutters. The cops always show up too and many cops are fed up with the gun nutters carrying everywhere they go now.

I consider anyone with a gun a threat to myself and the general public.

In fact those that are so scared to go anywhere without are gun are the very ones who should be banned from even looking at a gun much less owning a gun.

[madokie]

9. I agree with what you said