If there's one thing the Open Carry movement doesn't deserve, it's a fluff piece on a national Sunday news show. But ABC News seems to be having a metamorphosis into Fox News Lite.
Viewers were treated to this little slice of fluffy goodness right smack-dab in the middle of the show, featuring the man who is spearheading the Open Carry movement. From the transcript:
PITTS: That video went viral. A national movement was born, not just the right to carry a long gun openly in public, but handguns, as well.
(on camera): And that's the bottom line for you, the right to openly carry a pistol.
GRISHAM: Right. And, you know, once we get that, people aren't going to be walking around with rifles. And you probably won't even see a whole bunch of people walking around with pistols, but we should have that opportunity.
PITTS (voice-over): The open carry movement's chief adversary is a group called Mothers Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, founded by Shannon Watts, a stay-at-home mom from Indiana.
SHANNON WATTS, FOUNDER, MOTHERS DEMAND ACTION FOR GUN SENSE IN AMERICA: If we use our wallets and we use our votes, we can effect real change in our country's gun culture.
PITTS (on camera): Her group pressured big name store chains, like Starbucks, Chipotle, Chili's and Jack in the Box to ask their customers to leave their guns at home. Just this week, retail giant Target weighed in, writing, "We respectfully request that guests not bring firearms to Target, even in communities where it's permitted by law."
WATTS: They listened to us when we said we don't want loaded assault weapons around our children when we're shopping.
PITTS (voice-over): Nearly every week, CJ Grisham, his wife Emily and often their 12- and 16-year-old, hit the road to attend open carry marches across Texas.
GRISHAM: Oh, our guns are kissing.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: Oh.
PITTS: One weekend, we rode along to a rally in San Antonio.
GRISHAM: They are people with guns and they're not shooting up a school, they're not shooting up a business, they're not robbing a bank.
PITTS (on camera): There are folk in the country that you are scaring, right?
GRISHAM: I realize that there are people that -- that have what I call an irrational fear of guns.
PITTS (voice-over): For Grisham and those who support him nationwide, the battle over open carry is far from over, it's just beginning.
For THIS WEEK, Byron Pitts, ABC News, San Antonio.
Raddatz followed up that report with the reassurance that long guns were not going to be carried as much as pistols would, as though that would somehow be a comforting thought.
As for Grisham's claim that those of us who object have an irrational fear? Are they going to start wearing signs saying they're the good guys here to save us from the lunatics with guns? Isn't that a little like putting inmates in charge of the asylum?
There is no liberty in living in a hellhole where men swagger around with handguns or assault weapons in plain sight and ABC was irresponsible in running this piece without some kind of report about why it is people have an objection to their rights being trampled so someone else's rights can be elevated.
