The Daily Beast: Open Carry a Scare Tactic by Gun Rights Proponents

The Daily Beast is standing beside Moms Demand Action (MDA) to paint open carry proponents as bullies who are trying to scare people. 

Referencing a November 11 MDA rally in which Open Carry Texas (OCT) held a counter protest, Brandy Zadrozny wrote in The Daily Beast, “A growing faction of gun rights advocates believe brandishing big guns will help everyone feel safer. But their protests have been inciting more fear than support.”

Zadrozny ignores a key point here. “Big guns,” rifles in this instance, are what OCT members carry because rifles are the only firearms that can be legally carried in the open in Texas. Although she brings this up late in the article, she leaves it out in her opening salvos where it is pertinent. 

Zadrozny cites MDA’s Shannon Watts as saying the counter protest looked like “an armed ambush,” which many patrons in a nearby restaurant found “unsettling” and “disturbing.”  She highlights examples of open carry extremists to weave into her story, which gives the impression that all who carry openly are fringe-group gun owners. This plays into the hands of MDA, which wants to paint a picture of the counter protesters as “bullies.” 

But as readers consider the substantive points in Zadronzy’s column, they realize the real problem is that MDA could only muster four people to protest against guns. Pro-gun advocates had them greatly outnumbered. 

It is also worth noting that Zadrozny leaves out some of Watts’ most extreme hyperbole. For example, she does not mention Watts’ suggestion that OCT “was full of people that might rape the women involved in MDA.” This suggestion might have seemed especially strange to the women involved in the counter protest. 

Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins.