TX: Open Carry: Two Photos, One pose, Two Stories

Moms Demand Action has produced an Internet meme that they believe will further their cause.

They posted this picture.  At first glance, it looks a bit intimidating.  That is what it is meant to look like.    The angle and cropping has been done to create an effect.   All photographers do this to some extent.  It is the story that goes with the photograph that makes the tale.

Here is another photograph that shows the same group in the same pose, but gives a different take on what was going on:

Note the flags and the children posing in front.  Note the fellow in the red shirt on the right and the angle that his rifle is at.  Note the man in the green shirt just to the left of him, the large bald man behind Mr. Green Shirt and the head peaking above the flag with the green baseball cap on.  Compare them to the people in the first photograph.   It is clear that they are in the same pose and the same place.  The two photographs were just taken from different angles.

On the National Review article, a person who claimed to be there said that one of the Moms Demanding Action took one picture, maybe even asked them to pose (misspelled "post") in the quote, while another Mom took the first image:

One of the Moms Demanding Action asked us to post (bottom pic) she took in the parking lot. She even took a picture with my phone for me at my request. Her friends inside took the top pic while we were posing for the bottom one. LOL

Shannon Watts says that they only took one picture.  Note that in the picture that Shannon claims (the top one) the open carriers are facing away from the restaurant, because Shannon says it was taken from the restaurant.

 No, Watts says. “The only one taken by us,” she told me, “was the one where they’re in front of a car crouching down. The moms took it from inside the restaurant.

The author of the National Review article, Charles C. W. Cooke, thinks the Moms might have a reasonable charge of intimidation, but not if they came out and took a picture of the people that they claim were intimidating them.

I disagree.  Intimidation has to have a reasonable basis.  It is not a subjective notion.   If it were, the authorities could always find a way to stifle any dissent, because you can always find someone to claim that they were intimidated by anything, especially any kind of political action.

No jury would find the people posed in the second shot, with flags flying and toddlers on display, to be deliberately intimidating.

The Moms demanding action are the ones attempting to do the intimidating, using the muscle of the State to do it.


©2013 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
Link to Gun Watch