LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Los Angeles County sheriff said Tuesday gun shops are not essential businesses and ordered deputies to make sure they were closed during the coronavirus crisis — a move that was contradicted hours later when the county's top lawyer said the shops could be open....
The stay-at-home order is not a license “for everyone to be panic gun-buying or rushing to stores, which is now what we're seeing," Villanueva said.
A few days ago, 3/16/20 Los Angeles captured the hypocrisy well:
All across Los Angeles, from Culver City to Burbank, gun sales are booming. Long before compulsory social distancing became a reality in California, gun stores were already selling out of ammo and staying open late to accommodate a panic-driven run on their wares. According to gun shop personnel, most of the rise in demand is being driven by first-time buyers, including many who have never fired a gun....
As images of the crowd outside Martin B. Retting gun store in Culver City circulated on social media, motorists would slow to a drift on Magnolia Boulevard and gape at the bizarre scene outside Gun World in Burbank. Some took out cell phones and filmed in disbelief. One pedestrian edging through the crowded sidewalk called out, “It’s not the zombie apocalypse!”
The array of face masks in the crowd were not entirely to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Ranging from paper surgical masks to headgear reminiscent of Bane’s in The Dark Knight Rises, they were also useful to protect one’s identity. This is L.A., after all, and some people were rather sheepish about exercising their right to keep and bear arms....
“You’re not going to describe what I look like, are you?” asked a young screenwriter from Burbank who was wearing a corduroy cap and Warby Parker frames along with his N-95 respirator mask. “I told my wife not to even mention to my friends that I’m doing this.”
In the news vortex that has formed around the coronavirus, the longstanding social taboo against gun ownership in L.A. is losing ground to doomsday imaginings. The screenwriter was seated on a bench beside another “creative,” a music producer from Hollywood, who kept making references to the 1992 L.A. Riots and the AMC hit TV show The Walking Dead. The music producer declined to give his name and admitted the surgical mask was intended to conceal his identity. Owning a gun, he said, “is not really my brand.”...
The father, an Encino attorney in his 50s named Sal, described himself as a Joe Biden supporter and “gun-toting liberal.” He blamed President Trump for the anxiety on display at the store. “When Trump is on TV downplaying the virus, and the medical experts are shaking their heads and then correcting him later, that causes anxiety,” he said. “There’s going to be a lot of people doing stupid things.”
“When Trump is on TV downplaying the virus, and the medical experts are shaking their heads and then correcting him later, that causes anxiety,”
ReplyDeleteInteresting. I've heard the same press conferences, until the likes of Rachel Maddow say that they can't broadcast all of Trump's lies, and then when he leaves the room they don't cover the doctors and public health specialists.
But, he said he was a lawyer. They mainly hear what their clients need them to hear.