Confrontations in Public Places

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Something that kind of irks me is there is never an end to situations where some idiot is bothering you in a restaurant, aparking lot, store, etc. and you have to say something to them and then they still don't take a hint. Well the thing that really irks me is that normally I would just tell them to "Beat it. Hit the !@#$ road!" but the fact that I am open carrying which is already enough to cause confrontations with the sheeple makes me not want to have to be a jerk in public. On one hand I wonder if I should just keep biting my tounge like the politically correct brainwashed public has been induced to do or if I should just stop caring and treat it as a form of activism and let the altercations go where they may even if it means getting kicked out of a place or having the cops called. I support freedom which means the freedom to go about your business and be left alone but this public induced fear that you dare don't say anything to someone because you might "create a scene" is the very thing that is taking our freedoms away.

Anyway I was ina coffee shop trying to enjoy an interesting conversation with a friend when some drunk bum sits down at a table about ten feet away and decides to give a constant stare for about ten minutes straight right at us which we ignored. Then he gets up and comes over and sits down right at our table and starts talking nonsense in slow slurred speech. I politely told him we were having a conversation and then ignored him as if he wasn't even there. That didn't work as he interrupted our conversation and started commenting on what I was saying with insulting remarks. So then I said in a stern voice but still professional tone, "Look. I don't mean to be rude but we are having a conversation here. You are being insulting which I do not appreciate and I am asking you to stop interrupting us." He continues to sit there quietly and then interrupts again. So both of us get up and move to another table and then I go up to the manager on duty and tell him of the situation. The manager looks down at my hip, notices the gun, and says, "Well, you have a gun.Why don't you go handle it?" I then reply, "So you are suggesting that I shoot him if he doesn't stop bothering us? C'mon!" Apparently, the mananger was "too afraid" to go kick the customer out because that would not be "politically correct." He told us that if he comes to the new table to sternly ask him to leave and he would then back us up on it. Sure enough the man comes to the new table and sits down. I had to start yelling, "Get out. You are bothing us. Get up, leave the table, and get out...(ten second pause)...C'mon! Let's go. Beat it. Hit the road!" He then finally leaves the table and then the establishment. Naturally, this caused the entire restaurant to stop talking and every pair of eyes was on me. When everything returned to normal, the manager finally came up and apologized about the situation.

Not to make a short story long, but I really hate to create a scene but consistently I run into situations like this where everyone is so dazed and stupified that you are forced to handle things yourself and naturally you are the one who gets in trouble. For instance, it was quite embarrassing to have an entire restaurant full of people looking at me with substantial concern. I have to agree that if I saw someone with a gun on their hip yelling at someone I would be a bit concerned too even though I carry. I guess the reason I am posting it is because it seems like a catch-22 situation. If I leave the gun in the car and have to start yelling at someone, no one will feel threatened by me but then I have to worry what the person I'm yelling at is going to try to do to me. Then when I do have the gun, I'm not worried about the person I'm yelling at but I don't want to yell at them because I now have to be concerned about what everyone else is going to do. Is anyone else running into this? I would assume so especially if you do live in Arizona. In the New England states that I've been to, nobody tolerates this crap. The second a bum walks in, they throw him out immediately. Here, everyone is too damn scared to say anything to anybody. It's a real shame.

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I'd find a new coffee shop to patronise, and call &/or write the old one to tell them why. That manager will either be subjected to forced spinal stiffening and your re-patronage solicited, or he'll get fired, or they will loose your buisiness. Be sure to let the new shop know why you are now a customer, that will help prevent fresh incidents.

What shop was this, and what part of AZ are you in?

I'm up for coffee in the Tucson area...

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Tell them you are carrying a gun to protect yourself from zombies or aliens. They should leave you alone pretty fast! If they don't ignore everything they say after you say that and look at them and say: "you aren't a zombie or an alien are you? You suuure look like one to me."

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The idea is not to create a scene and referencing the gun would escalate the situation. Just yesterday, the same thing happened again in another establishment. Someone who looked like hell and off the street wanders in, gets right in front of me and closer to me that I felt comfortable and started giving me weird stares. So I had to say, "Do you need something? Can you please go somewhere else?" Same individual comes back about 10 minutes later so I had to raise my voice. "Hit the road. Go bother someone else. Get. Get. Scat. Beat it!" Then management asks him to leave. Just like the previous post, I do not like confrontations because you don't know how insane the person is that you are dealing with. Likewise, you prefer to just not deal with it in the first place.

Maybe this is off-topic but it seems like our culture is really going down the tubes. It seems you cannot go anywhere in public without having bums asking you for money, cigarettes, or a ride, drunks passed out on or underneath the bus stops, drugged-up individuals giving you funny looks and talking to themselves, people loitering by either standing around with no purpose or destination, sitting in their cars for long periods of time just looking at you again with no purpose or destination, and then people acting loud, obnoxious, or otherwise inappropriate in public establishments. The few of us who still have our mental facilities together are expected not to say or do anything about it and if we are OCing we really don't want to aggrevate a situation. But after awhile, you have seen so much of this crap on a daily basis that you really get tired of it. Sometimes I do believe people need to be told and things need to be said. There just always is that risk that you may be dealing with an extremely unstable individual and have to protect yourself accordingly.