Megan McArdle confounds me

I think Megan McArdle is very smart. Even though I know something only just slightly to the north of "zilch" when it comes to economics, I think much of what she writes on the subject for The Atlantic makes sense. (I don't believe that her fears about health care reform stifling innovation are well-founded, but that's a different topic for a different day.) But I think she is completely around the bend when it comes to the topic of people carrying guns to presidential events.

She's gotten into something of a back-and-forth with Jason Zengerle at The Plank on the topic. Their exchange seems to focus mainly on whether the people carrying the guns pose imminent threats to the POTUS. While I agree more with Zengerle than McArdle on that particular question, I think it is beside the point. In her initial post on the topic, she wrote:

I think carrying guns to protests is entirely counterproductive. Indeed, I'm not sold on the general virtues of protesting, which worked for Gandhi and the civil rights marcher, but has a dismal track record on other concerns. But I think people have a perfect right to do it, including with guns, though I also think the secret service is within its rights to ensure that they don't have a sight line on the president.

But the hysteria about them has been even more ludicrous. Numerous people claim to believe that this makes it likely, even certain, that someone will shoot at the president. This is very silly, because the president is not anywhere most of the gun-toting protesters, who have showed up at all sorts of events. It is, I suppose, more plausible to believe that they might take a shot at someone else. But not very plausible: the rate of crime associated with legal gun possession or carrying seems to be very low. Guns, it turn out, do not turn ordinary people into murderers. They make murderers more effective.

I will leave aside whether the sociopaths carrying the guns have a "perfect right" to do so or not. Let us accept that they do. It is still totally, 100% wrong.

What is the point of carrying the guns? Sure, maybe they don't actually intend to harm the President. But what are they trying to communicate by bringing a deadly assault rifle to a public forum he is attending? It is an inherently menacing thing to do, Second Amendment rights notwithstanding, and communicates an implicit threat of violence, if not now than potentially in the future. It is uncivil in the extreme, and does not comport with the expected behavior of responsible adult members of society.

Let me make two finals points, just to (probably pointlessly) head off a couple of potential criticisms:

1) I am not stridently anti-gun. I know many people who are perfectly honorable, sane, responsible gun owners. I do not begrudge them their right to own their guns, and do no conflate all gun owners with the reactionary thugs in question.

2) I detested George W. Bush, and have never been more pleased to see the departure of an American president from office. It was so bad that, at one point, I could barely stand to look at his face on television. But, had someone taken a shot at him or committed an act of violence on his person, it would have been a wholesale tragedy for the country and the world. I would have felt no less exercised if a bunch of leftist crazies had shown up at his rallies toting guns. This is an issue that transcends ideology.

You don't bring guns to a civic event, period. You especially don't bring them to a presidential event. We may have the right to do all manner of things that are nonetheless wrong. This is one of them.