A few weeks ago, my wife and I were shopping in Fort Gratiot, and we decided to stop at the Fort Gratiot McDonald’s to have some lunch, as we have done many times before. We pulled in a parking space, turned off the car, and then spotted something that caused us to decide to go somewhere else. In the few seconds it took for me to restart the car, we saw several customers hurriedly rush out of the restaurant with panicked looks on their faces.What was it that we spotted? A man carrying a gun into the restaurant.
Source: Gun-toting customer ruins everyone’s appetite
I had to fisk the whole thing. Enjoy.
For the better part of the past 35 years, I have been a frequent McDonald’s customer.
You and millions of others.
When I was in high school, my friends and I would frequent Mickey D’s, as we were perpetually broke teenage boys and it was an affordable meal. Of course, it was also where the perpetually broke teenage girls would go, so there was always the potential to get a date as well.
So basically you hung around the McD’s to get equally broke chicks who knew you were broke and probably didn’t give you the time of day.
I had friends who worked there as well, so we would go and visit our friends on our Friday movie nights. One told us how he hated making the McRib, so we always made sure to visit his store and order McRibs, because that’s what friends do.
Nothing says friendship like being an asshole, gotcha.
McDonald’s is one of the few foods I can eat while traveling that doesn’t make me sick, so over the years, and hundreds of thousands of miles traveled, it has become my de facto restaurant.
I really do not know what to say to this. You are on a trip and get invited to a good steakhouse and say no because you can only have a Big Mac when you travel?
Not any more.
And how come?
A few weeks ago, my wife and I were shopping in Fort Gratiot, and we decided to stop at the Fort Gratiot McDonald’s to have some lunch, as we have done many times before. We pulled in a parking space, turned off the car, and then spotted something that caused us to decide to go somewhere else.
And what was it? Cher naked and dancing to “I got you, babe”? IRS agents trying to audit you? A pack of rabid dogs? Godzilla?
In the few seconds it took for me to restart the car, we saw several customers hurriedly rush out of the restaurant with panicked looks on their faces.
Must have been your friend still making McRibs that set the panicked rush.
What was it that we spotted? A man carrying a gun into the restaurant.
STOP THE PRESSES!
Because Michigan is an open carry state, it is quite legal for someone to walk into a busy McDonald’s with a firearm. Why do it? Because it is your right?
Short answer? Yes.
Given that there were Canadians in that restaurant, and they don’t have the same gun culture that we have, how do you think that made them feel? I can’t speak for the Canadians, but I can speak for myself — seeing someone other than a police officer walking around with a firearm does not make me feel safe; quite the opposite.
And since you did not even bother to get out of the car, How do you know it was not a cop dressed in civvies? They have those in Michigan too.
How am I, just an average person, supposed to know if the person with the firearm is a “good guy” or a “bad guy?”
No, you are an idiot. Average person looks at the totality of the picture. If the guy with the gun orders your friend’s McRibs, fries and sits to eat calmly, chances are he is just a guy carrying a gun, nothing else. Now, if you were really telling the truth and in fact were worried about the intentions of the person, why the flock didn’t you call the cops? You ran away and left people in harm’s way and did not do your basic civic duty? And you have the nuts to preach us?
Or maybe the event did not happen…. nah, he wouldn’t be lying to us, right?
Suppose that I am armed, too.
Here we go.
Should I fire preemptively at the other person with the gun just in case that person is a “bad guy,” and take the chance of killing a “good guy,”
I hate to repeat myself, but if the guy happens to be a cop in regular clothes, you’d become a cop killer. But don’t fret, Michigan does not have the Death Penalty. You will become somebody sex toy in prison, but that should enhance your mental horizons and at least one body orifice.
or should I hold my fire and take the chance that the other person will not be a “bad guy” or be a “good guy” and think I am a “bad guy” and fire at me first?
Let me guess: you are the guy who has eaten the same crap at McDonald’s for 35 years but still gets to the counter and spends 15 minutes reading the menu, trying to decide if that is the day you will go for something different, but does not.
Is there a secret handshake that “good guys” use to identify each other? If so, what if a “bad guy” uses that secret handshake to pretend he is a “good guy” and then performs his nefarious acts?
There is no “secret handshake.” We shake hand like regular men and women. In all probability you would scream in pain like a little girl if you were the recipient of a regular handshake….by my wife.
I speak for myself, and I am confident I speak for many others — I don’t need armed vigilantes protecting me from criminals.
Newsflash: We ain’t your protective service. We don’t carry to keep you safe.
I grew up in Saint Louis, one of the most violent cities in the country. I spend several days a week driving around Detroit, also one of the most violent cities in the country. I have walked through housing projects, and I am still alive to write about it. I don’t need your protection.
You have all the spidey senses that protect you from evil shit in all those evil places, yet they failed you when a guy entered a McDonald’s with a gun on his side. I am guessing the Special Sauce is your kryptonite.
The overwhelming majority of crime involves people who are familiar with each other; violence against strangers is much less common.
Wrong. Not “familiar with each other” but “known each other” a term that includes just about every person you may see on a regular basis but do not have regular interaction or are not in your circle of friends and family.
Walking around with open firearms is provocative; just because you have the constitutional right, doesn’t mean you should.
So is writing faux editorials, but you don’t see us trying to restrict newspapers, do you?
Businesses need to make some hard choices as to who is valued more as a customer, those who feel it is OK to open carry even if it makes others uncomfortable, or those who want to not feel nervous they are going to get shot eating a hamburger or fries?
I’ll take “People that spend money in my business, not broke, pimpled-faced teenagers trying to get McRibs for free.” for $200 Alex.
Belonging to the second group, I will not be patronizing the Fort Gratiot McDonald’s any longer.
So what if the guy was a fellow traveler who just stopped there for a quick bite and then go on home in another state, perhaps never to return to that locale? Or the cop I mentioned above. Does your decision sound rational at all?
Michael Schrader of Port Huron is a Times Herald community columnist.
And first class whiner with a penchant to be a wee bit exaggerated in his writings.
“Given that there were Canadians in that restaurant, and they don’t have the same gun culture that we have, how do you think that made them feel?”
One should understand the country you’re traveling to. One should not expect the citizens of said country to accommodate you. Seems he’s arguing for ignorance and/or assuming Canadians are as alarmist as he is.
“McDonald’s is one of the few foods I can eat while traveling that doesn’t make me sick, so over the years, and hundreds of thousands of miles traveled, it has become my de facto restaurant.”
When I travel, I like to partake of local restaurants and get away from national chains. I’m not a fan of “Generica” where everywhere is starting to look like everywhere else with all the same businesses. He sounds like my mom and stepdad. Their standard operating procedure is to only go to chain restaurants on vacation, and when they ventured out of the country, complained they couldn’t get “American food.”
“The overwhelming majority of crime involves people who are familiar with each other; violence against strangers is much less common.”
He doesn’t realize he’s arguing against himself with this one. He didn’t know the guy, did he?
Ummmm, I am a bit confused. if he immediately got back into the car and left, how did he know there were a bunch of Canadians in the restaurant?
If it was due to some ESP type ability, why wouldn’t he ban able to use that to determine the “good guy”? Does his canadar ability only function if Canadians are the target?
Well, there’s also the fact that “known to each other” also covers rival gangs.
Precisely so.
Why isn’t there ever a serious effort to go disarm those people? Go door-to-door taking their guns?
(Of course, such a thing is unconstitutional and immoral, and I would oppose it vehemently, as all decent adults would, but Fed.gov and its minions have done that, and worse. See: New Orleans, in the aftermath of Katrina.)
“Given that there were Canadians in that restaurant, and they don’t have the same gun culture that we have, how do you think that made them feel?”
AWW! Bad open-carried guns hurt the Canuck’s FEEEEWINGS!
Well, too bad for the citiot Canucks who can’t take it. Don’t come to America, then.
But, see, the McRib Kid should know that generalizing about Canadians is RAAAACIST. (Isn’t that what the Progs and the SJW’s teach us?) Ol’ Backwoods knows a couple of Canadians from Toronto (the Mississauga area) pretty well, and lookie here! They both own long guns! They’d own a pistol if they could, but the sons-of-bureaucrats in the provincial government won’t give them a permit, and even if they could own a pistol, they can’t get a permit to carry it, because “common-sense gun laws” (eyeroll).
This is America. Maybe the McRib Kid should move to New Jersey or someplace where The Only Ones who have guns can give him a good beatdown, just so he knows they love him.
I always dig on the fact that these people don’t have the foggiest concept of self defense.
“Should I fire preemptively at the other person with the gun just in case that person is a ‘bad guy'”
No you jack-waggon, individual self defense does not include preemptive attack. You have to be under immediate threat of death or bodily harm. As long as that gun stays holstered you’re safe.
The CSGV asks this stupid question all the time. Funny how I can’t find any cases of CCW permit holders “preemptively” gunning down off duty cops. Because we understand self defense.
And when you mention to said jack-wagons that training on the “when,” “how,” and “under what conditions” of self-defense is available for < $100/year (ACLDN but there are others, too), and includes such luminaries in law enforcement, self-defense law, and self-defense training as Massad Ayoob, Andrew Branca, Marty Hayes, Marc "The Animal" Young, and many others, they don't want to talk anymore. Because for these lily-livered types, if they can't defeat an argument with snark or red herring, they don't want to talk anymore, because they've got nothing else.
Note his first reaction was to go in guns blazing at the poor schmo ordering his food. Typical projection since that’s what HE would do if he were carrying.
He stuck around hiding in his car long enough to see this guy enter the store, then waited for people to allegedly come running out in panic, THEN hung around to interview them and determine they were ‘Canadians’ who apparently are all terrified of guns?
Here’s what really happened.
He pulls up to Mickey’s in time to see the OC goes in and starts to panic. He then sees a group of people who have finished their food leaving and projected his fear onto them. Him and his wife peal out of the parking lot ranting and raving about how that crazy gun owner should be arrested.
“He then sees a group of people who have finished their food leaving and projected his fear onto them.”
Yep. Lily-livered, sensitive-amygdala types like The McRib Kid always project their fears onto others. Always.
Michigan wasn’t that full of liberal idiot pisswits when I lived there.
“[L]iberal idiot pisswits” are everywhere. They’re not being aborted at the rate blacks are.
I bet he pissed himself a little just writing that.
He had PMSD.
SIMPLY PUT AS MORE NARROW MINDED ANTI GUN BIGOTRY!!!
How is it these neanderthals can’t understand the basic concept of self-defense?
“Should I fire preemptively at the other person with the gun just in case that person is a ‘bad guy,’ and take the chance of killing a ‘good guy,'”
NO, you barbaric neck-bearded mouth breather, that’s called “assault” and “attempted murder,” and is exactly what people carry firearms to prevent!
What, do people like this drive down the street, see every car, and think “Should I swerve into him and drive him off the road just in case he plans on doing the same thing to me?” Do they see some black dude walking down the street in a Lakers jersey and immediately try to figure out if he’s a member of the Crip or a Blood so they know which sign to flash in case he decides to start an impromptu basketball game?
How terrible it must be to live in a world where your first thought is that anybody around you is going to try and kill you.
Rule of thumb: if *you* start the fight, that’s assault. If someone *else* starts the fight, but you finish it, that’s called self-defense.
Now, let’s be fair. In an ideal world, the author might subscribe to Mattis’s famous saying – “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.” That is to say, he’s aware of the potential threats, the potential routes of ingress and egress and is actively planning on ways to kill each and every person in the room if things go sideways. Now, given the rest of the article, this is highly unlikely … but having a plan to kill someone and/or anticipating that someone out there might want to kill you is not automatically a psychotic way to live.
Now that I think about it, a relatively long time ago in the relatively dangerous urban area where the University I attended was located, I was taught some basic situational awareness (which included not walking directly next to a building as that reduced the odds I was going to be unfavorably surprised when I went past a corner). In the subsequent year, I returned the favor by teaching that same basic level of awareness to a part of the incoming class. For better or worse, situational awareness is learned. So, give the author points for successfully and correctly identifying that there was a guy with a gun walking in the front door of the store. Of course, I’d probably proceed to dock most of those points for his subsequent overreaction.
Be fun to get a bunch of OC’ers together and see how many restaurants and stores they could run this waste of a Y chromosome out of, just by standing around and ignoring him.
Chances are McDonalds will kill you before someone with a gun.
Michael, Bad Guys do NOT walk around with a gun in a holster in plain sight, they keep it hidden until they are ready to wreak havoc.
You are obviously a paranoid individual.
Wait wait wait… I missed the good part.
“Should I fire preemptively at the other person with the gun just in case that person is a ‘bad guy’”
…but dude… if you were able to fire at the other person, it would mean that you yourself have a gun. Can’t ‘fire preemptively’ without a gun, right?
And of course, we’ll accept as Gospel truth your statement that anyone with a gun should be preemptively shot, because they ‘might be a bad guy’.
So… perhaps you’d like to demonstrate your logic by following it through and preemptively shooting yourself, who is carrying a gun and therefore might be a bad guy? We’d all find it very convincing.
as a canadian when i visit the states i avoid all gun free zones.I would feel safer in a room full of OC.rednecks as they are some of the most polite,god fearing,fun loving americans iv’e met.as for the author of this piece,please don’t visit Canada,we have enough weak pansified fragile minded morons of our own.
Well, as a Canadian (not presently a gun owner but expecting to become one) who visits Port Huron/Fort Gratiot on a semi-regular basis, I suggest that Michael Shrader let me decide for myself whether it’s the gun, the McRib, or neither that gives me the vapours.
Something stinks with that one… Just sayin… Most of the Canucks I know would be wanting to know what kind of pistol and how it shoots. They MISS their guns!
Bad guys don’t open carry. Bad guys conceal illegally. You can trust the open carrier.
So, it seems to me that the lesson here is that 35 years of McDonalds (including McRibs) negatively affects brain function and chemistry.
The answer is to defund Prog (1984) Ed in K-12, university and grad schools; replacing the anti-brain, anti-republic and Bizarro pedagogy with Western (1776) Enlightenment and its love of Natural Law, Common Sense Philosophy, Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Property & Happiness. This is the fix that fixes all.
This is the kind of person who takes the advice of various gun-grabbers and calls the cops hoping they’ll shoot a legal gun owner.
This clown should move to Idaho. Particularly northern Idaho. He’d have a heart attack.
It used to be “The Ugly American”. I guess, according to this weasel, it’s now “The Ugly Canadian” who expects all other cultures to accommodate him.
“Is there a secret handshake that “good guys” use to identify each other? If so, what if a “bad guy” uses that secret handshake to pretend he is a “good guy” and then performs his nefarious acts?”
People who carry know that there are people who carry because, duh!
I hate to break it to this idiot, but criminals carry concealed, and they “don’ need no stinkin’ license”. Mass murderers always target “gun free” zones. Morons panic at the mere sight of a gun.
The same Michael Schrader (presumably) made claims about being mistreated by local officials, only for the officials to note that there is no record of their ever having been contacted by him.
http://www.thetimesherald.com/story/opinion/readers/2016/10/12/michael-schrader-welcome-call-city-hall/91937030/
In another column, he complains that residents posted to social media flares from a refinery, causing concern. He wrote, “When I saw the social media post, I was, how shall I say this, rather annoyed. There are actually laws against yelling “fire” in a crowded theater; there should be laws against irresponsible posts. Instead of posting a video online that you knew, or had to have known, would cause panic, and asking what is going on, why didn’t you just tune into the Sarnia radio and find out?”
Apparently, fearing that a person exercising “open carry” is a potential bad guy is quite different.
As Glenn Reynolds often observes, If these folks didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all.
So this idiot thinks it might be reasonable to shoot a person open carrying in an open carry state because he “might turn out to be a bad guy” (like any other person engaged in lawful activity might nevertheless “turn out to be a bad guy”). Seems to me that such dangerous irrationality might reasonably be categorized as an extreme enough form of mental illness as to justify involuntary commitment to a mental institution and subsequent disqualification from the carrying of the arms. He thinks it might reasonable to commit obvious murder.
I’m generally very leery of mental illness being used as a rationale for stripping constitutional rights but this particular extremity is both highly insane and highly pertinent to gun carry. Can we let somebody carry a gun if he thinks that it might be reasonable to shoot someone just because they are carrying a gun?
On the slim chance it might be possible to reason him off of this particular precipice I offer the fourth rule of safe gun handling: KNOW YOUR TARGET. If you don’t know that the person you are thinking of shooting is a bad guy, YOU CAN’T SHOOT HIM. That is called murder, a violation of the Sixth Commandment. Fourth gun rule. Sixth Commandment. Basic basic basic stuff. As basic as basic gets.
If someone can’t comprehend the most basic of basic stuff, can’t tell right from wrong at the most basic level, is that a disqualifying insanity? At least he doesn’t seem to want to be armed, and other people with the same insanity might be similar in this regard, reducing the harm from not legally barring them, allowing us at low cost to avoid the high costs that such broadening of restrictions on gun rights would impose.
Still scary though, to know that such dangerous lunatics are out there.
Take Joe Biden’s advice: if you are sitting in your car and see someone open carrying, just fire a few rounds from your shotgun through the door as a warning. Problem solved.
I’m confused, was the man observed with the gun waving it around or brandishing it in an unsafe manner? Or was it safely holstered at his side? I’m guessing the latter, which makes me question what exactly the pansy writer was scared of? Geez.
People like this guy are “triggered” when they see an armed person because they are projecting. They have a very tenuous impulse control and assume everyone else does as well. They fear that if they were armed they might homicidally attack someone who frightens them. This is probably not true but there is a real risk they might hurt themselves. His decision not to be armed is a good one. He probably should be discouraged from possessing sharp things, heavy objects or matches. He’ll be O.K. after a good cry. Be nice to him. He’s doing the best he can.
“I grew up in Saint Louis, one of the most violent cities in the country. I spend several days a week driving around Detroit, also one of the most violent cities in the country. I have walked through housing projects, and I am still alive to write about it”
and yet you weren’t afraid of the illegal gun owners shooting you in those housing projects…now why would that be? you knew a large percentage were armed.
and you just could have driven around to the drive through.
Suppose I feel uncomfortable if there are young black males in a McDonalds, given their disproportionate involvement in crime.
McDonalds should ban them, right, Mikey?
So I can enjoy my hamburger without being afraid I might be a victim of crime.
“Michael Schrader of Port Huron is a Times Herald community columnist.”
Must’ve been a really slow “noos-weak” for the “community columnist” and anti-gun moron – so…he came up with a self-serving slug of idiotic fantasy-scribbling, based on (likely) nothing whatsoever beyond the faint rumblings from his Mickey-D junk food letch, which his echoingly-empty cranial cavity mistook for “thought”…
Total waste of time – moving right along…
armed vigilantes
We’re not “armed vigilantes”, dingleberry, we’re FREE CITIZENS.
Unlike you, serf. Lackey. SUBJECT.
The writer is sure a twit… but…
When I am out in public and I see someone carrying a gun, I have the following reactions:
1) Just because you have a right doesn’t mean you need to flaunt it.
2) Why is this guy displaying a gun when he can have it concealed (like the one I am carrying pretty much all the time)? It may be a sign of stunted social development. Or, he may actually be a nut. And that makes me a little bit nervous.
3) When you make people nervous, whether they should be or not, they don’t like you. And when you do it by open carry, then they get an aversion to gun people, like myself. And I’d rather that didn’t happen.
Now, there are obvious cases where open carry makes sense. When I was a kid, we’d carry our hunting rifles into hamburger joints, because we didn’t want to leave them in a car and they were too big to put into a pocket. But I am talking about the cases where you really don’t need to carry openly.
Here in Arizona, back before concealed carry, I’d carry openly when out in the wild. I did it for self protection, and it wasn’t bears I was worried about. But I noticed that it made other fishermen nervous, and that doesn’t surprise me. So when CCW came along, I took the class, got the permit, and hid the gun. Today, you don’t need the class and you can still hide the gun. Please do so.
I think it’s only polite to do so. If you really believe that carrying openly is somehow going to help keep our 2nd Amendment rights, then you fit into category 2 above.
If you go to a nice restaurant and the chefs have kitchen knives, do you panic, wondering if they are good guys or bad guys? Is there a secret hand-shake between knife users? Should you stab them first in case they are bad guys?
if you are driving on the road and you see a car, do you panic, wondering if they are good or bad guys? Is there a secret handshake between car drivers? Should you ram them first, in case they are bad guys about to mow people down on the sidewalk?
If you go to somebody’s home and their lamps have electrical cords, do you panic, wondering if they are good or bad guys? Is there a secret handshake between electrical cord owners? Should you strangle them first with the electrical cord, in case they are bad guys about to strangle you?
Or should you seek psychiatric help for your paranoid delusions?
As long as we’re entertaining the ridiculous, what if the open carrier has better esp than the columnist and is deliberately hitting Mickey D’s ahead of said columnist just to mess with him. The “report” reminds me of the reporter with ptsd after firing an AR-15.