Jackson Free Press

Up this time in the beer fridge it's Schlafly APA from St. Louis Brewery; this is a smooth drinking, hoppy pale ale that's worth a taste:

An interesting piece in Salon this week seems to have discovered (bless their little San Francisco hearts) that 'open carry' is a "new craze" (ahem) out here in flyover country.

But, now that they've caught on, the piece does take a fascinating look at some of the psychology of open carry and presents a case for the idea that open carry actually contributes to violence instead of curbing it.

How can that be? Here's a couple of the key points they make:

• People with guns tend to see guns, even when they're not there. Result: higher chance of shooting an unarmed "threat."

A recent study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology suggests that when people are holding a gun, they’re less capable of evaluating a threat than they would be if they didn’t have a weapon in their own hands.

• The presence of a weapon can make a hostile environment more hostile.

Since 1967, researchers have been observing the “weapons effect,” a phenomenon in which the mere presence of a weapon can stimulate aggressive behavior. Of course, a person doesn’t respond to a gun the way a cartoon bull reacts to the matador’s cape; we aren’t spontaneously enraged every time we notice a firearm. But empirical research has repeatedly shown that when people are already aggravated, seeing a gun will motivate them to behave more aggressively.

• Your body responds involuntarily to threats, and the presence of weapons is frequently interpreted as a superior threat in a given environment.

“The ‘threat superiority effect’ is the tendency for people to be able to pick out very quickly in their environment things that might pose a threat to their security — anything that might be dangerous,” explains Isabelle Blanchette, a professor of psychology at the University of Quebec. “People have a tendency to be able to see these things before they see other things.”

Read the whole piece; it'll fly in the face of some people's worldview, but if you've got an open mind about this topic it really is food for thought on the psychology of open carry.

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The American Family Association's president, Tim Wildmon, sent out an "AFA ActionAlert" this morning to let us know that our worst fears are, indeed, coming true. Thanks to an "activist" Federal judge in Utah, "...polygamy is now essentially legal in the United States."

Whoa! I tell you, those activist judges are out. of. control.

Of course, Wildmon had tried to tell us...

We warned from the beginning that once the biblical standard of man-woman marriage was breached, there would be no logical place to stop.

The AFA ActionAlert somewhat surprisingly links to this USA Today story about the ruling—I say surprisingly because, presumably, we're not actually supposed to read the USA Today story, since it only barely says anything like what Wildmon's ActionAlert says.

There is a judge, and a lawsuit—one brought by the reality TV stars of "Sister Wives," a show which focuses on a polygamist family formerly of Utah—now in Vegas.

From USA Today:

U.S. District Court Judge Clark Waddoups said in the ruling that the phrase in Utah law that forbids cohabitation with another person was a violation of the First Amendment.

Utah, it seems, has the most limiting polygamy law on the books—while 49 other states have laws against polygamy (being legally married to more than one person at a time), Utah's law "makes it illegal to even purport to be married to multiple partners or live together."

In other words, it's illegal in Utah to pretend to be married to more than one person at a time; in every other state it's only illegal to actually be married to more than one person at a time.

Back to Wildmon:

Though we have been accused of exaggerating and scare-mongering, this ruling shows that we were right all along to sound the alarm. Bans against incest are now at risk of being overturned.

Ahhh. Well, I guess we could see that one coming. Feels like a bit of a stretch… unless those rumors I've been hearing about a new show being cast in Appalachia called "Cousin Wives," prove to be true…

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