Artist's conception. Not actually Tony Cornish
State Rep. Tony "Yee-haw Bang" Cornish, lover of all things bullet-throwing, had his own take on the recent call by Al Shabab for attacks on western shopping malls,
specifically the Mall of America in Bloomington, MN. Faced with a threat someone might bring in guns and start shooting,
Cornish thinks the solution is for the mall to let anyone at all walk around with guns.
Yes, he's serious. Right now, law enforcement might figure that if anyone is walking around with a gun where guns are prohibited, that might be a good clue as to the identity of the terrorists. But no, Cornish wants his fellow ammosexuals walking around showing their guns and looking for trouble. Great, because that would solve the terrorists' problem of needing to blend in.
Would the mall be safe with lots of armed, untrained, and paranoid people wandering around? I'm sure these responsible gun owners won't pull out their guns and start shooting until after the terrorists reveal themselves --- or they get a good suspicion of who is a terrorist --- or they feel vaguely threatened --- or they hear a sudden noise.
Cornish is doing what must always be done when logic refuses to give way to love of guns: use the law to require acts of stupidity. He wants to force the mall to change its no-guns policy. So when the mall wants to keep out protesters, it's all about property rights. When it wants to keep out guns, what are these "property rights" of which you speak?
If we can rein in the paranoia a moment, can we take notice that Al Shabab called for an attack rather than attacking? Would they do that if they were actually planning an attack, give us this nice warning first? What would they do if they wanted to scare us but didn't actually have the means to attack? One guess is they might call for an attack, by some undefined someone else --- like they did. Or maybe they're actually being just a bit more clever than that. An effect they might get, even if they didn't actually think of it, is to get the non-Muslims suspicious of any Muslims walking around the mall. Maybe they want us to treat Muslims as suspects, make them feel unwanted, or, with a bunch of armed paranoiacs wandering around, out and out threatened. Making Muslims feel alienated is presumably helpful for recruiting if you're some sort of jihadi. So sure, let's strap on our holsters, menace some Muslims who just wanted to visit Legoland, and give the terrorists what they want.