Guns And Garbage

Adopt-A-Highway Litter Pick Up
Lexington, Kentucky
April 11th, 2009

Lots of traffic. Next time, we'll have some big signs to make sure they know we're armed.

Lots of traffic. Next time, we'll have some big signs to make sure they know we're armed.

Guns And Garbage!

That music probably sucks, or it wouldn't have been hurled out a car window.
"The Recession"? We ain't seen nothin' yet!

We had 16 volunteers for the first event, and most were armed.
Can you guess which of these three were open carrying?

Heather, picking up litter by the side of the lake.

Marsha and Brandon, taking down the signs after the first Guns And Garbage event.
Next time, we'll have some signs that convey a second amendment Open Carry message.

Brandon and Marsha, with some of the garbage we collected.
It was more than any of us thought until we consolidated it.

That's a lot of garbage!
The RonPaulMobile runneth over!

That's a lot of garbage! The RonPaulMobile runneth over!

After Guns And Garbage... Shopping For Guns!
The .22 being Mexican carried is definitely unloaded.
A holster was purchased so this gun could be carried in the next Guns And Garbage.

While we had hoped for more people, this was our first Guns And Garbage event. We'll have more people at the next one. We learned a lot about promoting an open carry event. We definitely needed more advance notice because many people couldn't attend with only one week notice. The short notice was intentional, to avoid the Adopt-A-Highway people having too long to think about whether an Open Carry event might be a little too much liberty for the Central Kentucky Campaign for Liberty. What we were doing was 100% legal, and was safe, so there should have been no problem. With one Open Carry litter pickup under our belt, we're well poised to grow this program to pick up litter and promote liberty in general, and particularly our right to keep and bear arms.

We tried to entice the media into covering our event. They almost certainly wouldn't have been interested in covering a pro-gun event like this, so we called and told them, "People are on the side of Richmond Road with guns!" The three local TV stations and the local newspaper didn't bite. Apparently they don't do gun stories, other than home invasions, bank robberies, and mass shootings in "gun-free" school zones. We're working on other options to generate some media interest to help promote gun rights, but if nothing else, thousands of people drove by during this event and next time we'll make absolutely sure that they know we're out picking up litter and we're ARMED. We'll be more in-your-face next time... not obnoxious, but we'll get the point across, hopefully with a little humor and in a way that generates a positive buzz. We want to get people talking and thinking about gun rights.

Big thanks to everyone who came out to pick up the garbage. Huge thanks to John and Cheryl for driving over from Spencer County, and Brandon who made the 2.5 hour drive from Bowling Green!

Too many gun owners want to complain about losing their gun rights, but they don't want to do anything positive to protect those rights. They feel that giving $35 a year to the NRA gives them the right to complain, as if they did their part. Then they go back to hoarding guns and ammo. Exercise your rights or you lose them. There are no shortcuts. Freedom isn't free. Sometimes, you have to invest a couple of hours picking up garbage.