"Tactical". There's that word again....
Daily open carrier here, as many of you already know from past debates. Don't remember how long I've been doing it now - maybe close to 4 years now?
ksnecktieman pretty much nailed my point of view on the subject. To "tactically" avoid my long, drawn-out soap box ritual, I'll just add a little ditty in regards to the amount of unknown crimes that may have been thwarted when a BG, or potential BG, is confronted with open carry...
First, a story from back in my school days. There was once this farm boy in my class who, although we regarded him a good friend in our close circle of friends, we picked on alot. He was mostly targeted as the brunt of practical jokes because of his almost insane reactions to small amounts of carefully doled amounts of pain. Something as trivial as a school-kid smack to the back of the head or a titty-twister would cause this boy to go into a fit of rage that I've only seen mimicked in Looney Tunes. We'd all laugh and run, and by the end of the day we were all hanging out and laughing about the prank.
Well, none of us really got to see retaliation for all those years of pranks. Fast sprinters, I guess. Maybe he secretly enjoyed the attention and didn't really try too hard to catch us. I dunno, it's regardless. Anyway, ...
A new kid comes to our school. He'd always been a good close friend of mine from out-of-town, so by default he hung with us. During a ribbing session one day with the farm boy aforementioned, somebody whips out a stapler and slams a staple into farmboy's arm. Not cool. Now, maybe the new kid was standing too close, laughing too loud, or his newness made him a likely target, but farm boy immediately turns to him and slams him to the concrete. I step in to his defense, and next thing I know I have the ol' "AFTER SCHOOL, YOU 'N ME, YANK!" - ultimatum. My hormonol honor at stake, I agree.
I meet him after school, out by the buses, well away from any chaperone's watch. I'm gonna cream this pig-farmin' hick. Farm boy shows up. We drop our books, roll up the sleeves, and start goin round n' round....
I'm noticing as I circle him, that he's bigger than I remember him being. I particularly notice the veins sticking out of his hamhock-forearms and begin to think, "Boy, this was a stupid idea. I'm gonna get my butt handed to me...". I want to run, but the teeny-bopper hormones tell me to stand my ground. I go for a gut-shot with the hardest, swiftest uppercut man has ever witnessed....
Farmboy doesn't so much as flinch. Remember the scene in that Indiana Jones movie when he reaches for his pistol and it's not there? That was pretty much how it ended. I let out small wimper and run as fast my legs would carry me.
So, what's the point? Point is this: Most people (let's call them BG's), haven't thoroughly thought out the potential consequences of their actions. Most of the time, it's because they've never been face-to-face with those consequences. If I were a poor man
, .....well, a poor man brought the point of desperation, that needed money so bad that I decided to rob a place, am I willing to risk death?
I may never get to "pre-make" that choice if I walk into a store and just put a pistol barrel under the clerk's nose. Sure, cops might come, but by default they can't shoot if I don't threaten them.
However, if I walk in the same store and see a .45 on a typical-looking man's side, he is not held by all the same rules and regulations a cop is (or so I believe, being a bad guy). As a matter of fact, he's carrying that gun to kill me. Kill me eh? Well, maybe I'll come back later, or pick another store, or maybe there's more than one gun-packin citizen out there gunnin' for me, but the next one has it under his coat. Maybe I better get a job instead, and live another day....
....and, well, who knew I ran anyway?
