Posted by ThomasR: Ultimately this debate really shows more how far we've fallen as to the belief that the citizens are the first line of defense in our freedoms
Sixty years ago this wouldn't be a debate, only criminals carried concealed, the only honorable way to carry a weapon was in the open...
I'm afraid you're a little off RE: timing.
Sixty years ago, I spent a lot of time reading gun books and gun magazines. The number of states that effectively prohibited the carrying of handguns, openly or concealed was large and bothersome to me as a child, and there were restrictions in counties and cities, on top of that.
Some time after the Civil War, most of the southern and border states outlawed the carrying of handguns and/or in some cases, having handguns in automobiles. Texas was among the early ones; Georgia followed suit before WWI. Missouri imposed a permit-to-purchase requirement in 1917, and I believe the carry restrictions (concealed and automobile) went in about the same time. The infamous Sullivan Act was enacted in NYS at around the same time.
In some cases permits could be obtained, but there were no shall issue provisions. In Texas, the only way to carry openly was to be named some kind of special honorary Texas Ranger. Sufficient contributions to the winning gubernatorial candidate were helpful.
It is also not accurate to say that only criminals carried concealed. Colt, H&A, H&R, Iver Johnson, Savage, and Smith and Wesson sold thousands of small revolvers and pocket semi-automatics to professional men, bankers, and so on, some for the drawer, and many for carry. Before open carry was prohibited in many of hose places, concealed carry was often been lawful, depending upon the jurisdiction. I had grandparents who preferred to carry concealed before it was prohibited, and so did my wife. I believe that permits may have been required.
By the way, the laws and the books and the articles referred to handguns as "pistols" in those days, as did Col. Colt and the dictionary.
Many of the western states remained exceptions, and open carry remained lawful, though municipal prohibition was not uncommon.
...as a public statement to ones committment to protecting ones community.
I really don't think that there is any basis for believing that carrying openly, when it was legal, was done to promote the protection of the community, much less to make any kind of public statement to that effect.
Elmer Keith did say that the prevalence of open carry in and around Salmon, Idaho made the place a safer place to live, and I've always believed that.
The idea of carrying a Model P or a top-break S&W .44 on one's belt is embroidered into the fabric of most western fiction, written and on screen, but it really wasn't all that common. Those things are heavy and cumbersome, and carrying them is not helpful to people doing a long day's work. Photographs that my uncle, a cowboy in New Mexico during the early part of the twentieth century, brought back portrayed
no one carrying side-arms. I argued that the pictures were unrealistic, and he and my aunt just laughed at me with my two-gun Hopalong Cassidy outfit.
Back around that time (a century ago), the .32 S&W was by far the most popular handgun chambering in America. I imagine that most of them were kept at home or carried concealed or both, but I ave no way of knowing.
We have made remarkable progress in most places in re-securing the right of lawful carry. Yes, in most places so far, it has been limited to concealed carry; and it has been very long in coming.
I first saw open carriers in the backwoods of Missouri sixty years ago. Five years later, I saw a groundskeeper on a Ford Tractor with a Smith and Wesson .22-32 Kit Gun in a belt holster in western Missouri. Five years later, I saw men open carrying on motorcycles and in restaurants in Colorado. My reaction was far from "what an idiot". It looked perfectly normal to me.
But I've been a gun guy since i first saw Gene Autry and Roy Rogers with their engraved model P single actions. There are only three people on my street today who were born before JFK became President, and since 1963 the schools and media have done everything possible, most of it dishonest, to condition people to fear guns.
We are lucky we have brought the pendulum back as far as we have.