The 2ndamd gives us the right to bear arms. I would be proud to bear a handgun with open carry. Not for any agenda to influence, or teach, or show off to others. I would be proud to open carry because, we live in a free country and the open carry of one of those rights would be the epitome of American liberty.
And every person you alarm by doing so is a person more likely to decide that guns are dangerous and should be restricted, and vote accordingly. And many of those who are not actually alarmed will still roll their eyes at this Rambo wannabe they see before them, and then quietly pull the lever for the Democrat promising reenact the assault weapons ban at the next election because they don’t trust these people they see as paranoid rednecks. It’s like waving a red flag at a bull.
Most people, who have little to no experience with violent crime, and have never been a victim of it (and that’s a majority of the population), simply don’t feel the need to be armed, and seldom understand why others do. It’s just like any other terrible tragedy – people to whom it has never happened don’t really believe, deep down where it counts, that it could happen to them. It’s something you read about that happens to other people. Rightly or wrongly, that’s the common perception. So when they see you carrying around a gun, they don’t see you as a prudent individual harmlessly exercising your constitutional rights. You look like Tackleberry from the Police Academy movies. If they’re not alarmed by you, they find you faintly absurd. Why on earth you would want gun owners to be regarded in this light is beyond me. It doesn’t help us. Quite the contrary in fact.
Recently we had this issue come up here in Norfolk. In August of 2007 a citizen openly carried a gun at Norfolk’s annual Harborfest event, held by the city in Town Point Park, knowing that he would be asked to leave the park. He refused and was arrested. He meant to be. He was a member of an organization determined to challenge the city’s policy of not allowing weapons to be carried on city property. His conviction was overturned and he sued the city, and the city ended up having to pay him $15,000 in the settlement.
It was a pyrrhic victory though. If you read the letters that got printed in the opinion section of the local paper afterward, you can see that the public reaction to this was
negative. People thought he was an idiot, or a nut, or in some cases even a menace. And it doesn’t really matter, as far as that perception goes, that he was completely within his rights, innocent of any intent to do the slightest harm, and completely law abiding. The public still, for the most part, saw him negatively. And since this is so, how do you think those people will be more likely to vote next time a gun control bill comes up?
Rights can be infringed. It happens all the time. It’s hard enough defending our gun rights as it is. Alarming non-gun enthusiasts, or causing them to regard us with amusement or contempt will only make it harder.
If you want to carry, by all means exercise your right to do so. But the smart way to do it is with a concealed weapons permit. If it were only possible to carry openly, I’d be all for it then. But since you can carry concealed just as easily, and it’s more advantageous in almost every respect, why not do that?
Really? Amazing that guns are the ONLY thing that people are not more comfortable with exposure. Those gun thingies are pretty amazing in that they go against human nature
You’re missing the point by a country mile. Sure, it’s absolutely true that if enough people carried, that weapons were commonplace in society, people would become more nonchalant about them and feel less threatened by them. I don’t doubt that for an instant. The point is
that there will NEVER be a time in our society where there are enough people walking around armed to make that happen. Once again: gun enthusiasts are a minority in society, and people who carry are an even smaller segment of that minority, and the number of people wanting to carry openly are a smaller portion still of that portion of that minority. Given this, there will never be more than a tiny fraction of the civilian population walking around with guns openly worn on their hips. And since this is so, the idea that you can make people more comfortably by openly carrying one is a pipe dream. The average person (outside of some rural areas where guns are more common) will,
maybe, see one person every several years – if that often – with a gun and no badge to go with it. And because this is uncommon,
and will ALWAYS remain uncommon, they will far more likely be alarmed by it than reassured.
Look guy, I’m not talking out of my @$$ here, I’m a cop, and I’ve been dispatched on more than one of these “person with a weapon” calls. I
know beyond any
shred of doubt what effect the sight of a gun in the hands of a civilian in a modern American city has on people. This is NOT speculation. I’m speaking from experience.
Those pesky bad guys. When faced with an armed guy they go AGAINST all predatory nature and attack the strong. Wow...amazing that every other type of victim is better off appearing strong. Or maybe I should tell my RADS students to look as weak and meek as possible to avoid attack.
Then explain why cops get ambushed and shot if criminals are
universally afraid of armed men. Explain how that armed security officer in the article I cited was killed if criminals can be depended upon to shy away from an armed man.
Once again, I am not speculating, and I am not getting all my knowledge from books or from television. I have worked real crime scenes, and stood over real dead bodies. Some of those victims were armed, and it turned out that
it was known by their murderers that they were armed. It didn’t stop the murder from taking place. If I want to kill you, and I know you’re carrying a gun, I’ll still kill you. I’ll just sneak up behind you and shoot you in the back of the head, and you’ll never know what hit you.
Sure being openly armed will deter some attacks. Absolutely it will. I don’t dispute it for a minute. But carrying yourself alertly, being aware of your surroundings and what people around you are doing, listening to that inner voice when it warns you something isn’t right, and staying out of bad areas will be a hundred times more effective at keeping you out of the crime statistics than carrying a gun openly will. And you can still carry concealed (in case trouble still finds you anyway, which it sometimes does) while doing it
without ANY of the negative effects I enumerated in my first post on this thread (most of which you completely failed to address). There is no 100% solution, but on the balance, concealed carry will be far better all around than open carry, and as I said, if you can even legally buy a gun in the first place, you can almost certainly get a CCW permit, so why not just do that? You get all the benefits, and none of the risks.