What pushed me to get a permit to carry was the murder of two friends of my brother by a carjacker on the way to band practice. I barely knew them (we had shared beers and burgers and played volleyball at a July 4th party at my brothers'). I was told they were the kind of people who probably gave the carjacker their car keys and their $11 pocket change without resistance, and he killed them anyway. That was one factor in my decision to get a carry permit.
I do not carry for the purpose of carrying in a business or other establishment, but when I am carrying for self defense against being way-laid around the home, on the travel or in the parking lot (the most common sites of criminal attack), I cannot make the gun disappear if I have to enter a business or other establishment out of necessity.
Would I concealed carry in a place that posted a sign against it? That is a judgement call.
Would I deliberately go somewhere knowing ahead of time that they barred carry of a gun and carry anyway? NO.
The non-legal compliant signs are often posted with a wink-and-nudge aimed at (a) illegal carriers or (b) hoplophobe customers who are scared of guns. Such signs are a fig leaf for businesses that are not really concerned about
legal carriers, but somehow believe such signs keep out
illegal carriers or appeal to people who fear concealed guns they should never see.
Also concealed means concealed. If you cannot effectively conceal the fact that you are carrying, maybe you should not concealed carry, especially if you do not understand the concept of justification of necessity which is legally related to the concept of justification of self-defense. I would not plan on going into a business that posted against guns, but sometimes one has little or no choice. Quite frankly I often would leave my gun on me in its holster when I went into the convenience store on Beech Creek Road to pay for gas (even though they had beer for sale in the cooler and carrying where alcohol was sold was a no-no) because the alternative was to leave the gun in the vehicle vulnerable to theft or be seen handling a gun in my vehicle at the gas pump. (The law has been changed to no guns where alcohol is consumed.)
In yesterday's newspaper (10 Jun 2010),
Dear Abby answered a letter from a girl who had been told by her parents that a parishoner "carries a licensed gun when he's in church" and it gave her the heebie-jeebies and asked Dear Abby what she should do about it.
DEAR GUN-SHY: If the man has a license to carry the gun, then he's breaking no laws. You are certainly within your rights to refrain from being in his presence. If your parents were really concerned about their safety, they would either talk to the pastor or go somewhere else to worship. Because they have done neither, I think you should let it go.
(It's also within your rights to refrain from being in the presence of persons of color or white skinheads with Nordic tatoos, but overcoming my own prejudices I have found that people I once feared are often decent people inside in spite of my bigotted reaction to their appearance.)
Justification of necessity. Don B. Kates,
Restricting Handguns: the Liberal Skeptics Speak Out 1979, recounts testimony from Chicago gun court judges who often dismissed illegal gun charges against people caught carrying in no-gun-permit Chicago because (a) the carriers were otherwise law-abiding citizens caught carrying out of fear of crime and often poor people caught carrying in bad neighborhoods, and (b) the arrests usually involved blatant 4th Amendment violations. There's the spirit of justice then there's the letter of the law. Law is supposed to serve and bend to justice, not the other way around.
