Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns Open carry

I will give you my personal perspective. I can't cite you examples although we do see occasional links on the forums now that open carry is becoming more common. I don’t live my life correcting for something that happened to somebody else in the past. I try to stay ahead of the curve. We are all products of our environment. My orientation stems from growing up and spending a chunk of my adult life in a high crime city where any valuable commodity rates higher attention in the eyes of criminals. A gun is a high value commodity. It is a place where carjackings were high (even of off duty cops who generally don’t look like targets), dope dealers and gangs get in gunfights with each other, and, recently, people in restaurants, including high end places, have been subjected to takeover robberies where customers were proned out by a team of guys, searched, and relieved of valuables. A visible gun may deter some but it certainly won’t deter the hard core types who are the most dangerous. A visible gun on a good guy gives the initiative to the bad guy. The bad guy gets to make a choice of how to take him and maximize his advantage. My personal preference is to make my own decision when the gunfight starts so that I can take the initiative at the point that I perceive that I have the best chance of survival with the least chance of collateral damage. Others go the other way on that. They have their reasons and I respect them. Heck, in the takeover robbery situation, I would love for one of the other patrons to draw all the attention.

So, that's where I am coming from. I don't vary that just because I am in the woods or at the cabin. Changing things requires a decision that something is different about the cabin or the woods, such as that only good guys are in the woods or driving on the rural highways. I just can't get there in my mind.

Idaho has been OC since Lewis & Clark came through. I have yet to have to step over a body on the sidewalk.
I rarely see OC folks running around. I think CC is much more in vogue here.

Surprise, Gomer!! Another fooking train wreck of a thread.

Just because something is 'legal' doesn't mean it's a good idea.

The problem I have is you are drawing a conclusion, first, on what you read on the 'fire. You've not conducted a survey of the Campfire members to determine if we are divided. Second, the evidence you are using is anecdotal, and therefore you can not draw any conclusions from it that are valid. Third, even if you were to conduct a survey of Campfire members, you can not generalize the results from a survey of Campfire members to the rest of American gun owners. The results of your survey, if you used a valid instrument to conduct the survey, only apply to the population (24 Hour Campfire members) you surveyed. This is all statistics 101.

My humble take on the matter.

Pretty much anything that expands the practice of our 2A rights I see as a net positive.

The ability to have your weapon seen without brushing up against, if not outright breaking, the local firearm carry laws is an absolute positive. If you've been carrying under a jacket and get out to pump some gas with your jacket off it's nice to not have that be any issue legally.

I don't personally find "general" OC a particularly good idea for a number of reasons (many already discussed) but very much support the legal option to do so.

I was reacting to the insertion of drama, not initiating it.

My view exactly.

Actually - you're overlooking the obvious. I see some pretty tough looking dudes OC almost every day. They're usually in uniform though and they very often have gear (and hopefully training and practice) that impedes a gun grab. Pretty rare for someone to just up and grab their guns without already being in a fight.

I have run across a few non-uniformed OC guys here in Idaho recently though, and they all fit that Barney description. I find myself checking to see if they are being attentive to their surroundings and to see just how "grabbable" that gun is. Makes me a little nervous that said gun is almost always essentially up for grabs.

My personal take on it is that it's a bad idea for most of us when we are or will be in close proximity to people we don't know. I don't like having to watch everybody that closely to make sure I (or some other OC guy) am not about to supply a stolen gun to the mix. Yeah - I know that it can still happen with a hidden gun, but it's just not as likely...at least I'd like to think so.

In a more rural environment though, I have absolutely no problem with it. One time that I was quite certain that I was about to have to use my gun, I was carrying it openly. The subject of my concern had not noticed the gun at first, but when he did his furtive movements stopped and he and his buddies made a hasty exit. Reviewing the situation after the fact convinced me that in that particular situation a hidden gun would likely have been needfully deployed. Not sure the outcome would have been any different, but someone would at least have been closer to dying.

We all strive to keep our concealed weapon unnoticed, and the vast majority of the time are quite successful at it. But it should not be a matter of concern for us that a slip in our concealment system or other legitimate circumstances might lead to charges of brandishing simply because someone sees our gun. Removing restrictions on OC is always a good thing, IMO. Deliberately practicing it in an urban environment....not so much.

FreeMe,
You and I agree right down the line……my comments are/were related strictly to OC in an urban environment by non-LEO's. We have National Forests around here where a lot of snowmobiling and 4 wheeling take place on back trails and OC is pretty much SOP for a large % of the people and I don't doubt the intimidation factor when limited to isolated locations where it's just you and them and no witnesses. In the city however, I'm not sure that I buy the intimidation factor---certainly not as a primary benefit of OC.

My wife and I went to a buffet restaurant here in Laramie a couple of days ago. There was a guy in line directly in front of us that was probably in his 70's, not decrepit, but certainly long past being athletic. He was OC'ing a 1911 in a strong side holster while carrying a dinner plate with both hands. He didn't look at us as we got in line directly behind him; absolutely no sign on his part of any situational awareness. My 8 year old grandson could have disarmed him in less than 10 seconds. If his shooting skills match his mindset, he's a lawsuit waiting to happen. In the mean time, he's a potential gun donor and little more.

I'm delighted and in favor of laws legalizing OC……just still don't see the virtue of it in an urban setting for non-uniformed personnel. JMO.

Here's an example from right now. I can't refute the exact thing you said, but you're implying that nobody here is against open carry and that is still far from the case and was much more so let's say, two years ago. Right here on this forum two years ago, I seriously doubt you could have found 50% of posters on a given thread on this topic who would've supported it. "Ever opposed OC legislation"? You could probably thin that way down, but here and now there are a lot more folks supporting OC than there were previously.

TRH's comments about not getting arrested are very easy to discern too. All cops are not familiar with the law especially they are not all up-to-date on recent rulings thereof. As such, it is a definite possibility to get arrested for things you shouldn't be arrested for and the more we can prevent this, the better off we are. As some of our legal experts would agree, ALL firearms laws are infringement, it's how much we want to put up with that's the question. Lately, people are putting up with less and less.

So certainly, there is a split between gunowners and I seriously doubt if you could ask every gun owner in the US that OC would win out. The topic would fare much better on the 'fire and even better thinned down to this particular forum, but there are still those that oppose in spirit if not in practice. The LE opposition is self-evident, just look at all the YouTube videos by OC advocates.

Just to put a face on this idea.

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/local/...police-chief-ep-412648471-360158151.html

No I'm not.

TRH said that there are those here at the Fire who oppose Open Carry legislation.


To which I replied....




I also took exception to the dramatic notion that the gun owning nation is "divided on the issue". Of course we disagree on it, we disagree on a great number of things. But that doesn't mean that disagreement on that issue has to rise to the level of "dividing the gun owning nation".

I disagree with my wife on where to find the best Mexican food in town, and the best fried chicken. That doesn't mean that our home is "divided", it just means that we disagree.

Disagreement does not always equal division, and rightfully so. To say that it does is easily characterized as dramatic.

I wouldn't.

Wow!

Bluedreaux, I'm sorry but that's a good bit of parsing. Disagreement does usually equal division and it most certainly does in this case as I already illustrated.

Yeah, that's it. TRH is ahead of the curve and we can't see it because we hate him so much.

So I'll take off my hate-blinders and listen. Just post up the examples of people here opposing open carry legislation. On this issue tearing apart the gun community there must be examples aplenty.

Ethan, disagreement doesn't equal division. If some loony leftist came on the board and started stating that anyone who was not in Law Enforcement or the Military should not be allowed to own a gun, he would immediately be barraged by dozens of gun owners...many of them with disagreements between them regarding some aspect of owning and using a firearm. Take Stick as an extreme example. If you're not deer hunting with a Kimber Montana in .223, scoped with a 6X Super Sniper, then you're just an idiot and wasting your own time and money. Even he would side with other gun owners against the onslaught of people like hitlery clinton. I don't know the percentages or even all the issues, but I'd bet gun owners agree on more gun-related topics than on topics they disagree with one another about. At the end of the day, we're still gun owners and we have to remain ever vigilant to keep the loony left from pecking away at our 2nd Amendment right.

The linked internal affairs report is kind of funny.

If I said the Republican base is divided on the issue of abortion, would you conclude that the Republican base is "torn apart" over the issue. Division and being "torn apart" aren't equatable concepts. He's right. You're parsing in order to find disagreement.

The liberals are ahead in this game. Then, I was in junior high and kids brought shotguns on the bus and kept them in their lockers for trap practice after school. It was common to see someone walking down the street with a rifle or some kid with a .22 strapped to his bike. Now, some fat lady at Walmart catches a glimpse of what might be a gun and SWAT responds.

Open carry starts to reverse the incrementalism that got us from then to now. Open carry will irritate some folks, it will cause conflicts, and might even have some risk, but in the long haul hopefully minds and perceptions will be changed.