imported post
I like the idea of promoting open carry in a more organized fashion. In my state, open carry is not regulated, but it is not practiced very often. For some time now, a significant percentage of the police in the three largest towns would hassle someone if they were carrying openly. They seemed to know the law allowed people to carry openly, but they acted as if the law was old and no longer applied, so they chose to ignore it. With the prevalence of concealed carry, now their comment is, "If you want to carry a gun, you need to get a concealed carry permit."
Personally, I'm offended that I had to get a CCDW license to carry concealed, but I did. Tactically, I prefer concealed carry. But from a gun rights perspective, I prefer open carry.
We now have the problem that open carry is so rare in many parts of the country, that even where it's legal, the person exercising that right is considered to be a kook or weirdo. People call the police and the police threaten an arrest for disturbing the peace or something like that.
I think there is strength in numbers, but I also think that simply declaring a national Open Carry Day will result in a lot of martyrs for the cause. We'll have a lot of individuals carrying openly, but the current problems with open carry will persist. It'll be society and police against the individual. In a worst case scenario, it may backfire and some of the resulting confrontations may result in restricting open carry. If the law doesn't match the consensus, the law will be changed.
I think a much better way to achieve the goal of educating the public about open carry and gun laws would be to have open carry events, much like the ones that have occurred in Virginia. I'd like to organize a local Open Carry Ice Cream Social. If a group of 50 people assembled peacefully at a picnic to enjoy an ice cream sundae, how could anyone be upset by that? It would be much more difficult to bully or persecute all those people when they're assembled as a group.
Gun control advocates have succeeded by associating guns with violent crime. When people don't own guns, they only see guns in the context of violent crime. Open carry events can change that. Society would see that guns are not a problem, and the problem is crime. Eventually, guns will again be seen as the solution and not the problem.
Instead of 10,000 individuals spread across the nation exercising their right to openly carry a weapon and causing some people to freak out and causing some police to be dispatched to deal with a perceived problem, I'd rather see the same number of people congregating in groups of 20 to 50 people, in a setting that is publicly visible but not likely to result in fear or concern.
From a public relations perspective, I see a lot of potential for some of the open carry individuals to inadvertently generate bad media coverage, while an Open Carry Ice Cream Social or Open Carry Barbecue is so unusual that even a media with a left leaning agenda would feel compelled to cover it, and it would be almost impossible to be spun in a negative manner. Depending on local attitudes to guns and the attitude of an individual openly carrying a gun, I can see an individual practicing the right to openly carry as resulting in the occasional "Deranged Gunman Menaces Local Wal-Mart" story. When events like that start to go bad, they can become very bad, very fast. Add a little mass hysteria egging on the police, and it becomes a situation where the individual's rights are suppressed and one person's word against a group seldom wins in court.
Consider it from the perspetive of the gun wary public, ignorant of the gun laws. They see an individual with a gun as a possible threat. "People don't usually walk around in my town with a gun strapped to their hip. Is this guy crazy? Are we in danger?" However, if they see a group of people in the park grilling out, talking to each other, laughing, and generally engaged in nice non-threatening behavior, but they're all wearing guns, the attitude is completely different. It's part of the reason there's strength in numbers. The assumption is, 50 people aren't all crazy. A person viewing that scene isn't threatened. Sociologically, we perceive ourselves as part of a group. In this case, they all have guns and I don't. It really turns the tables. Instead of an armed individual in an unarmed group, each of the observers now have the feeling of being an unarmed individual in an armed group. The sociology and psychology are completely different. If the armed group is behaving peacefully, there is no sense of fear, and instead there is a sense of curiosity. A curious person is in a condition that is conducive to learning.
And much as I like the 2nd amendment significance of a national Open Carry Day on 2/2, early February is just about the worst day possible for such an event. The entire idea is to openly carry a weapon,and that becomes a bit contrived when bundled up in a parka. And keeping with my previous comments, who wants to have a barbecue and eat ice cream in February?
Just my newbie two cents.
