Open Carry around SW Virginia

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Hello to the group. I am new here and just found this web site yesterday. I guess I have been a Unicorn for quite some time and didn't even know it. I have been OC around here for a long time and have only had one problem and that was a long time ago. I go every place and everyone that sees me can see that I am armed and most people have never even payed it any attention. I went to dinner with my wife yesterday to O'Charley's in Bristol, Va. and walked in with my 9mm on my hip and there was even a LEO in the parking lot and even he paid me no attention. I guess what I am trying to say is I respect everyones right to carry as long as they are legal and I enjoy being able to carry myself. I have no fear if I see another person OC. And have in fact talked to others that I have ran into from time to time that OC and we all are pretty much agreed that we should show the public at large that guns are a normal part of our rights and we should not cower in the dark corners of our homes when we see a person OC. The media has been showing a lot of gun crime news but they never show what the rest of us do or have done as the case may be. I believe that if we all come together and can show the media that we as a people can carry openly without the danger of us being a thug or that we have no intention that we are going to harm or otherwise cause them harm in any way shape or form. I guess I should get off the soap box as it where. Just suffice it to say that I and a few other people around here do OC on a regular basis. I am planning to take my son to Charlottesville on Friday for a doctors appointment and I will be OC for that trip also. If anyone has any info on places that are not OC friendly around there please let me know. I have sent an email to another friend of mine with a link to this site so he too will be lurking around I am sure. Thanks to everyone for there hard work on the site and it is a fine resource for the rest of us. God Bless

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Welcome to the forum!

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Glad to see one more OCer down my way. I live in Abingdon, I am the guy with the Stetson and a double shoulder holster rig with two S&W 64's. Welcome to the forum.

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I think this is the third thread of this name started :^). For some reason, lack of crime or what not, no one every posts to these threads so they end up getting buried. I'll be OCing at Virginia Tech before long, don't know when though, nmostly as a statement to the administration there. I always OC where ever I go. There are two or three more that I know of in the Blacksburg area, and that's it.

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Glad to see more guys in my area OC'ing, I thought I was the only one here. O'Charlies is a good place to eat and never even a second look as the OP said. VA sure is a good place to live, just wish Iwould see more OC around here.

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Resqu2 wrote:

SNIP
O'Charlies is a good place to eat and never even a second look as the OP said. SNIP

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Love that place mmmmm

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Thanks everyone for the warm welcome. I will keep and eye out for everyone around here and try to talk more people into doing the OC. I am glad to see more than just me carrying around here. I have seen several others but didn't put two and two together I guess. Anyway I just wanted to say thanks and God Bless.

Sniper65

Chilhowie, Va. and often in Washington, Wythe and Smyth counties.

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I am planning to take my son to Charlottesville on Friday for a doctors appointment and I will be OC for that trip also.

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I assume you will be at the UVA facilities for your doctor visit. The campus security guys can be over zealous, and if they are not familiar with OC they may give you a hassle.

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The doctors office isn't atUVA, but it is close by on Ray C Hunt drive. So it is pretty close to UVA from what I can tell. Any info on those doctors offices on that street? Thanks and God Bless

Sniper65

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Those offices are located on state property so you should have no problem.

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Thanks that helps alot. Are they're any good places to eat that are OC friendly around there? Thanks and God Bless

Sniper65

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I was OCing around Pearisburg today as I normally do and was in Wades supermarket. I was inspecting their chicken when this lady, whom I've never met, came out of the butcher shop and stopped as she walked by and said, quote "Can I borrow your gun? I want to kill someone." She sounded like she actually wanted me to hand her my gun. But I could tell rather quickly that she had been joking around with the morning and evening butchers as they were changing shifts. She went back to the shop door and told them to come out because she was going to use my gun to shoot the morning guy. We ended up having a good conversation about OC/CC which gave me opportunity to tell them about the laws. The evening guy seemed pretty current/knowledgable. The conversation drifted into talking about taxes before we parted ways.

My second interaction in the area in one year of OC. The first started out negative but ended up positive, this one was all positive.

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sniper65 wrote:

Thanks that helps alot. Are they're any good places to eat that are OC friendly around there? Thanks and God Bless
Sniper65

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If there's not an Open Carry Dining Out group already in your area, you could start one yourself. We've been doing them in Tidewater for almost two years now and have never been denied service or been spoken to by the police. We usually have two a month, sometimes more, and we started with a very small group - now we regularly have 15 to 20 folks join us - our most so far is 35, at the Free Mason Abbey in Norfolk - just before 100 of us went to the Norfolk City Council meeting!!!

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Bubba Ron wrote:

sniper65 wrote:

Thanks that helps alot. Are they're any good places to eat that are OC friendly around there? Thanks and God Bless
Sniper65

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If there's not an Open Carry Dining Out group already in your area, you could start one yourself. We've been doing them in Tidewater for almost two years now and have never been denied service or been spoken to by the police. We usually have two a month, sometimes more, and we started with a very small group - now we regularly have 15 to 20 folks join us - our most so far is 35, at the Free Mason Abbey in Norfolk - just before 100 of us went to the Norfolk City Council meeting!!!

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SW VA is pretty spread out and most people are OK with OC but they might ask "why", not much crime around here. Nothing like the Northern dominated section of VA where cops with ballistic shields come out when you're having a cook out at the park. No one here would care. So, boring, yet free. Sometimes I'm not sure which is better

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If there's not an Open Carry Dining Out group already in your area, you could start one yourself.

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So, boring, yet free.

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Its probably boring BECAUSE its free! If you want excitement, go to DC or Chicago.:uhoh: Me, I'll take boring Virginia any day. I second what Bubba Ron said about the dinners. If O'Charley's is really good, why not have an OCDO ("Open Carry Dining Out") event there? You'd be surprised how much fun they can be, and you can meet kindred spirits. A lot of the new converts in our area started out by coming to a dinner so their earliest OC experiences wouldn't be so anxiety-provoking. You could probably build a decent group out your way.

Welcome aboard to sniper65! (A Nam vet, right?)

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Good Morning to everyone. Well the trip to Charlottesville and UVA went great yesterday, I OC the whole day and never even got a funny look or anything else as far as anything bad. No comments at all except for one guy and it wasn't bad. I had printed up some of the "Know your gun rights" pamphlets and had them with me just to give out to anyone interested. The guy was sitting there and he started talking about guns and knives in Virginia. So I took the chance to educate him and handed him the phamplet and he just couldn't put it down. He kept reading it and he thanked me many times as he had OCed before but never knew where to find more info on it. He said that it pretty much answered all his questions. So I guess he will be better armed with info in the future so to speak. As for me being a Nam Vet, I am a vet but wasn't old enough to go to Nam. My father is a Nam vet but my brother and myself are also vets but later on. At the present I am trying to re-enlist but since I am older now it is a hard process. As for the Sniper65 user name, that is something that was hung on me by my friends a long time ago. I love long range shooting and prefer ranges at or beyond 500 yards, I was firing serveral guns, I was firing a AR-15/M4A2, Savage .308 and M24/47 and K98 and some Mosin Nagants and was doing pretty well with the old war horses but nowhere near as good as I was with the AR and Savage. But they said I should have been a Sniper and since I was born in 1965 they just put it together and thats what they came up with and it has stuck ever since then. I do my own reloading and love it too. I just reloaded some Hornady 147gn 9mm that I use in my carry weapon. Anyway I know some of this is off topic so please forgive my ramblings. I hope atleast we have another guy that will be better informed on OC in Va and the trip was worth it. Thanks and God Bless

Rev. Carl

Sniper65

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Interesting story. A member of our group handed out leaflets some time back, and it was a good way to educate those who were interested. I hope your leaflet mentions VCDL and OCDO.


I roll my own too, because its an good way to play around and find that perfect recipe for a particular gun. The part about loading the rounds for your carry gun is a bit controversial however. Do a little research on the net about this. Some, like Massad Ayoob, feel it is legally quite risky to do so, and I think he makes some good points. YMMV.

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Dutch Uncle wrote:

Interesting story. A member of our group handed out leaflets some time back, and it was a good way to educate those who were interested. I hope your leaflet mentions VCDL and OCDO.


I roll my own too, because its an good way to play around and find that perfect recipe for a particular gun. The part about loading the rounds for your carry gun is a bit controversial however. Do a little research on the net about this. Some, like Massad Ayoob, feel it is legally quite risky to do so, and I think he makes some good points. YMMV.

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Legally risky? Why is that? The reason I don't use reloads for defense is that the primers don't always fire (1 out of 200?). Probably due to my hand primiing although I do use a quality tool.

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Welcome to the board. Glad that all went well and hope that it will continue.

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Hello Dutch Uncle and everyone else, yes I agree about carrying a weapon with the reloads to a certain extent. I too have read a bit about that. I carry 2 mags with me at all times. I carry one with 115 gn Magtech FMJ in the gun if I am out and about but only for the legal issues, it is in the gun then. I don't like FMJ's as they tend to have a pass through effect on tissue. But I also carry a mag with my reloads in 147gn Hornady HP/XTP loaded with 3.6 gn of 700x that I would trust and do trust with my life. When I am home I usually change mags and am ready for what ever I need it for. I guess I should have been more clear on that. That is not to say that I do that every time.The flyer that I handed out was from here. http://opencarry.mywowbb.com/forum61/3356.html

It tells it better than I ever could and is very easy to understand. I am kind of an odd ball as far as preachers go. I am but one of two that I know who are also OCing. I guess people that know me for who and what I am accept me for me. And as far as being a preacher, I guess they figure that hey if a preacher is comfortable doing an OC then it should be alright for me to do it too. I do not break any laws as it would not only put me in harms way but the rest of us also. I have tried to educate anyone and everyone I talk to about guns and the number one thing I try to convey is, If I lay a gun on a table and no one picks it up, whether it is loaded or not, it will not hurt or harm anyone ever. Not that I would do that by the way. But like I said it would lay there not hurting anyone or anything. Now if someone comes along and they have it in they're mind to harm others or do themselves harm then it is in they're mindset to do it. It isn't the fault of the gun. It takes intent to do harm. The gun is just a means to do it, just like a club, car or bow and arrow. People put way too much attention on the guns used in crimes, it shouldn't be there. It should be on the people that used the gun in the crime. You hear all the time about people screaming about this guy used a gun to kill someone, you never hear that same group screaming ban all cars because that guy drove his car to the guys house to kill him. Simple facts are that cars kill many more people every year than guns do and you don't hear them saying ban all cars. I am sorry about rambling on. But my firearms are a very dear part of my life and my family and I have enjoyed using them as a part of family time in a safe and careful way. I am not a very educated man but I am also not a foolish man and the media and all the bleeding hearts need to understand that we as a people have a right that was set down in the founding of this great nation and without the 2nd we can't expect or deserve any of the others. I am sorry for rambling as I said but never sorry for our rights. I will always stand up for what I think is right and the rest should too. Ok can you tell I am a preacher now. LOL. Anyway what do you carry as your weapon of choice? Right now I have a cheap HI-Point C9 so please no bashing on them, I know they are cheapbut am trying to save enough to get meanother Ruger P89DC. I loved that gun. But family comes first. I do love this forum. God Bless and safe carry.

Rev. Carl

Sniper65