"It will get stolen"

imported post

cynicist wrote:

I was looking through the page on the various arguments against OC, and I came across one with a response that didn't quite answer it. This is the reason I generally don't OC, or at least around my neighborhood, and I know the situation is similar for millions of people in the Us.

I live within what you would call a high crime area. PBS even did a show recently on our gangs (and the pop. is 13k.)
One of my concerns with OCing was that due to the presence of a large amount of gang-members is the neighborhood, that they would see me OC, find out where I live, know when and where I work (I am a librarian - easy to find out when I am now home,) and remove the gun from my home.

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You are completely right not to OC in your neighborhood or anywhere in your town really.

OC is situational. Anyone here calling for you to OC after the explanation of your situation is not being realistic. The point of OC'ing is to reduce your chance of being a target for crime. If you believe OC'ing would increase your chance, and you have a valid justification for that belief based on actual experiences in your neighborhood, then you should definitely not OC.

This does not mean that the answer previously given about this issue is not right, what it means is that it is not complete. It probably covers the situation, quite frankly, from a middle-class white mans viewpoint as most of the OC justifications do. Sadly things are not quite as easy for blacks, hispanics, people with foreign accents of any kind, people that live in very high-crime areas (where OC'ing does in fact make you a target, though not necessarily for a mugging), and many other people who are more likely to cause people to panic when armed than a middle-aged white guy is.