imported post
Mr. Eads, let me be the first to pick this off since there seemed to be quite a few postings involving you and your positions, and your reactions to responses to said postings.
I wish to enjoy in a rather civil dialogue and discourse, but it takes two sides to do so. I wish to extend that dialogue with you here.
I speak as a holder of a CT State Pistol Permit.
First, in one of your emails that was publicly posted, you posted that the impression that open carry is something only generally done in western states (I could have the wording of what you said incorrect, no offense is meant if I gave it as wrong).
I'm from Washington State, which up until 3 years ago, where it was de facto illegal to open carry due to extensive police harassment and arrests for a statute that was intended and meant to target groups such as the Black Panthers, not against peaceable open carrying citizens. Until I researched the history of that statute three years ago, no one knew in the field law enforcement community (though gun lobbyists, old retired legislators, and some police chiefs and people with knowledge of open carry issues from the 1970's knew the truth) that it was legal to peaceably open carry despite a 911 call.
Washington was, besides California, the most anti-open carry state in the western states (I don't include Texas or Oklahoma) in terms of law enforcement treatment and bad information.
Washington now has the 2nd most active open carry community (in terms of forum postings, we're behind Virginia).
In the last three years, the most difficult people to acknowledge the legal status of open carry wasn't law enforcement or city government, it was gun store owners and firearms instructors. The amount of complete FUD that was being spread was nauseated, and these are supposedly "our own people" who are supposed to be on our side.
Now they are generally coming around, but honestly, Washington's open carry movement was too focused on getting law enforcement agencies and 911 dispatch centers on the ball on this issue, because those two groups had the most ways of effecting open carriers personally. We heard dire predictions that if we open carried en masse in Washington, the state Legislature would pass a law to ban open carry (in violation of our state constitution), or that they would repeal our state preemption statute. It didn't. Now granted open carry has been quite controlled by advice from myself and other advisers within the movement here, but yet it's still happening without interference from the our Legislature.
Open carry IS the "bearing of arms" spoken about in the constitution. The fact that CT requires a license subjects the entire licensing scheme to a form of strict scrutiny, the state courts ignorance and willingness to ignore their own state constitution to the contrary. This is why federal courts with 42USC1983 is more important than state level suits in the future. There is why there are many places where concealment is licensed, but open carry is not. Licensed and lawful concealed carry is a relatively recent phenomena in US history.
Connecticut's issues are two-fold: The State Police are allowed to revoke licenses and then force you to wait for a BFPE hearing before you get it back. That's a violation of the auspices of a SCOTUS ruling, Board of Regents v. Roth. Even drivers licenses in most states require that the hearing happen first before it becomes invalid, and drivers licenses aren't even encompassing a constitutionally protected civil right, that a state pistol permit is.
The second issue is the law enforcement attitude and the unwillingness to bow to the law, and to make up charges in order to punish the individual they don't like. This is a much wider issue than just gun rights, and encompasses 4th amendment violations as well. You, as well as any other gun owner involved in the gun rights movement, should be pushing back on these abuses instead of telling us as open carriers to not do what both statutory and constitutional law allows us to do. You may not personally like open carry, but cops legislating from the squad car, applying charges that are completely invalid to the situation in order to punish said person for in your opinion "being stupid", should give even you pause instead of your celebration.
Are you going to keep doing what you are doing, or are you going to be part of the solution to fixing both of these issues?
Oh, and I forgot the most important issue: I personally am not willing to be completely in the closet as a gun owner. I have quite an aversion to being in closets, as my attendances at Seattle and Portland Pride Festivals shows, and yes, I have open carried my trusty Springfield XD there too. I'm a proud gun owner, Gregory, and I don't hide who I am. Do you?
ERSATZ "STICKUP JOB" !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
