imported post
Buckskinner15 wrote:
So, today between 9 and 9:30 a.m. I went to Walmart (the one north of Loveland on 287), to pick up some groceries for tonights OC picnic at lake Loveland (and maybe some ammo, if they had any).I walked through the entrance and then heard:
"Sir, sir," from behind.
I turn around, anda guy (I think the greeter) asks me to step aside for a minute so he can ask someone else if it's ok for me to carry my gun in here. I agree, and he asks me ifI have a permit. I say no, you don't need one to OC.He says they had an incident in the last week where someone brought a cased long gun (the horrors!) into the store on his watch and he got in trouble for it.
So along comes another employee. He asks me if I have a permit. I say you don't need one to OC. He doesn't seem to know much more than the first guy, so he calls an assistant manager over.
She tells me that Walmart's policy is no firearms in the store unless you're law enforcement. I ask ifI can talk to her boss, butshe doesn't seem too willing (and maybe I wasn't too insistent).So I get her name and leave. Then I go to King Soopers and give them the business instead.
I'm pretty sure I've read about similar instances on the forum which were rectified, so I'm wondering: who do I contact to get this fixed? I've OC'd in Walmart before, with no problems. My understanding was that Walmart's policy was guided bystate law, unless they changed it recently. Thanks for any info!
Relevant points:
1: Absolutely no permit is needed to OC in a Wal-Mart (or any other store)in Colorado!!!
2. Wal-Mart's policy as indicated in several areas in these forums is to "adhere to the law of the state in which the Wal-Mart resides."
3. Most (perhaps all) states allow private property owners to deny access to carriers of firearms, whether OC or CC.
4. When such organizations as Wal-Mart decide to enact their rights of denying entry to either/or OC or CC weapons-holders, they're facing several considerations:
4a. Criminals rarely open carry. The vast majority of OC citizens are law-abiding.
4b. Open-carry deters criminal activity. What criminal in would rob a store in which a patron in plain view is openly carrying a firearm? The criminal will either leave, or he/she will wait until the owner askes the individual lawfully exercising his right to bear arms to leave the premises.
Note: Sadly, the vast majority of store-owners fail to think this through. They do not consider the vastly reduced crime statistics whereby others were openly carrying their weapons. They fail to consider the vast majority of criminals illegally carry concealed weapons.
Instead, they simply overreact, innocently, yet ignorantly, to a media-hypersensitized member of the puplic who says, "eek - the man has a gun!"
"Yes, but I am, and have been, an honest, law-abiding citizen for more than 40 years. I am not a criminal! What of the many criminals passing through your store today, nearly all of whomwere carrying an illegallyconcealed weapon?"
That simply doesn't register with most store owners. They, as are most people in the US have simply not been properly educated on either citizen rights or criminal justice issues. Sadly, the media usually plays an overbearing, albeit unkowing, part, and has grossly misinformed many at the pressures of special interest groups who have largely blinded the media's insight intothe actual governing laws. Thus, it's become a sensationalist issue, not a factual issue.
I think [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmZic2VFGyI"Nightline's Coverage on Open Carry[/url} is perhaps one of the best, most objective pieces I have ever seen on this issue. It's not the typical NRA extremist (drag everything to one end, because the others who're trying to drag everything to the other). Nor is it the typical anti-gun liberalist media piece to which most of us have been subject since WWII. It's simple a simple, clear piece on the issue and the people.
We Americans have grown smarter than this in the last couple hundred years! Such ploys do us no justice, and may have done this issue grave harm.
Rather, it is a very simple enforcement of our Constitutional right to "keep and bear arms" for personal defense against "all enemies, foreign and domestic," to which I swore myself long ago, and to which I hold dear to this very day.
For now, I rest my case.
