imported post
Dave Workman wrote:
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I have a note from one of my Examiner.com readers, obviously a WA resident, who offers a very well-thought-out, sincere comment, and now is our opportunity to either shine like a star, or stink like an ogre, with a well-thought-out reply, or something less.
How you reply will speak volumes more about you than about Ruby.
Ruby says:
Thanks,Dave, for getting back to me. As I said, I am opposed to open carry. I am a gun owner and I respect other people's opinions and practices. I am opposed to it because it is not customary in our society at the present time, and it does scare some people. And it is not without some limitations, as you described in your book Washington State Gun Rights and Responsibilities. We will not convert people who are on the fence about gun rights by scaring them. The other reason is that I do not want everyone to know that I have a firearm. Some criminal may just decide that he will try to take it away from me. I also think that for some gun owners, not all, but some, it's an ego trip. Look at me, I have a gun. I would be interested in hearing what the rest of you think about it and if you have carried openly, what your experience with it has been.
May 3, 7:45 PM
Ruby, your views can be broken down into three categories, and addressed individually. As I see it, you think that:
1) Open carry will scare people and lead to curtailing of your rights.
2) Concealed carry offers a "tactical advantage" that is lost when open carrying.
3) Those who open carry are likely to be a bad representation of self-defense rights advocates.
While it may be initially true that a person, not used to seeing a person open carrying, may feel apprehension (or even fear if they have no knowledge of firearms), the way to treat irrational fear is by repeated, safe exposure. This is addressed in
Emotional Processing of Fear: Exposure to Corrective Information where "it is argued some form of exposure to feared situations is common to many psychotherapies for anxiety, and that confrontation with feared objects or situations is an effective treatment." Based on this, and similar research surrounding the mechanism of fear and its psychological processing, the best way to fix the fact that open carry scares people is to do it more, not less.
The importance of open carry goes beyond just addressing those that have a fear of firearms, though. You fear that it will be hard to "convert people on the fence" if they view the practice as radical. I agree in a way, yet contend that until gun owners across the country are carrying openly, people on the fence will have to deal with humanity's innate tribalism. That is, every time anyone sees a gun owner acting polite in public, contributing to the community, or just going about their business, the person viewing the gun owner begins to recognize that there are many in their "tribe" that are gun owners. Politically, this means that people will be less likely to discriminate, because it's much harder for an opponent to demonize gun owners as "others" who must have their rights stripped, when every day the voter has positive encounters with other people within their sphere of influence. When you see a wide range of people open carrying, the stereotype of idiots, rednecks, and other demagogy rings false.
For point number 2, I would question your assumptions about those who are willing to or planning to commit crimes, as well as on your presumed reaction time in a situation. Every time I read "tactical advantage" as a reason for concealed carry, I start to think about what those words really mean - do you plan to be in the middle of a mugging and yell "surprise!" while you draw and take out a bad guy? Your fear of someone who "may just decide that he will try to take [your firearm] away from [you]" makes me wonder about the criminal mindset. While I'm not certain of the answer, I think that presenting yourself as a "hard" target - one with potentially lethal consequences - provides a much greater deterrent than the common quip about "but the criminals need to fear because they don't know who is armed." Criminals are, in general, dumb and opportunistic. Without the overt reminder in their face about the consequences of a possible action, it seems unlikely they will even factor in the possibility of you having a concealed firearm. And at the point they're holding you up with a knife or a firearm of their own, what action can you take with a concealed carry pistol that could not better be taken with an openly carried gun? Ideally, I'd prefer they see that I am armed, as it reminds them that there are people around who are capable of ending them, and it is a blatant reminder of the fact there may be others around who aren't as visibly armed.
Additionally, tying point #1 and #2 together, open carry reminds people that the world is an unsafe place. It's interesting that people feel scared about the visible presence of a person with a firearm, because it presents an opportunity to remind people that personal safety through police protection is an illusion. While we don't aim to scare people, many don't even consider the reality of police response times, what options they have in a crisis situation, etc, until they are reminded or challenged with something along the lines of "if this presented real danger to you right now, what would you be able to do about it?"
Finally, for #3, I have met many open carriers now, and they are often the most mild-mannered people about. While there is certainly the potential for a bad apple, by and large we are a group that is simply interested in our rights. To that end, we recognize that open carry is a right and concealed carry a privilege in most states. In fact, the constitutions of Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, and North Carolina all explicitly call out that the right to keep and bear arms does not protect the right to carry concealed weapons. You don't "win" in the political realm by repeatedly conceding your rights, a little bit at a time. Over the past 200 years we’ve slowly watched many rights be eroded away. Recently, a resurgence has occurred in the love of Constitutionally guaranteed liberties that seems to have been missing since WW1, the Great Depression, the New Deal, WW2, and its fallout. By conceding in 1934, 1986, and 1994, Americans had many of the rights of the second amendment infringed upon. That led to the modern system of registration, bans on weapons that would be useful for serving as a militiaman, and even the ban (still alive in some places) on semi-automatic sporting rifles.
With all that said, my experience with open carry has been, on the whole, positive. Even those who were hesitant at first have become accustomed to seeing me and realizing that, hey, maybe guns aren't scary murder weapons that they see them portrayed as. Hopefully this has been informative or at least helpful in understanding our views. Though you may not choose to open carry, yourself, I would ask that you not oppose it. Much as it is your right to disagree with the practice, to take an active stand against it means to attempt to curtail the very rights you claim to support, those of the people of this country to keep and bear arms.
This is the internut ya know. 
