imported post
Well... I just got back from talking to said police training officer. :banghead:
I didn't even bother staying for the seminar... I had heard enough after our 30 minute conversation. He pulled out the 'scaring 90 year old ladies' thing, which of course has no bearing on the conversation of the legality of open carry. When I walked up to the scene, he was talking with someone else and started saying how "Open carry is a gray area because there is no case law..." at which point I immediately pulled out two copies of the tri-fold and gave one to the cop and one to the other guy standing there.
To his credit, he actually read through it, quickly. And then he started a whole line of argument that I had not encountered to date. He was, of course, open carrying, and he proceeded to put his arm over his weapon and say "Is it concealed now?" He goes on into how there has been no case law defining what is concealed and what is unconcealed. I was kind of dumbfounded at this line of reasoning as any "reasonable person" would not consider his gun to be concealed because his arm swung in front of it. Regardless of course, this really has no bearing on the conversation either since I am a pistol permit carrier and can carry both openly and concealed if I choose.
The next topic of conversation was my question of what he would actually do if I was open carrying, sitting at the local burger joint eating lunch, minding my own business. He (predictably) stated that he would at least take my gun and run the serial numberto see if I was a felon, etc, etc. I informed him that this would be an illegal seizure, which he hotly denied... I had brought the statute with me, pulled it out and showed him he needed reasonable suspicion that my carry of the firearm was a crime. Here, his words were "Oh I guarantee you I could develop reasonable suspicion sometime during that!"
This almost set me off, but at this point we were interrupted by the Bass Pro employee who said they had to go set up for the next seminar. He was very polite and pleasant. The cop was not, he refused to even shake my hand actually. And I made it a point to be polite with him the entire time... to no avail.
I didn't even get to the 'public demonstration' and short barreled rifles and shotguns stuff... Oh well, if someone around here wants to stop by tomorrow they can tackle those. And sorry, I left the voice recorder in the truck because I wasn't expecting to run into him at 1:15 when the seminar was at 2. Kind of a lame interaction... but this guy was kind of a lame LEO so that's what we get.
I'm tempted to show up Friday night OCing and see if they let me in. Free trigger block to the first fifty folks at each seminar. :dude: Im curious if the law expert is going to be a LEO.
