Liberty4Ever
Regular Member
imported post
I realize this sounds a lot like, "You weren't there. Neener neener neener."
That's definitely not my intent. I want to discuss solutions to the LFUCG rule requiring a million dollars in liability insurance for all publicly advertised events in the LFUCG parks, which I am almost certain they are selectively enforcing on us and pretty much nobody else. I don't have $500 to shell out and a few hours of time to spend jumping through hoops every time we want to have an open carry picnic.
This time, a date was selected well in advance, and I emailed 77 friends I thought would like to attend the open carry picnic. A lot of you guys are friends, but unfortunately we interact on this forum and I don't have your email addresses in my address book. I kept intending to send private message invitations via Opencarry.org, but last week was the senate primary election and I slept 3-4 hours a night, and by the time I make 20 minutes to send invitations, it was the morning of the event. Yes, that's shameful, and I publicly apologize.
The picnic was good. I did see some woman taking pictures of us, but she seemed to be taking pictures of everyone in the park. It seems that the folks in the park aren't bothered by us. We had a couple of positive inquiries, and I didn't hear any negative comments or see any derisive or concerned stares.
These open carry picnics are always low key and relaxing events. Open carry activists tend to be smart and interesting people. We always form spontaneous groups of 2-5 people and the discussions are very diverse - some serious gun nut stuff, the politics of the day, history, monetary policy... you name it.
I think this was our third or fourth open carry picnic and a lot of the details are well established, so it's not difficult to have a picnic. Nor should it be. We do need to overcome this prohibition on publicly advertising the event that makes it much more difficult to promote the picnics and restrict the picnic attendence to 10-20 people.
I assume nobody wants to fight city hall on this. If we did, we should probably file a Freedom Of Information Act request for the records that would indicate that all publicly advertised events in the parks have a million dollar liability insurance policy. I know that's not the case, and it'd be obvious that they're discriminating against us as a premeditated attempt to deny us of one of our most basic rights. It's a fight worth fighting, but I'm just not up for it.
One simpler solution might be to have all of my open carry activist friends make certain that I have your email address so I can more easily send a picnic invitation, and I could structure that emailed invitation so you could cut and paste it and email it to your gun rights activist friends, and we could have an email tree. This event will never grow as long as it's restricted to my immediate circle of friends. At Sunday's picnic, there was only one person who was invited by someone other than me.
Another suggestion I heard was to have open carry picnics as regularly recurring events. They could be something like the 3rd Saturday or Sunday of every month between March and October at 3:00 PM, and if the weather looks nasty, everyone could decide for themselves whether they wanted to skip it or not. I'm afraid that schedule would be posted on a public forum by someone who didn't know about the illogical LFUCG rule and we'd accidentally be in violation.
Does anyone have any other ideas we should discuss?
Sorry I let you guys down on the notification this time. We'll have at least a couple of more OC picnics this summer and fall, and hey, isn't it time for someone to plan another open carry breakfast?
I'm also planning an Open Carry Adopt-A-Highway litter pickup on Richmond Road soon. I'm way behind on those. Anyone interested? Let me know. I can publicly advertise that event. When we have a date, I'll post it on the website.
http://www.GunsAndGarbage.com
I realize this sounds a lot like, "You weren't there. Neener neener neener."
That's definitely not my intent. I want to discuss solutions to the LFUCG rule requiring a million dollars in liability insurance for all publicly advertised events in the LFUCG parks, which I am almost certain they are selectively enforcing on us and pretty much nobody else. I don't have $500 to shell out and a few hours of time to spend jumping through hoops every time we want to have an open carry picnic.
This time, a date was selected well in advance, and I emailed 77 friends I thought would like to attend the open carry picnic. A lot of you guys are friends, but unfortunately we interact on this forum and I don't have your email addresses in my address book. I kept intending to send private message invitations via Opencarry.org, but last week was the senate primary election and I slept 3-4 hours a night, and by the time I make 20 minutes to send invitations, it was the morning of the event. Yes, that's shameful, and I publicly apologize.
The picnic was good. I did see some woman taking pictures of us, but she seemed to be taking pictures of everyone in the park. It seems that the folks in the park aren't bothered by us. We had a couple of positive inquiries, and I didn't hear any negative comments or see any derisive or concerned stares.
These open carry picnics are always low key and relaxing events. Open carry activists tend to be smart and interesting people. We always form spontaneous groups of 2-5 people and the discussions are very diverse - some serious gun nut stuff, the politics of the day, history, monetary policy... you name it.
I think this was our third or fourth open carry picnic and a lot of the details are well established, so it's not difficult to have a picnic. Nor should it be. We do need to overcome this prohibition on publicly advertising the event that makes it much more difficult to promote the picnics and restrict the picnic attendence to 10-20 people.
I assume nobody wants to fight city hall on this. If we did, we should probably file a Freedom Of Information Act request for the records that would indicate that all publicly advertised events in the parks have a million dollar liability insurance policy. I know that's not the case, and it'd be obvious that they're discriminating against us as a premeditated attempt to deny us of one of our most basic rights. It's a fight worth fighting, but I'm just not up for it.
One simpler solution might be to have all of my open carry activist friends make certain that I have your email address so I can more easily send a picnic invitation, and I could structure that emailed invitation so you could cut and paste it and email it to your gun rights activist friends, and we could have an email tree. This event will never grow as long as it's restricted to my immediate circle of friends. At Sunday's picnic, there was only one person who was invited by someone other than me.
Another suggestion I heard was to have open carry picnics as regularly recurring events. They could be something like the 3rd Saturday or Sunday of every month between March and October at 3:00 PM, and if the weather looks nasty, everyone could decide for themselves whether they wanted to skip it or not. I'm afraid that schedule would be posted on a public forum by someone who didn't know about the illogical LFUCG rule and we'd accidentally be in violation.
Does anyone have any other ideas we should discuss?
Sorry I let you guys down on the notification this time. We'll have at least a couple of more OC picnics this summer and fall, and hey, isn't it time for someone to plan another open carry breakfast?
I'm also planning an Open Carry Adopt-A-Highway litter pickup on Richmond Road soon. I'm way behind on those. Anyone interested? Let me know. I can publicly advertise that event. When we have a date, I'll post it on the website.
http://www.GunsAndGarbage.com