This is always an interesting question to me.
A person slinging a military style rifle would provoke this reaction in me:
"He is trying to make a political point."
Nothing more.
This would have been true before I owned guns as well. Nor do I see making a political point a bad thing. Of all the ludicrous things anti-gun people try to argue for, the idea that not seeing a gun is somehow desirable - that asking to be made ignorant about the fact that people are armed all around them - seems particularly childish. It is like an infant who believes his daddy disappears when he ducks below the field of vision.
So then there is the general public. And we know that a lot of them are going to get their panties in a bunch about it. But the same public gets their panties in a bunch about handguns, which we're all about here.
So my question is whether or not carrying a military style rifle - black rifle - has any kind of specific impact on the open carry movement that carrying a handgun doesn't. Most people don't carry big rifles around town for any purpose but making a point. I am sure there are exceptions to this.
I wouldn't do it, but then again I'm not a big fan of those kinds of rifles as a matter of personal aesthetics (got nothing against anyone owning them at all, even slightly). For me, a handgun is the "right tool for the job" in terms of self-defense, especially in urban and suburban environments.
I question whether the ambivalent or anti-gun public is significantly moved either way by the choice of weapon people carry around. I am open to the possibility that carrying rifles around winds people up in ways which are detrimental to rights but I'd need to see some kind of study on it.
However, it is not also possible that getting people used to seeing black rifles, that they will be completely desensitized to handguns?
I'm not sure.
It probably is true that a lot of people who carry black rifles around have a "look at me!" attitude. But this is not the same as being a teenage drama queen either. It is saying, "Look at me. I carry this rifle and yet I am a threat to no one because I am a rational human being, and this is just a hunk of plastic and metal."
When we open carry, there are multiple contexts and purposes involved. One is to make a political statement - a sort of (forgive me for this) "coming out of the closet" display of exercising one's rights, and the second is for practical or tactical reasons.
It is important that we do not confuse the two.
I just don't like the conformity a lot of people seem to suggest is desirable here, not only in terms of the guns we carry, but how we dress and so on. If I have to dress a certain way, select a weapon from an approved list, and answer "yes ma'am" and "no ma'am" to every question to make an impression, this is like begging society for my rights, as opposed to begging the government for my rights.
Now that being said, I am generally "acceptable" in public when I carry by personal style and choice. I think overall I'm a pretty nice guy, because I like being that way.
But it is important to me that we don't get bogged down in pretending to be scoutmasters every time we're out and about - unless we actually are scoutmasters (or scoutmaster like), or choose to be.
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