I found this article at the Christian Science Monitor site.
Excepting perhaps the use of the word "arsenal" I found the article well written, and nicely balanced. Good solid reporting, just as I'd expect from that publication (which is, admittedly, not nearly as libertarian as many here).
This topic has been debated a lot here and I don't intend to go through that all again.
I will simply observe that one's goal in OCing is to increase public/social acceptance of RKBA and thus advance the statutory respect for RKBA, I believe that is best accomplished by pushing the envelope gradually.
Charging past all social mores is likely not to be nearly as effective and might even lead to backlash.
There may well be places where OCing a rifle is only slightly beyond social norms. But in urban/suburban Utah, 4 or 5 men choosing to do so did not help us in some related legislative efforts. What should have been a 1 or 2 year effort to get some protections against bogus charges of Disorderly Conduct (along with several other catch all laws) for OCers turned into a 4 or 5 year fight because each year shortly before our legislative session there was a case of someone OCing a rifle around a shopping mall or something similar. Of course, the anti-gun media played these up. We were finally able to get protections for OCers whose guns are holstered. We haven't yet been able to successfully address some of the other laws (disrupting a school activity) that some entities have threatened against lawful OCers.
If someone is just going to do something because it is legal and he can, so be it. But he shouldn't pretend or claim that his conduct is advance RKBA if that conduct is not helping with social or legal advances.
We used to see gun owners on here frequently quoting Heinlein on good manners and polite society. And I've never read anyone willing to disparage his words. But since I've pointed out that Heinlein's charge imposes at least as much obligation on those who carry guns as it does on those who don't, he has become a lot less popular it seems. It is easy to declare that others' feelings are not a mortgage on our rights. But Heinlein's words remind us that the total situation is a bit more complicated than that and that we do have some obligation to consider our manners.
"An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life."
--Robert A. Heinlein
Charles
