Media feeding frenzy over open carry guns in restaurants much ado about nothing

Fox News ^ | June 03, 2014 | john Lott

[USNBandit]

Laurel and Hardy in the above picture are walking around with their hands on the gun ready to go. What equals a deadly threat to you? Is it when they point the gun at you? Not me. It is when somebody produces a weapon and has the means to use it.

If a concealed carry person shot one of these morons it wouldn't matter what the legal aftermath would be. The Bloomberg people would be celebrating a great political victory.

[21twelve]

“It is when somebody produces a weapon and has the means to use it.”

Context is everything, although the skinny guy is, to me, “brandishing” (but with another guy that isn't, and posing for the camera with a stupid grin, so probably not a threat). But obviously you do not mean when you are out hunting (although there was that crazy Hmong hunter in Minnesota that shot a bunch of other hunters), or at the range (where rare shootings have also occurred). And certainly not in Israel standing next to some gal in a bikini at the ice cream shop with her M-16 slung over her shoulder. Which brings me to the point - in Israel nobody gives a second glance probably. Of course they are probably in the military. But the point is that the weapons are part of their culture. And a safe part.

So while some of these guys don't help the cause, the idea that “guns are bad and evil” needs to be overturned in the mind of the public. Responsible people carrying responsibly is their means of promoting that. And I guess that is where we will all have different levels of “responsibly”.

Visible or not visible?
Licensed or unlicensed.
Mandated training or not.
Etc.

Liberals see a pistol on a holster and freak out and call the cops and complain of “brandishing”.

Oh, and there is that Second Amendment thingy.

BTW - you do have good company with Ronald Reagan. In seeing the Black Panthers on parades with their shotguns and rifles he called for the laws to ban open carry in California. And I imagine one could follow all of the numerous additional laws back to that.

[William Tell]

There was a time not many generations ago that carrying a concealed weapon was the act of a criminal attempting to get an undeserved advantage.

Now that thinking, apart from the anti-gun paradises in the nation, is out-of-fashion. Now it is thought by some that it is the open carry of arms which is provocative and should be prohibited.

Whichever fashion is preferred it ought to be obvious to those who truly support RKBA that all forms of carry should be protected, supported, and encouraged and NEVER infringed.

[Deagle]

Well, after much thought, I disagree. There is a problem with obvious carrying for effect, and it should not be done. Now if the problem was a major problem with that, then maybe..but that is not the case here.

Carrying for a specific purpose, okay, but for purposes of trying to effect carry regulations...no, it is just antagonistic.