Posted on 12/28/2015 6:48:39 AM PST by Jed Eckert
On January 1, 2016, Texas will become the next state to allow licensed citizens to openly carry a handgun, this after Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a bill into law earlier this year that would allow Texans to open carry.
As is case with most similar laws, open carry in Texas will have some restrictions, as private businesses will have the right to ban people from flashing their weapon within their individual places of business.
Florida is right behind Texas.
The father and son legislative duo of Sen. Don Gaetz (R) and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R) have both sponsored open carry bills in their respective legislative chambers within the Florida legislature.
"Junior" Gaetz has seen his HB163 bill pass its first House committee, while papa Gaetz's SB300 bill has also made it through the House Justice Appropriations Subcommittee.
Expect Florida to become the next state after Texas to allow concealed carry license holders to openly carry.
Yeeehawwwww!!!!
>>they’ll have about 1/20 of a second to be very surprised, before they aren’t very anything.
Wow. You are quite the fast draw, especially from concealment! With speed like that, you definitely should keep carrying concealed. Nothing slows you down!
I like to teach people who think they are a gunslinger by setting up at the range, and then asking them to jog down the road and back. While they are gone, I move the targets around and when they get back,I hand them their gun and tell them to engage all the brown or white targets. They quickly learn that a rapid heart rate throws off all those fine motor skills that they practiced on the range.
Please go back and read my post #26 again. I was comparing the average rural sheriff to the average big-city police chief. Don't read more into it than is there.
Virginia has had open carry WITHOUT a permit since 1607. Some cities back in the day used to ban it, but that was relatively few cities and that went away a decade ago due to preemption.
OC is not a problem, and never has been. I prefer open carry and do so almost all the time when I do carry. It’s a complete nothing burger.
Actually, I’d wait until he was distracted so I could quietly draw without him noticing.
The 1/20 of the second is the time from when I draw his attention back to me and he sees me pointing my weapon at him..... until I pull the trigger.
Why the 1/20 second delay?
I want to see the terror in his eyes before he dies.
One great thing about a restaurant is, if you see something possibly starting, you can get weapon into hand, in lap, or even better, under napkin on table, and no one knows.
You’re completely wrong on open carry.
The “best” gunfight is one that never occurs in the first place. Most, but not all criminals are opportunists rather than psychopaths. They prey on those they perceive to be weak. An openly carried handgun sends an unmistakable message and the bulk of criminals are going to move on to easier pickings.
Second, I agree that concealed carry provides a tactical advantage over open carry. But that completely misses the point: open carry is all about strategy and strategic considerations, not tactics. The chances of being in a gunfight for a white middle class person who avoids problem areas is very remote. The bigger threat to our safety isn’t so much the criminals, it’s the sociopaths in government who want to ban guns. And they have their supporters in the general populace.
Open carry is important because it exposes the general populace regularly to guns and gun owners. And they didn’t die and weren’t hurt as a result: contrary to decades of propaganda saying otherwise. It puts that important element of doubt in the minds of those who might be susceptible to the gun banner arguments. There is even a name for it: the innoculation effect.
So in summary I would say this: if you are planning on finding yourself in a gunfight, then by all means conceal. Better still, avoid the situation entirely. If you’re in the more common situation of not being at particular risk, then open carry is a far better alternative. Not just for self defense, but for preserving your right to keep and bear arms.
>>I want to see the terror in his eyes before he dies.
Excellent!! You’ve obviously been in a lot of gunfights! My skills aren’t good enough for those kind of Josey Wales style luxuries.
>>Actually, I’d wait until he was distracted so I could quietly draw without him noticing.
But, even with your extensive gunfighting experience that gives you time to enjoy the 1/20 second pauses, I’d suggest that any plan that requires your enemy to do something is not a very good plan. No plan survives contact with the enemy. One that expects him to take a certain action is even less reliable.
>>One great thing about a restaurant is, if you see something possibly starting, you can get weapon into hand, in lap, or even better, under napkin on table, and no one knows.
If you maintain situational awareness with an eye for avoiding trouble, you’ll find that you can see most situations developing before they erupt into violence.
Obviously, a planned ambush is the exception. But you can even mitigate those by walking away from walls and vehicles, going wide around corners, staying at the edges of the light, keeping the phone out of your hands, walking with one hand free at all times, keeping your head on a swivel, etc. The best part is that predators recognize predators. They will always choose the easy target.
Gun fights? a few, Far NW corner of III Corps. A few decades ago.
The 1/20 of a second wasn’t a gun fight. Once in RVN was enough.... and it was with a Fairbairn-Sykes, not a pistol
These days, predators are pretty easy to pre-ID.
I’m at Orange anytime outside. Usually hand in pocket, on grip.
So we should follow your argument to its logical conclusion, and everybody over the age of 21, the sane and not inform, should open carry.
Gee, that will be great for the foreign tourist business at WDW.
>>These days, predators are pretty easy to pre-ID.
My point exactly. My open-carry gun won’t inspire a good young man to go Sudden Thug Syndrome, but it might inspire a bad one to go be a thug elsewhere. If that doesn’t deter him, then my open carry gun will be better for a gunfight than my small, single stack concealed weapon.
>>Gee, that will be great for the foreign tourist business at WDW.
Is that the value of the 2nd Amendment now? The foreign tourist trade at WDW?
The 2d Amendment is the RIGHT to do so.
Intelligence is the smartness not to.
And remember if you can, so can every street punk, child molester, Ward Churchill, etc.
The courts say Bill of Rights also gives me the right stand on the street corner and scream “Death to All Church Attendees”, or burn the Flag, or hit myself on the head with a ball peen hammer . I’m smart enough to not do those things either.
>>Intelligence is the smartness not to.
Well, you are not the final arbiter of what is “intelligent”. No one is forcing you to carry or not, or to carry concealed or openly. We all make our decisions, based on the facts and assumptions we choose to have.
I’m sure that the police in Florida will be checking for permits a lot if this open carry law actually passes and gets signed. I’m more concerned about the “are you detaining me?” folks causing trouble than I am the thugs who will suddenly realize what a gun-filled world they operate in. The “are you detaining me?” jackasses will be the ones to ruin this for all of us, not the thugs.
What exactly do they mean by “licensed gun owners”? There’s no gun registration in Florida. Does it mean you need a license to open carry like you do to carry concealed?
Poor journalism on the part of the reporter makes the title misleading. It simply means if you have a concealed carry permit you would also have the option for open carry subject to the same restrictions.
Some of the LEOs also want to add to the bill the provision that they can stop and question you based on reasonable suspicion rather than probable cause. Not necessarily a deal breaker but I tend to feel a bit uneasy about that part.
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