Open Carry demonstrates nothing other than you can scare people.
How?
You start a good PR campaign. Begin with free gun safety classes for kids. Promote then through the private schools first. More likely to have conservative business owner parents.
Then get media involved. First find the most conservative MSM in town. Probably the local Fox affiliate.
Be prepared for lots of flak. Counter it with education, not Wyatt Earp.
There is much more you can do, and win, but scareing the hell out of people is not how to do it.
Got news for ya - those who are “scared” about open carry or concealed carry will not be moved by your “education”.
>>So, how do you convince people that concealed carry or open carry is safe unless you demonstrate that it is safe?
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>Open Carry demonstrates nothing other than you can scare people.
Really? Then the open-carry environment at basic training demonstrates only that our armed forces have the ability to “be scary.” Obviously.
Prior to Basic, I had absolutely NO experience with firearms; today I find them fairly natural and have no animosity towards the tool. And virtually ALL of my past decade’s experience with firearms is from military training; I only got into private firearms the last year or so of my enlistment, after being deployed to Iraq.
But maybe you’ll say that the military is different, or that it, as my introduction to firearms, makes my experience invalid as anecdotal evidence that much of the fear of firearms is resultant of ignorance thereof.
Open carry demonstrations are certainly a way to alleviate some of that ignorance.
>How?
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>You start a good PR campaign.
Question: how is a PR campaign of more substance than actual experience? That is, if you were on a jury hearing the testimony of someone who only “heard about” ‘people with guns’ versus a testimony by someone who interacted with ‘people with guns’ who would you be inclined to believe? {Here’s a hint, the former is called ‘hearsay’ and is inadmissible in a court of law.}
>Begin with free gun safety classes for kids. Promote then through the private schools first. More likely to have conservative business owner parents.
Again, this is EXPERIENCE, not PERCEPTION which you are advocating.
>Then get media involved. First find the most conservative MSM in town. Probably the local Fox affiliate.
Really, do we really want the media involved? Isn’t that the thing that is “making people wet themselves” over open carry right now? The media is _NOT_ your friend, they do not want “good, happy endings” they want “SENSATIONAL NEWS STORIES!!” Isn’t it their hearsay on ‘guns are evil’ that is saturating the country? {Along with the school-systems it makes for a very good social indoctrination/engineering program.}