Posted on 04/29/2010 10:38:21 AM PDT by AJKauf
Open carry advocates, as a gun rights subgroup, are the continuing negligent political discharge of the shooting community. Their disastrous nationwide campaign to normalize the open carrying of firearms alienates Americans from coast to coast, even among those who champion the concealed carry of weapons.
You only need to look at examples of the media incompetence of these groups in the past year to understand how this theoretically pro-gun movement has managed to cause the public to recoil in horror and actually set the movement back on its heels. It is enough to make you wonder if the group isn’t the operation that “Crash the Tea Party” wanted to be, executed by the otherwise inept anti-gun harpies.
Other than small-scale displays primarily consumed by the local news, the open carry movement is known to most people for precisely two awkward public displays: an August 17, 2009, protest in Phoenix and one this past Sunday on the Potomac’s Virginia shores....
(Excerpt) Read more at pajamasmedia.com ...
Perhaps not, but they will call their state reps and senators and get open carry declared illegal ASAP.
Open Carry demos are simply stupid.
agree to disagree.
In case I didn’t make it clear, my remarks were not primarily about individuals choosing to open carry in their private lives. This gets little publicity and unless it becomes a lot more common than it has, is well below most people’s radar.
I was referencing the mass armed protests that have occurred in the last few months, which I believe severely damaging politically to the 2nd Amendment rights cause. I’ve spoken to perhaps a dozen people recently about the issue, from all varieties of political belief. Every single one of them was aghast that this was happening and thought it showed the fanaticism of the gun rights people. Not a representative sample, of course, but interesting.
YMMV
>One other thing. If you advocate completely Open Carry, then you are defending the “rights” of a convicted child molester to follow your 8 year old daughter or granddaughter home from her school bus stop, with a pistol in his hand, as long as he stays on public property, such as a sidewalk, and there is NOTHING you can do about it.
Interesting position; I reject it. A child molester who has served their sentence should have ALL rights and privileges restored, period. {Whether or not the sentence is just is another, separate matter.} So, in that sense I _MUST_ be for the ex-convict being allowed to be armed, true.
HOWEVER, stalking IS illegal; and you have attached that into your scenario. Why should my advocacy of human rights, such as self defense, be linked to the condoning of a crime?
I don’t think we want to “brandish” our firearms. All (not most, not 99%, but all) of the gun owners I know are responsible, trained, and reasonable.
You carry a firearm as insurance. If it is there, you probably won’t need it. When you are being sized up by a criminal, they will move on down the food chain. They won’t want to mess with someone that will give them any trouble.
Gun owners are not nuts.
People with an unreasonable fear of firearms, brought about by the movies and TV culture, are nuts.
Walking down the sidewalk behind someone, with no communication of a threat or verbal contact, hardly constitutes stalking.
>>So, how do you convince people that concealed carry or open carry is safe unless you demonstrate that it is safe?
>
>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?
>
>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.}
I have not expressed an opinion on open carry.
Oh, you didn't? I must be illiterate then. I'm sure you didn't here either. Where did we get the idea that you want to force others to give up their right to openly carry? I don't know, how about your outrageous comparison to the pro-life movement?
One does not convince people by scareing them.
As I've said countless times, but you choose to ignore, my job is complete when I can go anywhere with my Glock on my hip and I don't scare them. That doesn't happen by hiding it. It happens by openly carrying to the point that it's an everyday thing.
And as for your "if the people have rights, they will abuse them, therefore they shouldn't have rights" crap, OneWingedShark did a phenomenal job of debunking it in post #125, so I'll defer to him.
You sound like a totalitarian. If you don't like it, no one should be able to. And before you snidely dismiss me as "wrong," let's take a look at your phrasing, shall we?
If you advocate completely Open Carry
What's the opposite of "completely Open Carry"? Open Carry for cops only? For the privileged? Or for a ban on open carry?
I'd just like one example of this happening.
I don't care if you are "intimidated". It's a RIGHT.
You need to figure out what that means instead of trying to weasel your way around to supporting gun control.
This. I don't know why this is so hard for those on here that want to revoke our Open Carry rights (there, I said it. There is at least one person on this post that would gladly revoke that right).
They keep shouting "tactical! concealed" element of surprise!" but it's totally bogus. They cannot point to one story of an open carrier being attacked, either with his or someone else's weapon.
Adjustable for clip on, belt slide, and cant. Also has a passive resistance adjustment screw.
A good belt and a light cover garment and I forget I'm carrying a full sized pistol.
I've been to a couple of open carry picnics. Good folks for the most part. These events are good as the "public" sees folks exercising their Rights peacefully, we get a boost from being around like minded folks, and freedom gains a little of it's lost ground back.
It's all worth being called a few names by the anti-gun pols, their media lapdogs, and the outright p*ssies on "our" side of the political fence.
Hoplophobes.
>In case I didn’t make it clear, my remarks were not primarily about individuals choosing to open carry in their private lives. This gets little publicity and unless it becomes a lot more common than it has, is well below most people’s radar.
Then how would you suggest to put it on people’s radar?
>I was referencing the mass armed protests that have occurred in the last few months,
Isn’t the individual the weakest group? What is the fundamental difference between a peaceful armed individual and a peaceful armed group? Is it merely the number involved? If that is the case, what is the number where that change occurs: 500? 100? 50? 10? 5? 2?
>which I believe severely damaging politically to the 2nd Amendment rights cause.
What about state rights, as in the State Constitution I mentioned in an earlier post? It clearly states that counties and municipalities cannot “regulate, in any way, an incident of the right to keep and bear arms.” So, if such a rally were denied on the city-level on the grounds that it might frighten someone [”public disturbance”] simply because firearms were involved is ILLEGAL; in this case the only way to tell if the city is following the law is to try to do what is legally permitted and see if they try to stop you.
Now, having recognized that, what of the case where a county or city IS regulating [incidents of] the right to keep and bear arms? How would you go about seeking redress?
>I’ve spoken to perhaps a dozen people recently about the issue, from all varieties of political belief. Every single one of them was aghast that this was happening and thought it showed the fanaticism of the gun rights people.
Kind of like how the SWAT team being called out on the bunch of granny Tea Party-types proves that they are nothing more than barely restrained, violent, seditionists? You know, the incident where they looked like they would have given the SWAT team cookies and milk in the EVIL PLOT to fatten them to the point where they ARE NO LONGER ABLE TO BE POLICE!! *GASP*
[/ridicule]
>Not a representative sample, of course, but interesting.
Indeed. I think it is more indicative of the widespread ignorance of guns than anything else; and the sample is quite small. If we were going on small samples, the one, and ONLY, time I have had a problem open carrying in a restaurant is after picking up a rifle (.22/.410 double barrel over-under) and went into Burger King for lunch as it was about noon. I ordered, with the rifle in my hands, got the food, sat at the table, ate and read a portion of a book before an employee confronted me about it. They said that the gun was scaring people and that it was illegal for me to have the gun in the restaurant. {As previously stated, my state Constitution PROHIBITS laws abridging the right to keep and bear arms for defense, AS WELL AS prohibiting the counties and cities from harassing people about exercising that right.}
So, my only experience with a problem in restaurants with open carry is that they are ignorant at best, liars at worst. Would it be just to characterize all restaurants that way, or even JUST Burger King? {BTW, I’ve open carried handguns in Burger King with no problem.}
>Walking down the sidewalk behind someone, with no communication of a threat or verbal contact, hardly constitutes stalking.
Then why should you be concerned at all?
>>And open carry just lets the criminal element target you before you are aware you are their target.
>
>I’d just like one example of this happening.
Columbine, Virginia Tech, the National Mall... ALL of the shooters took out the armed targets present first.
Ah, vacuously true statements; the key to winning any argument! ;)
You are zotted. I never argue with little people who just want to argue and drag you down to their level.
>You are zotted. I never argue with little people who just want to argue and drag you down to their level.
Says the guy who cannot coherently argue his point and relies only on the visceral emotionality of his presented scenarios?
(Or, how is using reasoning dragging you down to my level?)
I agree that I like to argue, in the philosophical sense, but since when has philosophy (the love of wisdom) become something of “the little people” to be so belittled?
Have you looked at his home page?
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