Miguel and I have our disagreements on things. He is kind enough to let me write for him despite that.
One of those topics is open carry.
My understanding of Miguel’s position on open carry is absolutely VERBOTEN!!! (Miguel, correct me if I’m wrong)
To be fair to him Florida is a concealed carry state, and when they say concealed they mean concealed. To the degree that the way the law was originally written, if you bent over to get something off the bottom shelf or tie your shoe and the muzzle of your pistol peeked out from under your cover garment, you were in violation. That’s how it was when I got my FL CWP for the first time when I was 21. Florida had to change their CCW laws because it was so strict.
I had my CCW in Illinois, I got it within six months of the law going into effect, and Illinois was even more strict about peeking and printing than Florida was.
Alabama is an open carry state, and it took me a long time to warm to the idea of open carry. I still don’t fully open carry, but if it’s hot and I’m wearing strong side, I don’t worry too much if I’m running errands with two inches of pistol sticking out from under my t-shirt. The fact is that in Huntsville, nobody cares about that in most places. I can go to Lowes or Home Depot, Kroger and Wal-Mart (try enforcing that corporate policy in Alabama, see how well that goes) and there will be at least two or three people doing the same thing.
I wouldn’t do that if I went to a fancy restaurant at the nice outdoor mall in town, but in shorts going to Sam’s Club, nobody cares.
The reason I warmed to that was that it’s more comfortable, especially in the Alabama heat, so it makes it easier to carry.
Where I agree with Miguel that open carry is stupid and a bad idea is when it comes to guys walking around with a slung rifle or going out in a tactical thigh holster (yes, I’ve seen that in Huntsville).
My feeling on open carry is “don’t be an obnoxious dick.” Unfortunately, that cannot be codified into law. So as long as open carry is legal, there are people who will be dicks while open carrying.
Thus bringing us to this article from Slate.
They are not wrong.
On Aug. 3, a 21-year-old Texas man shot 46 people in an El Paso Walmart with a semi-automatic rifle, killing 22 of them. On Aug. 8, a 20-year-old man wearing body armor and carrying a semi-automatic rifle entered a Walmart in Springfield, Missouri, in what police say he intended as a “social experiment” to see if the store would honor the state’s open-carry law in the wake of the El Paso killings.
This guy went out after a mass shooting, where half of everyone was screaming for more gun control and decided to be a Dirk Diggler size cock.
The experiment got results. After shoppers panicked and a store employee pulled a fire alarm to trigger an evacuation, the man—his name is Dmitriy Andreychenko—was arrested and charged with making a terrorist threat; prosecutors argue that he recklessly disregarded the possibility that his actions would cause dangerous chaos. If you’ve been following the rise of politically motivated “tactical” open-carry culture in the last six or so years, what happened next was surprising: Walmart—and a number of its competitors, like Kroger, Wegmans, CVS, and Walgreens—have announced that they are “requesting” or “asking” customers not to display firearms in their stores even in states where the practice is legal.
This guy’s utter dick behavior ruined open carry for the rest of us.
Whether these people like it or not, every time they open carry, they represent the whole of the open AND concealed carry community. When they act like dicks, the rest of the population assumes we’re all dicks, and we lose our rights.
I’m not sure how to convey to these people that “yes, you have the right, but when you do it like that, you scare other people and then we have to pay the price for your dick move.”
A consistent theme that I post on is minority groups in which the most aggressively obnoxious and off-putting members become the loudest and most visible representatives of the group, and how that backfires and hurts the group.
The carry community is no different. We are a minority. We need to be better to be accepted. The fact the CCW permit holders have a criminality rate way below average really helps us. We need to police ourselves so that our most obnoxious and off-putting members don’t become the face of our community.
Every person who cares about gun rights needs to understand this very simple rule: “don’t be THAT guy who screws it up for the rest of us because you just had to be a dick about ‘muh rights.'”
We used to have “that guy” here. His name was Leonard. His shtick was to find a really, reaaaaaaly obscure firearms law, and then go to the absolute extreme with it with the intent of suing law enforcement. He always strictly followed the letter of the law, which lead the citizens of Tennessee into some weird and dangerous territory around the NFA because of the reactions he got from officials.
He finally stopped when a judge essentially said “you know what? Let’s let a jury figure out who is right here” and the dude spent a year with multiple felony charges and a jury trial over his head. The charges were eventually (and legally correctly) dropped, but he hasn’t been heard from since.
Carry in my state use to be a bit more difficult in d**k cities. If you were carrying concealed and printed, you might find yourself in cuffs because “stuff”. A few years ago a guy was in a bookstore shopping. He was in a safe place, let his situational awareness drop a little bit.
A shopper saw his firearm because he’d taken off his wind breaker. Cops get called. Cops act like d**ks. He sees them coming, doesn’t worry about it because cops ain’t bad guys. Next thing he knows he’s on the ground in cuffs ’cause stuff.
In other parts of the state, that would not have happened. He wasn’t being obnoxious, he was just browsing. Shoppers, cops over reacted and a bad time was had by all.
Laws change, now we are constitutional carry. Nobody cares. I’ve not seen a single person say anything to an open carry of a pistol. Nobody cares when they see somebody walking the roads with a rifle. Nobody cares, except in those d**k cities.
It helps because sometimes you do print, and it would be nice if that did not result in being hassled. That said, the people that tacti-cool go into place just to get a reaction are getting reactions I wish they didn’t get.
Having said that, I have an invite in hand to a “open-carry wedding” where the bride and groom have explicitly requested that everybody open carry. One of the brides maids is looking at getting a scary black rifle, just for the wedding.
“My understanding of Miguel’s position on open carry is absolutely VERBOTEN!!! (Miguel, correct me if I’m wrong)”
My standing: I personally won’t do OC for the element of surprise. I do support it because of the problems we had in Florida with certain departments (coughBSOcough) being dicks about accidental exposure.
Personal opinion follows: I don’t open carry even though it is permissable in my state. Because A. it scares grandma and B. It gives away my tactical advantage. Having said that I usually thank and congratulate anyone I see open carrying for the stand they are making in regards to the Constitution. There have been several good conversations resulting from those interactions. I am not trying to make a point with those people but sometimes they may gain some insight.
Here in my state open carry is legal. In my 30- plus years of living here I have actually seen two men open carry, one at a convenience store, with a 1911 in a shoulder holster, over a tee shirt, and once in Walmart by a “yute” with a couple of giggly girls by his side, and a semi-auto pistol of some sort OWB, with a holster that had a mag pouch as part of the holster.
Just two.
So, it’s not that common, but my point is: nobody noticed or cared! The tee shirt guy was standing in the checkout line, and three or four people behind him. Very obvious OC, and no reaction. Same with the “yute” who, with the cute giggler girls, was not exactly low profile. But nobody cared.
But, a tacticool ass with body armor and slung rifle at ready carry, THAT’S going to get attention. Attention we do not want. When are these idiots going to get it?
BTW, I’m with Miggy on this, my personal preference is good concealment. But accidentally printing is not a crime here.
I have a friend that got the briefing at the local Wally World about how to handle OC.
“If you see somebody open carrying, treat it like you would a service animal. It is working! You don’t touch it, you don’t pet it, you don’t stare at it. You treat it just like you would a service animal.”
They get a boat load of training in how to handle service animals. It is big deal because of the laws about discriminating against disabled people.
I think that is the best briefing I’ve heard about how to interact with OC.
For me, I have a friend that OCs all the time. The last time out he was talking about how he wanted to be more gray man. So I told him to start carrying concealed. I think he might, or at least stop advertising.
We were at a VFW event. He’s been at the sharp end, but then so have all of these dudes as well. Some of them in Korea, some in Vietnam, and one or two very old gentlemen in WWII. Him OCing to tell others “back the f*** off, I’m bigger and badder than you.” is just a laugh in that environment.
And I know that every person that saw that OC and carries had already put the flag up in their head as “There is potential there”.
In my house, I don’t care if you OC. If I’m having a get together, I’ll ask people that are OCing to cover it. Just because I do have people that don’t know how to deal with OC.
Sigh. What a tool. I’ve been open carrying for years in Wichita, and received one very polite negative comment, vs twenty or so positive ones. I even had a nice conversation with a police officer, where I told him one of my reasons for open carry was to let people see you COULD carry a gun and not be a dick. He agreed with me. But like I learned when I left college for the working world, a single “Aw shit” cancels out a thousand “Great job”s. And mister rifle-carrying tool is that “Aw Shit”.