Open carry is now legal in Texas. I have the feeling it is coming to Florida pretty soon.
I’m not a big fan of open carry for several reasons, but I’m not going to get into that right now.
It has been just about 36 hours since open carry went into effect and the streets of Texas have run red with blood nothing bad has happened. You wouldn’t know that from all the hand-wringing about open carry:
Well let me bestow upon those concerned, a little bit of advice:
“If you see a guy with a gun on his hip, as long as that gun stays in it’s holster, your’e fine.”
That goes for those with concealed carry permits too. It’s really not that hard to understand.
I’ll get into it so far as to say that I think that the legality of open carry and advisability of open carry are two separate issues. I have no more problems with the legality of open carrying than I do for the open carrying of any other legal to possess item.
It’s almost been 6 years since constitutional carry was signed into law in AZ (open or concealed, it doesn’t matter) and most of the violent crime has continued it’s downward trend; the only exception is that rape has increased. Gotta get more of the women out to the range and into the gun shops.
I’ll never understand the “we don’t know who’s a threat” junk.
Someone who is a threat could also just as easily conceal it…and you still wouldn’t know who’s a threat. Do you freak out over everyone you see WITHOUT a pistol on their hip, because the COULD be a threat that has a pistol hidden somewhere?
The reality is that you’ll never know when anyone is a threat until they actually do something threatening. This is NOT SPECIFIC TO OPEN CARRY. It’s life in general. Deal with it.
I remember when carrying a concealed firearm was considered proof of a nefarious purpose and devious mind.
But that was long ago, when it was still somewhat fashionable to be openly armed.
It fell out of fashion before it was made illegal. There’s a cautionary tale there, I’m sure.
There seems a large contingent opposed to open carry’s return that sounds more like they’re concerned about fashion than anything practical.
People being unaccustomed to seeing openly carried arms won’t change until there’s arms openly carried for them to get accustomed to. After a while, it will be a non-event and people will wonder why it was ever banned in the first place.
I wonder if OC in the old days was as widespread as we think it was. Sure, the cowboy on the open range would very likely have a Peacemaker on the hip, but was it really considered normal for the regular person going about their normal business to do likewise?
Probably not. I would suggest the mindset of the earlier generations was based on “what do you need a (particular gun) for?” modern Fudds are so fond of.
As a youthful Fudd I was in the habit of carrying a rifle on my shoulder walking down the public roads to my favorite squirrel hunting grounds. On occasion an adult would indeed stop me . . . to tell me that I was a sign that America’s youth had not gone completely to hell.
I might also carry a pistol, often in my hand, not holster, to go do a bit of mindless plinking or picking off rats at the dump. I can’t recall anyone even giving me a take, never mind giving me any grief over it.
Not only did nobody get upset about a Man With A Gun, they didn’t get upset about a CHILD With A Gun.
I bought my firearms myself. Cash. Over the counter. No ID.
Kids ran the streets with realistic looking BB 1911’s and Lugers.
Most Fudds had at least one, not too terribly out of date , semi auto battle rifle. They were cheaper than a good hunting rifle. The government was damned near giving them away to anyone who wanted one.
You clearly do not understand how casual people generally were about firearms, not in the empty old west, but in living memory in the well settled north east and, as the OP states, it was the concealed carrier who was considered as obviously up to no good. Otherwise, why would he conceal his weapon? That’s the behaviour of the scoundrel and the assassin.
Actually I do- and yes, a kid taking his .22 to school because he needed to go hunting, or target shooting after was rightfully seen as a normal thing- which goes back to the “need” idea.
Ponder why GunCulture 1.0 was pretty willing to allow the Miller decision in 1934- who besides gangsters needed sawed-off shotguns, machine guns, or silencers was the common thinking of the time. A time when gun ownership and regular use was more widespread.
As McThang said, OC’ing a pistol was legal, but not fashionable for regular life in general.
Because it was fashion, there were places you wore a gun and places that you didn’t.
If you needed a handy gun, it was fashionable to wear it. Around the cattle profession guns were worn openly and commonly. Around railroad work, not so much.
Most of the time it was considered bad manners to wear in town, and that’s were the famous ordinance in Tombstone originates. Making law to force manners on the unruly folks shooting the place up. At least that’s the face put on it, the Earps might have had ulterior motives.
And it’s nothing new and unique to America. Wearing swords was once fashionable too, and the swords carried were near useless as weapons in some places.
Smallswords (the 18th century dueling sword) were pretty much useless except against other smallswords. Rapiers, OTOH, are possibly the most versatile swords ever invented; I prefer longsword myself, but concede that a good rapierist will usually beat a good longswordman.
Like kfg, I recall in my youth, at least when spending summers down in southern Illinois as opposed to my regular Chicago suburban home, my cousins and I would walk the town with our rifles and shotguns, nobody said a word, as long as you were carrying them right (not muzzling people, etc). My first encounter with someone carrying concealed was at a gamecon when I was 14. playing a naval miniatures competition,m one of the guys reached across the table to make his move and his shirt rode up a bit revealing a gun holstered on his back. I was momentarily stunned. been around guns all my life but I never saw anyone carry concealed before. but that lasted all of about 20 seconds, then I went on to sink all of his transport ships and half the destroyer escort to win.
Not a fan of open carry in general, at least the way some people do it now, but I get it.
Iowa doesn’t have concealed carry. It’s always just been a carry state open or concealed. I open carry if I’m going to the range and when I stop to get a drink, no one bats a eye. Every now and then I see other open carries and the only thought I have is “what are they carrying”.
I think common sense would tell you that if it is not pulled out and pointing at you then you are probably pretty safe.I think such fear of the sight of something is ridiculous.