Speaking only for myself, if I saw someone open-carrying a holstered handgun my presumption would be that they have a carry permit and are promoting carry by public example. If I saw someone carrying a slung assault rifle I would assume that they were the extreme fringe of this movement- perhaps a bit of jerk but probably harmless. If they were carrying a handgun or a rifle at the ready, then I would be worried.
The whole point of the open-carry movement is to abolish the idea that gun carrying is an implicit threat. I wouldn’t mind in the least if everyone carried.
And that sums up how I feel, only better said. Except the guy with the holstered handgun might not have a permit (doesn’t need one) and might just be carrying a gun for self defense, not to set an example.
And not giving them the benefit of the doubt about it is just part of basic gun safety. To wit:
Any firearm should always be presumed to be loaded;
Any firearm pointed at a person should always be presumed to be an immediate danger;
Any stranger seen in public with a firearm, unless they are obviously carrying it as a routine part of their professional duties or obviously engaged in shooting-sports activities, should be presumed to be dangerous due to malice or incompetence or both.
If open-carry advocates want to carry guns around in public places where they are legally permitted to do so, that’s up to them. But they are arrogant idiots if they expect people who don’t know them from Adam to put any faith in their good intentions and their competence while doing so.
And dismissing that reasonable distrust as some kind of “irrational fear of guns” just makes them look clueless as well as arrogant. No, I am not afraid of guns per se. I simply have no a priori reason to assume that [generic] you, a total stranger whom I know nothing about, can be trusted to handle one safely. Not giving you the benefit of the doubt on that is simply common sense.
The more I think about it, the more I’m sure this is an irrational fear of guns, and mostly a city-people thing. You ARE afraid of guns, as much as you try to deny it.
I see people with guns all the time, and people see me. (Almost) nobody freaks out.
I had a remodeler in the house the other day to look at my master bath. Walked right by my shotgun, hanging on my bedroom wall. Neither of even blinked. Thinking “Oh no! What if the home improvement guy grabs my gun and shoots me in the back!?!”: that’s is irrational.
My barber open carries, until he puts his smock on. Nobody in his shop is worried. I suspect most of his customers feel a little safer.
I meet people frequently in the out-of-doors; on the trail, at the river, at the lake, in the woods. Many are armed, including me. Rarely a concern.*
*Except that one time, at the Medicine Bow Peak trailhead, where I had a pleasant talk with a father and son for 10 or 15 minutes. They were about to go up, too. Then I put on my pack, took my revolver and holster out of the truck, turned around and they were gone. Saw the gun, freaked, and left. That is irrational.
This whole idea that anybody that has a gun (but only one you can see) probably means you harm is just weird. And a little bit chickenshit, too.
In that case, I suggest that your reaction is due to poor risk assessment. Also, seeing a soldier with a gun should alarm you, since that’s not supposed to happen under any normal circumstance.
What? :dubious:
I think the statistics are against you. When was the last time you heard of a criminal carrying a gun openly? Especially in a context where it will tend to draw attention? Their MO is usually a pistol hidden in the jacket pocket or the waistband until the moment they’re ready to rob the bank/convenience store/your grandma.
And if it didn’t seem like the only purpose of those evaluations was to screen out applicants who are too intelligent and civic-minded, I would agree with you.
When I defend peaceable open carry, I’m not talking about these guys. I question their sanity too.
Which brings me back to my original point… There is no logical reason for anyone to openly carry a gun in their everyday life. In a community where most of the people DON’T do that, it’s simply obnoxious.
Ok, you can be afraid of soldiers carrying guns. I’ll be afraid of identified people carrying guns.
You’re talking RATIONAL criminals like robbers. I’m thinking of irrational, crazed criminals who just killed their wife/gf and kids and are on the way to off the extended family and anyone they meet on the way.
You don’t seem to have a clue what I’m actually saying.
[QUOTE=ChickenLegs]
I had a remodeler in the house the other day to look at my master bath. Walked right by my shotgun, hanging on my bedroom wall. Neither of even blinked.
[/quote]
That’s got nothing to do with open carry. It’s a given that gun owners will keep guns in their personal residences. Moreover, I’m not walking into the personal residences of total strangers whom I know nothing about, and such strangers aren’t walking into mine.
Out in public, on the other hand, I’m surrounded by total strangers whom I know nothing about. There is absolutely no a priori reason that I should automatically assume that any of them can be safely trusted with a gun.
Actually, you’re the one being weird (and a little bit chickenshit) about this. You’re trying to assert simultaneously the two contradictory propositions that
(1) the world is so full of scary dangerous strangers that we’re all “supposed to be armed” so as to have “more good guys who aren’t defenseless”, and
(2) we should have so much confidence and trust in the strangers around us that observing a random stranger carrying a firearm for no known reason should cause us no concern at all, and it’s even irrational and somewhat cowardly not to automatically assume they’re totally trustworthy.
If someone has a permit, they’ve met the criteria of the law that they can be trusted to handle one safely. That they have a clean background, have passed a safety course and can shoot accurately. No one who doesn’t have a permit would ever open carry.
If a pistol is in a holster, I’m not about to be shot with it. If someone is holding one, that’s another matter.
What you mean is “No rational and law-abiding person who doesn’t have a permit would ever open carry”. I have no way of knowing whether a random total stranger whom I know nothing about is rational and law-abiding.
And pardon my cynicism, but I don’t happen to think that even meeting the criteria for a gun permit says all that much about a person’s reliability. All it means is that the permit-holder has passed certain basic tests of firearm skills in a very controlled environment, and that they don’t have any legal record of certain types of criminal activity and other drastic misbehavior.
I totally support the legality of letting people who meet such criteria own a gun if they want to. But that sure as hell doesn’t mean that I consider myself personally obligated to automatically believe they can be trusted to handle a gun safely in a public place.
Would you not be alarmed to see soldiers with rifles in your neighborhood? Even if you assume they’re on your side, the fact that they’re there at all should give you a moment of existential terror. This is not, and has never been, at least since the end of the Civil War, a place where rifles were a necessary fashion accessory.
Right. That happens almost never? I mean, seriously, think about what you’re suggesting. There is a whole mile of difference between a person going about their daily business with a holstered pistol on their hip, and somebody mentally deranged, carrying on with a gun in their hand, seeking whom to [del]devour[/del] shoot. The deranged killer, notably, does not have their gun holstered. And at any rate, the unhinged spree killer is the rarest of outliers when it comes to homicide – yes, we had a calendar year a few twelvemonths back where there were a few of them. This is a country of three hundred millions. See my earlier point about risk assessment.
I used to work in downtown Manhattan near the Federal Reserve. For weeks after 9/11 there were soldiers stationed there with automatic rifles. They didn’t alarm me in the slightest. Now, if I didn’t know why they were there, I’d want to know. But as long as they are MARKED U.S. soldiers and weren’t shooting people indiscriminately, I wouldn’t feel overly alarmed seeing them on my block. At least, not as much as I would an UNMARKED, unidentified person.
The deranged killer scenario only has to happen ONCE and it’s a lot easier to identify if people carrying guns is UNUSUAL rather than the norm. Plus I’m not sure where it’s written that they won’t ever have their gun holstered. I don’t quite get how you can point out the perils of having armed soldiers in your neighborhood yet say I’m being chickenshit about being leery of civilians carrying guns.
Different strokes, I guess. That sort of thing to me seems an unnerving overreaction, and yes, their presence would make me feel less safe. But then, we hardly need to have a discussion here about the ways we as a nation overreacted to 9/11. That’s a whole different 50-page thread.
I never said you were being chickenshit. I said your risk assessment seemed skewed. The scenario you envision has, to my knowledge, never happened. Spree shooters, even mentally deranged ones, tend to conceal their weapons until it’s time to start blasting.
Yours is an interesting but alien mentality to me. I’m from the UK and handguns are simply not allowed, the police are not routinely armed and I never see an openly carried handgun or weapon of any kind outside of an airport.
The only people who can access handguns are the criminals (who by definition are free to harm themselves in whatever way they choose)
Seeing as both our LEO’s and populace in general are unarmed, why are we at far less risk of being killed by handguns? Why do we see far fewer shootings in the UK per head of population than in the USA? I’d interested to know why you think that is
I do not accept that that is true now,* but it certainly would not be true in a society where open carrying of firearms was commonplace. Criminals would have no need to conceal them in order to “blend in”.
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*Even in a country like America, with highly permissive firearms laws and widespread gun ownership. In Britain and most other first world countries, someone openly carrying a firearm, unless it were very clearly and obviously for some legitimate use, would certainly be regarded by most people as a threat, and very reasonably so. The chances that were a dangerous lunatic about to embark on a killing spree would be very high.)
Indeed in the UK anyone caught in possession of an illegal firearm faces 5yrs in prison and such restrictions are accepted as perfectly proper. People get spooked seeing police with firearms in public when there is a terrorist alert. Police trained to use firearms still often make grievous mistakes. Many other countries have restrictive firearms laws, the idea of civilians openly carrying lethal weapons in public seems quite weird and recipe for hideous incidents. It seems a US thing and very strange.
I am guessing this is all to with the relationship between the individual and the state in the US. Open carriers are making a point regarding the limits of the power of state and that individuals have rights to provide their own personal security using firearms under the constitution.
Is this open carry movement widely supported in the US or is just confined to rural areas or amongst political activists? I don’t remember seeing anyone but the police openly carry weapons in the big cities.
The video showed a police officer exercising remarkable control and seemed quite prepared for this constitutional confrontation with an individual who was confident of his rights. However, the place for these sort of nuanced legalistic exchanges is a court of law, not the public highway. The threat that one man could kill the other with the powerful weapons they were carrying was very palpable. I can imagine in other circumstances with less controlled individuals, at night, no cameras, people emotional or under the influence…it could have gone quite wrong.
Is this just a temporary thing and some people making a point or is habitual gun carrying part of the culture in some parts of the US?
Just for starters, there are a lot more Joe Schmoes than cops. Even if we assume *arguendo *that the average cop is as much of a danger to the public as the average citizen who carries, multiplying the number of persons carrying firearms multiplies the risk.
