I found this interesting. I had not expected to see a law like this approved in CA.
Per this article I can open carry a gun in CA in most areas as long as i have the ammo in my pocket and not in the gun.
As your cited link notes, astro,
“Loaded firearm” definition, from CA Penal Code section 12031(g):
Despite your link, and scanning the bill, I’m still not fully sure that open carrying a firearm with an empty chamber, an empty magazine, but with full magazines on your person is legal, given People v. Clark. (PDF warning) (Aside, as I read section 12031(g), you can’t carry a shotgun with shells in a shell carrier attached to the stock, even if the chamber and magazine are empty.) I know they claim at the linked site and discussion forums that an empty revolver with full speed-loaders at hand is fine, and so you’d think the same logic with apply with semi-autos, but still… I guess you could claim, if you were the prosecution, that the speedloaders aren’t part of the firearm when the firearm is ready to be fired, but that loaded mags are. And then there was the discussion of whether the loaded magazines also had to be open carried.
Of course, even assuming everything is de jure legal, you get to play Rosa Parks with the officer called out because someone “saw a crazy with a gun on hir hip.” I can see a whole lot of ways that a vindictive D.A. can interpret this law, unfortunately. But it’s still better than it was before, for firearms activists.
Why the hell would anyone want to carry an unloaded weapon?
We used to get a dozen plus calls a day about various states’ open-carry policies when I worked at the NRA. One of my specific duties (I was a 3L, working in their legislative department), was speaking to these people, and directing them to our state-by-state pamphlets.
But the message to drive home was, “why do you need to open-carry; please don’t do it just to make a point; you may be inadvertantly hurting our cause.” At the NRA, we called these folks “squirrels.”
I guess I should expand on this and say that I am referring to folks who wanted to strap up and walk around the grocery store, just to prove that they could. That kind of behavior was generally discouraged.