Overall these kind of scenarios just aren’t happening. I challenge you to find cites that open carriers are statistically victims of crimes more often than concealers.
Gotta disagree with that. Unfortunately in some locations open carriers get the police called on them a lot, even when OC is perfectly legal.
Go on opencarry.org and read some of the experiences.
Common sense doesn’t need a citation. Unless the criminals don’t follow any sort of logic, the people that are obviously armed in a situation where the criminals intend to kill are going to be offed first (if given the chance). They’re not going to see armed citizens and decide to take them out last, especially since many criminals fear an armed citizen much more than the police.
Of course such a situation has a LOT of assumptions (all the people lumped in a group, the criminals have closely looked at the people to see if anyone is armed, etc.) so I’m not going to act like OCers always have a tactical disadvantage, just in the kind of situations I described.
Actually, most criminals would simply run away, and the rest are psycho enough that they’ll kill anyone just because.
Your “common sense” is guessing what a criminal is going to do in a given situation, and then guessing that the open carrier is at a disadvantage.
If your guesses were correct, these things would be happening in the places where open carry is legal and even routine for some people. If it’s common sense that these things were to happen, why haven’t they?
Citing “common sense” in this case is no substitute for an actual cite, and a poor technique of debate.
Area denial weapon??? We’re talking about normal shotguns, right? Did you confuse them with MK19s or artillery or something? Holy crap.
He’s referring to the quad-shot quantum-barrel depleted plutonium shooting, napalm bee flechette launching personal defense system. Pretty standard stuff, really. It’s a wonder shotgun users don’t hit themselves in the massive cloud of spray.
I’d hate to think of what might happen should, gasp, shotguns become standard LEO equipment! :eek:
I worked as an Armed Guard in an urban retail environment. Obviously, it’s open carry on a police belt.
On Sunday, a small child became fascinated with my gun and tried to touch it. I pushed him away. Moments later, distracted by his mother, who had other issues, I found that he had circled around behind me and had just put his hand on my gun. I got slightly less than nice (but not abusive, he was after all, a little kid) and physically steered him away from me, letting his mother know that he wasn’t going to do that again.
But the bottom line is two fold:
1> Someone doing open carry in a crowded environment can be targetted by multiple individuals to distract and disarm.
2> Fragile Little Snowflakes might become upset and cause a scene.
And how many times does this happen? How often has a police officer, security guard, or private citizen been targeted simply because they were open carrying?
Don’t count occurrences where the [cop, guard, civvy] already was having a contact with the criminal and it went bad. I’d like some statistics showing a number of how many people were targeted just for the gun and wouldn’t have been had they been concealing.
This “it could happen” stuff is the lame argument that Sarah Brady and her minions use to try to ban everything.
This is actually a valid argument against open carry, but only on a personal level.
How much bullshit from ignorant people one is willing to take is something each of us have to decide when choosing between OC and CCW. My cite is some of the stories I’ve read on opencarry.org. But there are far more positive experiences (including from myself).
When I lived on my farm, we had a constant problem with trespassers and poachers. Sometimes I would hear shooting or see people, and I would need to see what was going on and ask them to leave. I was not being paranoid or selfish, we had horses that we didn’t want shot, and we had had a bad incident with bullet holes in a car.
We had a nice bass pond, that attracted a lot of kids, but sometimes it attracted partiers at night.
The dogs and the horses usually let us know when we were being invaded by unwanted visitors.
I had a concealed carry permit.
Generally speaking when somebody is on your property without your permission, they are aware of it. If they are poaching, they tend to be armed. When you go to confront them, it is good to do so appropriately.
I found that tossing a great big gun over my shoulder sent a confrontational image. Holding it in my hands was worse. In either case, it was the kind of thing that might provoke other people into considering you dangerous, and perhaps acting threatening with their weapons and/or attitudes.
Best to avoid that whole issue.
My grandfather was a policeman and I followed his advice. As a cop, he was required to use his gun as a threat. It’s a very bad strategy. His thoughts as a civilian and his advice to me was that nobody should ever have the faintest idea that I have a gun until the split second before I am pulling the trigger.
So, I would not show a gun unless I was immediately going to use it.
I had a very small concealable Firestar 9mm. I put it in my jacket pocket, loaded and chambered with safety on, and I kept my hands in my pockets when i walked down to see who was doing what.
I have found numerous kids fishing or hunting, numerous adults doing the same, and on one occasion a bonfire and a big party being held by a bunch of bikers. I have found parties of Amish kids drinking.
In no case did I ever have to show a weapon, but in no case would I have been willing to walk down there without one. The concealment prevented escalation.
maybe he was thinking of a shotgun that fired landmines out of it.
I never really kept track of this sort of thing, but I know from personal experience that it happens. I can recall a couple of instances where someone tried to distract me in one direction while another person tried to angle around to where they might have been able to access my gun while I was dealing with their friend. Most often when I was working armored and carrying money.
But I always pay attention to groups of people - who is with who - and if one or more of them is getting my attention, I make damned sure I know where the others are.
Or just in general, I know that if there’s a big distraction in one direction, that’s the time I should be looking everywhere else to see what else is going on.
Getting back to the OP, it’s very simple and very practical.
If I’m carrying a gun and it starts to rain, I don’t particularly want to take off my holster and put it back on over a rain slicker. But if I don’t have a Concealed Carry Permit, I can’t wear the raincoat over the gun.
There are lots of other reasons (carrying in the car, using a saddle scabbard for a rifle, and many of the others stated in this thread), but keeping a gun dry in the rain really is number one. For that matter, ever try to open carry while wearing a heavy winter coat?
How’d you deal with the bikers, Scylla?
Thats such a bad idea. I’ve used a gun in self defense numerous times, and never had to shoot anyone because I didn’t go straight from concealed to grand jury fodder. Usually, pointing a gun at someone and saying drop the club, or get off the property gets them moving or at leasts gets them t stop until the police arrive. The sight of a gun is a huge deterrent and your intent in using a gun is to stop the other person from harming you or yours. Skipping that detterent step when you could have used it is reckless and immoral. From a practical standpoint, shooting people is expensive. Even if you are right you are going to have a HUGE legal bill, and probably an arrest record.
If you don’t have time for a warning without putting yourself at risk that’s one thing.
As for the OP…
It is a much better crime detterent if the bad guys don’t know who is armed. If you walk into a restraunt to rob it and know that with a shall issue carry law there is a good chance that three of four people are armed you might think twice. Most robbers do NOT want to shoot anyone, they just want the money. Thats why armed security guards work, bad guy will go somewhere where there isn’t an armed guard rather than risk the lethal injection for having to kill someone.
if you walk into a resturaunt and can look around and SEE that nobody happens to be armed that day, you don’t have to worry about it…if someone is openly carrying, go down the street.
Might, or were they actually attempting to gain your weapon? Being aware of ones surroundings and situation is part of the job and not the same as actually having an attempt made on your weapon.
Your personal awareness/paranoia does not substitute for a cite showing how often open carriers are specifically targeted.
Three guys come in. Exchange repeated glances in my direction and whispered words among each other. They split up and try to non-chalantly circle around me, looking like they’re completely innocent. Then while one guy gets in my face over something minor, I glance around and see one of them approaching me very close from my 5 o’clock position, looking directly at my gun, with a look on his face that tells me he’s alert and focused on me and that gun.
I turn to put him at my 3 and put my hand on my gun, whereby his hand comes up and “innocently” brushes his hair as he suddenly turns and walks away. A sure sign, if you can read body language, that he was caught reaching for something.
You make the call. Paranoia, or incident averted?
The incident in the county jail elevator (funny as hell):
We picked up from the property room at the local county jail. A major metropolitan county jail in downtown. Across the street is City Hall. A block south of that is the County Government Center. A block north of City Hall is the Federal Court House. Two blocks east is Juvenile Court. More cops per square inch than anywhere you can think of.
While I’m at the window conducting business, prisoners who are being released come out a door 10 feet from me in my 4 o’clock position and ride up the same elevator, about 8’ in my 9 o’clock position. Now this is the slowest elevator on Earth, because it’s not actually an elevator, but a hydrolic lift. What genius made that decision is not for this discussion. There is a very large, oversized security camera in the elevator, which has doors on both sides. You enter on one side in the basement, exit on the other side on the ground floor. Given that I was riding up with released prisoners, I always positioned myself directly in front of the camera.
One day this large man is released and gets on the elevator with me. At least 6’4", about 300 pounds, could have been a football linebacker. Looking very angry, he looks me in the face, then down at my gun, then at my bag. Steps 3-6" closer. Repeat process several more times: Face, Gun, Bag, Step. When he’s about 18" from me, he straightens up and takes a breath and gets a look on his face. I know action is going to follow in a split second, so I turn to him, look him straight in the eye, give him a great big smile, point casually up at the camera and say with a laugh "So how far do you think you’ll get?
He looks shocked, looks up at the camera, instantly takes a large step away from me, looks at the floor and folds his hands in front of himself, chastised.
Damn, that was funny.
The average person is not doing business at jail. Your examples are personal, rare, and completely irrelevant to the average person who would open carry.
I’ve been in law enforcement for 26+ years, most of it in a uniform carrying openly. And like yours, none of the zillion stories I could bore you with would make valid arguments against the average person open carrying.
The point is that Idiots will occasionally try to take weapons away from people in Uniform. The consequences of this are far greater, and their targets far more likely to be well trained, than if they’d pick on armed civilians. So it seems fairly likely that a civilian would be a more likely target for such antics.
Sounds like something intended for over-weight or over-sized work. Heavy or awkward cargo to the basement. If I had to haul 57 boxes of evidence (or whatever) out of the evidence/property room to the courthouse, you want an elevator with wide doors (and in your case, an elevator where you don’t have to do some interesting ballet to get your cargo out of it).
munches popcorn
And the Amish?