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frankie_the_yankee wrote:If we had unlicensed open carry, previously convicted criminals and other disqualified persons could openly carry guns and, since no license was needed, the fact that they did not have one would not trigger an arrest in the case of an incidental contact with LE. When a cop runs your license he will get info on any open wants or warrants, but he will not get info on what closed convictions a person might have.

Horse hockey. Any convicted criminal is in the system as such, at the very least for the state in which he was convicted. Where do you think NICS comes from? If you have a rap sheet, they'll know about it, especially if you're on parole but even if not.

In any case it's nonsensical; if you are carrying a weapon, you are assumed to be doing so lawfully. It's part of the whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing that makes our judicial system so great. That holds whether the carry is concealed or open. In fact, I fail to see how you would think OC puts a criminal at LESS risk of being caught. When carrying concealed and being subjected to "incidental LE contact" (whatever that means), the LEO has to first DISCOVER the person is carrying. They then must assume that the person is carrying legally if they are doing nothing else wrong. It's only if there is sufficient articulable reason to detain (and simply carrying is not sufficient articulable reason) that the LEO can then ask for credentials and the criminal is in trouble. With OC, the risk of a criminal being caught is greater if they OC, if for no other reason than the LEO doesn't have to look real hard to spot an OCer's sidearm. They do still have to assume legality, but if a criminal who is OCing is detained by an LEO for articulable reason, the first thing that happens is that the LEO asks for ID, and calls it in asking for the subject's arrest record. If there is a single black mark on the subject's record they can sort it out at the station.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:I'm a lot more concerned with making it easy for criminals to blend in with LAC's while carrying guns in public...

We've already been through this. You can CC right now. Concealed means concealed. If nobody notices that a criminal is carrying concealed, not only has he blended in with law-abiding carriers, he's blended into the population at large.

OC would be no different. Actually it would; it would make the police take a closer look at anyone OCing even if they couldn't detain someone for OCing. The last thing any criminal wants is to have attention paid to him. If OC became legal, I doubt you would see anyone intent on criminal activity OCing, except in the very rare circumstance that he's planning on mowing down anyone who looks at him twice (and other random people along the way). If that ever happened in my immediate vicinity I'd want my handgun as ready as it could be, and not to have to dig through my clothing to get to it.

It comes down to the fact that, despite any difference in the amount of training, licensing, or tactical experience/knowledge, there is no legal difference between a shot fired by a licensed CHL and a shot fired by an unlicensed OCer. You as a gun owner are responsible for every projectile that comes out of the business end of your firearm, and it does not matter one iota how that firearm is situated on your person. Thus, required or not, any lawful gun owner choosing to carry will have done his homework and spent considerable time at the range. To assume otherwise is not only elitist, but a simple mistake; to follow that reasoning you would assume anyone with a gun but without a CHL doesn't know how and when to use it; that is a VERY dangerous assumption to make, I assure you.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:The concept of tactical surprise has been well established for thousands of years. It has been used by everyone from Hannibal to Alexander, to Tojo, Rommel, and MacArthur.

If it was good enough for them, it's good enough for me.

For reasons I cannot fathom, many OC advocates deny the existence of this concept, which they tend to catagorize as a "myth".

The only hypothesis I can come up with is that some are so in love with the idea of OC that they do not allow any conflicting information or thought to intrude into their world view.

I have found that there is no point whatsoever in arguing about it. The issue appears to go beyond logic.

That's not the argument OCers (at least the ones I've heard) make. Their argument is that it does not matter what the tactical advantages/disadvantages of OCing are; requiring that those with a gun carry concealed, and then requiring a permit to carry concealed, is an infringement of gun rights. To become a CHL in TX you generally have to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $250. To OC in Virginia costs approximately $0. It's a poll tax; the $250 and a day I can't spend in a classroom are what keep me from carrying concealed. It's elitist and totally contrary to the 2A. That's the argument.

frankie_the_yankee wrote:I have no problem with legalizing open carry (though I would seldom do it myself) but I would not favor unlicensed open carry.

I think unlicensed open carry makes it too easy for criminals and other disqualified persons to "blend in" on the street. Criminal records and records containing other disqualifying information are not readily available to the cop on patrol who might want or need to check someone out. That is one of the main purposes of the background check requirement for getting a license.

Umm, OK. You have a license to open carry, and without that license you are breaking the law by carrying. Your statement that a license would separate legal OCers from illegal infers that a cop could stop you on the street and make you show your carry license. That's like saying a cop could pull you over in your car because it's possible you don't have a DL. If you're innocent until proven guilty, an officer cannot stop you just for walking down the street OCing. That may be fuel for not allowing open carry at all; I'm just saying, just like "concealed means concealed", if OCing is legal at all they have to assume you're completely lawful until you demonstrate otherwise.

The statement that requiring licensing would increase gun owners' training implies that people who OC wouldn't train if it weren't required. That's horse hockey, and even if it were true it would change very little of the ramifications of OCing. You as a gun owner, whether you carry it or not, have a responsibility to know the law. Whether you learn it in a CHL class or by reading the Texas Statutes online makes little difference. I grant that a CHL course that is reviewed by the State would give you the "need to knows" faster and with less chance something will be missed, but the same information taught in a $100 supervised course can be put in a book for $10. As far as competency, scoring a 175 in the CHL course of fire is not exactly difficult, and there are probably many people in Texas who are not CHLs that could score perfect. I'd be one of them; I've done practice runs against the older B-27 standard.

In short, it works in Virginia and 10 other states; it can work here.