OC advocates willing to toss all other gun rights under the bus? What?
The only "under the bus" issue I recall from 2009, was Students for Concealed Carry proclaiming that they had nothing to do with OC, and didn't want any talk of OC scaring away legislators who might support campus carry. Not that it did them any good, in the end. I don't recall any OC advocates declaiming campus carry until after the fact, when some said they could no longer support SCC (although almost all had been supporting them until then).
I recall lots of worry that passing OC would result in an increase in places that were off limits for all gun carriers. I didn't agree, but I do remember the concern. Those were CC advocates worrying about OC, not the other way around. The legislative fixes to allay those worries were pretty simple, but too many people were thinking inside the box.
I don't recall
any cases of OC proponents either advocating, admitting, or even subtly hinting, that they would accept a reduction in CC rights in exchange for legal OC. For the most part, OC advocates are 2A absolutists:
"shall not infringe" is pretty darn clear, and the 14th Amendment is also pretty clear to everyone except nine people in silly costumes, whose predecessors invented "incorporation" and limited it to certain amendments. And they did so specifically because they were worried that the "wrong people" would be able to enjoy full Constitutional rights; specifically, the right to keep and bear arms.
I recall accusations that open carry advocates were a bunch of "outsiders" interfering with Texas. I don't recall the accusers admitting that over 8,000
Texans signed the OC petition. Mike Stollenwerk, one of the founders of opencarry.org (Lt. Col., U.S. Army, Retired), was called an outside agitator, despite owning a home in Killeen and having been stationed at Fort Hood for several years. And the truly ironic thing is that of everyone on OCDO, he's particularly sensitive to issues of "perception", and just this past weekend urged people to not OC 1911s, because the "cocked hammer" might scare people.
Open carry advocates tend to truly support RKBA without limits. Most I'm acquainted with don't support limitations based on citizenship, previous criminal record, or licenses that grant an exemption to carry bans. To the degree that anyone argues "OC is Constitutionally protected, CC isn't", I believe they're just trying to point out the case law history, as SA-TX did a good job of analyzing. I don't know
any OC advocate who believes in further restrictions on CC or any other form of carry.
This is why the recent Arizona law has been dubbed "Constitutional Carry": no license or permission needed to carry concealed, openly, loaded, in a vehicle, or otherwise. The availability of a concealed carry license is a courtesy for those Arizonans who might visit states where "Constitutional Carry" is not yet recognized.
Several years of effort by TSRA to gain carry rights went unrewarded in Texas. I salute the efforts, and I support TSRA. But the one thing that finally got concealed carry legalized in Texas was the sea-change of public opinion that swept Ma Richards and her cronies out of office. No offense to the TSRA efforts, but those were the years when the Republicans started sweeping the nation for reasons mostly unrelated to gun rights. We have concealed carry today because Texans (like the rest of the country) were PO'd at, and scared of, Bill Clinton.
Newt Gingrich and the Contract With America swept into office, and the Texas CHL was a fortunate side effect.
I don't support any restrictions on CC (except those that violate private property rights), but I do support OC.
Shall. Not. Be. Infringed.
Those words are clear enough.
