djjoshuad wrote:I agree with what speedsix wrote. The point of my posts on this thread was not to instill fear, rather to inform. It's one thing to accept the risks you know about. It's something entirely different to unknowingly put oneself at risk. There are those of us with the willingness and wherewithal to fight the system in the event of a wrongful arrest. There are also many among us who cannot afford to or simply are not willing to, and should be warned of the potential fallout.
We're all on the same side
I lead my entire life by assessing risks and making decisions about what chances that I'm willing to take. As you point out, the key is "informed" decisions. I don't want to be surprised by being unknowingly dragged into be the test case for something. On this forum, the situation with Grapevine Mills Mall and the implied willingness for Grapevine police department to make individual officers to make the decision about arresting CHLs there in spite of the invalid 30.06 sign is one such case. As a policy, I won't shop there. There may be times, however, when I have to go there and I need to make a decision to carry or not, understanding the potential consequences.
I race sailboats. Part of the tactics of sailboat racing is using the rules to your advantage. There is always some lout on the race course who yells and screams at other sailors, trying to bend the rules to his advantage, fully understanding that he is wrong. Sometimes, it is a simple matter of someone incorrectly interpreting the situation because of the complexity of that situation and the speed at which the circumstances change which rule actually applies. In my current model boat sailing, the consequences are usually not more than a couple of evenings of repair work. I've been in collisions on big boats where those consequences are much more severe and may actually result in serious injuries. The point of my comparison is simply that having a license to carry a weapon is much the same. The rules are complex and open to the interpretation of those who may or may not have the legal right to that interpretation. There is always a lout around who will try to push the law way past its intention and that is just one of the potential risks to be minimized, as we do in sailing, by paying attention and avoiding louts.