tommyg wrote:I'm against open carry it will aggravate the anti gun ners and make it worse for us.
Hand Guns need to be concealed long guns need to be in cases. Sorry to
feel this way we need to keep a low profile. We need to be responsible.
I'm not going to attack
you for having an opinion I disagree with, but I do want to point out a couple of things........
First item:
Handguns need to be concealed
because that is the law, but
what if the law changes? If Open Carry or Constitutional Carry becomes law, are you going to call people irresponsible for openly carrying a handgun so long as they do so within the law? Is it irresponsible if, on a very hot Texas afternoon, a lawyer in a $3,000 suit takes off his jacket and exposes his $2,500 custom 1911 in a $250 custom made holster? We're not talking Joe Redneck waving a gun around here. What if that same guy is a state legislator? Is he irresponsible too? How would you even know he's a lawyer or legislator, and not a police detective? The fact is, you don't. So how can you call him irresponsible, if he is not breaking the law and if he is
otherwise behaving responsibly? Now, let's dispense with the trappings of wealth. If that same guy is wearing a t-shirt and jeans and boots, and he's got a $450 Glock on his hip in a $60 belt slide, but he is otherwise behaving exactly that like lawyer/detective/whatever in a responsible manner, and he takes off his windbreaker exposing his gun, and OC is legal, is
he behaving responsibly?
What's at issue here isn't the illegal open carry of handguns. That is NOT what the protesters have been charged with.
Second item:
Currently, there is no law against openly carrying a long gun. There is only a law against displaying it in a manner calculated to cause alarm. That is very much subject to the same standards as SCOTUS Justice Potter Stewart's definition of obscenity:
I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.
You know when open carry of a long gun is deliberately calculated to cause alarm
WHEN YOU SEE IT. It is NOT axiomatic that public carry of a long gun is
automatically threatening. If that were so, all hunters in the state of Texas would be rounded up and charged because all it would take would be a Massachusetts transplant in Birkenstock sandals, driving past in her Prius, who observes a bunch of dove hunters in a field and calls the cops. . . . . because she feels "threatened". . . .
THIS is what the protesters have been charged with.
Now, I'm in agreement with you that I think these protesters
are behaving irresponsibly (but not
illegally), and I believe that their actions do the rest of us and the 2nd Amendment more harm than good. But I don't think you can legitimately make a blanket statement that all long guns must be cased at all times unless they are in use for legitimate purposes, because neither you nor I are not the arbiters of legitimacy. I have, on more than one occasion, carried an uncased long gun into a gun store. That meant getting it out of my car, and walking from my car to to the store's entrance, with an uncased long gun in my hand. I submit that, in the context of the parking lot of a gunstore, this was entirely appropriate and responsible. By your definition, it isn't, and I would dispute that.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
― G. Michael Hopf, "Those Who Remain"
#TINVOWOOT
