Openly Carrying Guns Can Be Unwise, Even When It’s Legal
My article did not propose that open carry should be illegal. There are some unusual circumstances where it might be the best choice — and in some rare circumstances, in some states, it may be the only choice that you have. (Wisconsin, for example, completely prohibits concealed carry of handguns, but does allow open carry.) What I did argue is that gun owners should think long and hard about whether it serves our best interests to offend, disturb, or concern people that would prefer that we keep our guns as well hidden as our excretory organs.
I was expecting some negative reaction to that article — but I was not expecting the level of vitriol. I received one polite response, yes. But I also received a number of really angry and not very polite emails, including:
I have been a loyal SGN reader for many years and have subscribed several times.
Having read Mr. Cramer’s column on open carry, “How to Lose Friends,” this will no longer be the case. Mr. Cramer’s column should have been titled “Why We Should Be Ashamed of Our Rights.”
I will NOT be buying any further SGN magazines EVER; nor will I encourage my friends and family to do so, until and unless Mr. Cramer is FIRED publicly and SGN apologizes for his failure to support the rights of American citizens.
In the course of attempting to calm this reader down, I discovered that this poor guy feels tremendously trapped by the enormous success that the anti-gun crowd is enjoying. I have talked to a few others over the last few years who seem to think that the gun control crowd is on one continuous winning streak and that at any moment, the federal government is going to complete the final confiscation of firearms from private citizens.
The gun control movement is dangerous, in spite of their small numbers, because they exercise enormous influence over the entertainment and legal communities. But for those who haven’t been following the news: the gun control movement is in such sorry shape that if I worked in that area, I would be getting my resume up to date and looking for some other windmills to joust against.
Mr. Cramer, we carry guns for protection not for political correctness. It is our discretion as free individuals whether or not we want to carry a gun. The “wise” part of it is never to pull a gun unless you are forced to. If it is your personal decision not to carry a gun where your neighbors might be offended, that is your choice as a free individual. One of the problems with America today and for many decades to date is that there are just too many people telling other people what they should do. I do not care what you want to see me do. It is my life and i will act in what I see as my best interests, and the best interests of those I consider close, not because of a suggestion, recommendation or order from someone I do not know and have no interaction with. I hopefully will never have to use the gun in peacetime. I do not show it off, but I know how to use it if need be. I will not recommend what you should do. That is your decision.
Sorry, Cramer. The negative attitude is the result of the Left’s campaign against guns. People just have to get the propoganda out of their system; propoganda they don’t even know they’ve ingested.
The cure is to see it more frequently; to normalize it. More people should do it, not less. Advocating otherwise cedes the high battleground to the opponents. Imagine if it got to the point that, say, 10% or so of the populace carried openly. No big deal, then.
Do not allow the Leftists to define the debate.
The offended wimps you mention should be more concerned with the good will of their armed neighbors than with their prissy dislike of the sight of an “equalizer.” The folks carrying are equipped for far more contingencies than the folks who aren’t — and if something nasty should arise, the unarmed will “free ride” on the expenditure, foresight, and courage of the armed.
I am mortally tired of being told that I shouldn’t do this or that because it will, or might, “offend” someone. I won’t kowtow to it in matters of speech or opinion, so I’ll be damned if I’ll do so with regard to something as important as the right to keep and bear arms.
Basically you are saying it is not in good taste to OC or good manners.
The main problem with pro gun control is the prevailing attitude that a person with a gun is a criminal. This automatic assumption makes it easier to make the emotional argument for gun control.
The push on OC is to try to normalize the practice so people do not get upset but get used to it like people are used to seeing guns on police.
I do disagree with your premise here. I do understand that people’s initial reaction may be negative but that often changes once people think about it.
I love guns. I love firing my weapons, trading off with my friends at the range. I enjoy reading about them, seeing them in movies like HEAT. But I don’t want to see your f—ing gun when I take my kid to the mall.
I don’t know who you are, man. I don’t know where your head is at on that particular day. But wearing your gun openly in public, it tells me something about your intellect, your judgement and maybe even the size of your penis. And because of that, I don’t trust you.*
*My comments obviously don’t apply to special events (Open Carry picnics, etc), Convenience Store Clerks or Farmers/Ranchers.
Mr. Cramer:
“I have talked to a few others over the last few years who seem to think that the gun control crowd is on one continuous winning streak and that at any moment, the federal government is going to complete the final confiscation of firearms from private citizens.”
Ah, now, can you blame them? These are likely the folks who uncritically read every piece of “beggar mail” that the NRA sends their way,(and boy, does NRA send!).
One of the reasons I let my NRA membership lapse was the unending array of breathless exhortations of impending tyranny requesting that I send in X number of bucks, offers to join the “Chairman’s Inner Circle of Gun Owners” at the distinguished “Gold” level, (with a limited time only upgrade to the coveted “Platinum” level for a low additional annual fee), and other marketing hogwash that they’d regularly clog my mailbox with.
To my mind, it really muddied their message.
Paranoia sells. And man, if you’re a credulous sort of person, a three year membership’s worth of reading NRA mailings would be enough for you to dig yourself a family bunker in the backyard and wear a revolver when using the toilet…”just in case!”.
But you are absolutely correct. Context IS everything.
The Virginia Citizens Defense League a while back would organize “Open Carry Nights” to highlight one of the Old Dominion’s peculiarities of it’s Concealed Carry laws.
You can NOT, even if licensed to do so, carry concealed in an establishment that serves alcohol, but you CAN open carry in such a joint.
Since VaJanYa also has some remaining “Blue” (as in alcohol), laws, every freestanding bar in the state also has a restaurant attached to it.
We got LAWS in this heah state, bwah!
So VCDL would basically just have the “Armed Yuppies of Reston/Herndon”,(for example), meet up and have a non-alcoholic dinner while openly carrying solely to illustrate and protest the inanity of the law.
Virginians, (even Northern metro DC area ones), being rather a “live and let live” kind of folks, only a few, (and those were probably visiting Murliners or transplanted Massholes and Californicans and suchlike), soiled their Depends at the sinister sight of pistol-packing suburbanites sitting around a table enjoying a club sandwich or a Cobb salad at the local Applebee’s.
So, yeah. Your point is valid. If there’s no compelling reason to do so, or you’re not staging a form of street theater protest, keep it on the QT.
It’s certainly more tactically rational not to educate any lurking miscreants that you have a gatt, because THEY may be also be carrying, (concealed), and all you will have accomplished is move yourself to the head of the “Shoot That Guy First” line that way.
Besides, if you want to engage in Constitutionally-protected activities that some find offensive, then start a blog or other media outlet and factually criticize the Alleged Hawaiian and his Administration.
At least with that, you might get some notice by some Federal level bureaucratic flunkie.
And maybe Rupert Murdoch will give you a teevee show of your very own.
And remember, speaking out against run away socialist spending may also be offensive so while we have a right to free speech it is really best if we keep quiet about our desire for smaller government as it is really counterproductive to get people worried about it.
The only aspect of gun control I care about I learned in basic infantry training :Breath
Relax
Aim
Squeeze
Open or concealed carry one thing holds true: You never need a firearm until you need it badly.
I agree with this premise for a couple of reasons…and no they not about having guns. I have a CWP.
More than a few cops have been shot by their own weapon whilst escorting a prisoner. With a gun in open sight, someone that wishes to do you harm can easily approach your blind side and make a grab for it. A concealed weapon makes this much more difficult, and more unlikely.
Second, public opinion DOES matter in that with a large outcry, any state legislature might decide to take on this issue with predictably bad results (i.e., restrictions). The US Supreme Court has held in previous rulings that some restrictions are allowable.
One of the problems with open carry is that the message that this is legal is controlled/contained by the news media. Because it tends to be out of the ordinary these days, it provokes uncomfortable reactions. If you wish to get your message across, then it is necessary to find a way of expressing it effectively.
Cramer makes a good point. Handguns especially make a lot of people nervous. But this aversion to guns has been indoctrinated into us. Yet all the cowboys went openly armed in the Westerns. We knew who was who by how they behaved. Given all the weapons criminals have and the number of psychos out there, the public could grow to find comfort in seeing ordinary good guys packing. A nut case in the mall might think twice about shooting innocents if he sees a few armed guys walking around. Or he may challenge the armed instead of the defenseless.
Not sure on this. . . InSC no open carry, but I have aCWP so I do carry. Cant help but wonder though, if the open carry would cut the crime rate- the crooks would see folks out there ready to react. If people are offended by the sight of a weapon, Heaven help us if we have to depend on them in a tough situation. . . A little to PC in this article?
I am offended by your article, perhaps you should not write openly.
I am offended by your article, perhaps you should not write openly. After all, your writing and your excretory organs have something in common.
What a bunch of panty-waists the nation has become.
You should see the look on people’s faces when they see me reading my copy of “Garden and Gun” magazine at the local diner. By their reaction you could tell they thought I was a potential mass murderer.
It’s a frakin magazine.
Your arguement amounts to : “guns are icky, like peepee and dooky”. It’s a childish response to liberty.
Like the above posted, leftist anti-gun propaganda aims to turn people against the very sight of guns. The goal is to make whoever carries or even owns guns to seem weird, abnormal and even criminal.
You need to get over your bigotry. You need to support freedom, especially the freedoms that makes you uneasy. Otherwise, who is going to support your freedom when it comes under attack?
Someone with no common sense advocationg common sense!
so the Pc crowd wants their feelings considered, but what about my feelings? what happens when they offend me? common sense to me is if i see someone with a oc gun, maybe i shouldn’t get stupid with them. what about knives, baseball bats, baby strollers?
Mr. Cramer I guess I will be one of the few. I am a gun advocate and think that if a person wants to carry and meets the requirements they should be allowed. However the example that you used about the group going to the zoo was a perfect example of going over the top to prove your rights. This is a place where the norm is mom and dad with their children or school outings. I doubt seriously that there is a real threat inside the compound as long as you stay out of the animals cages. This type move is exactly what helps loose our freedoms because of the knee jerk reaction of the media and the politicals. I know folks who carry a concealed weapon at all times, but no one else would unless they were attacked. I think we need to use a little common sense when approaching the issue. We have won some of the battles lately…ie the supreme court ruling on hand guns in Washington DC. I don’t think the wild west theme works well in our current society. Just think what most people would think including these guys that openly carried if they walked down the street and saw someone openly carrying a gun that looked like (use your sterotypical image of a bad guy), how safe would you feel. The guy may have just came back from a week of hunting and look grungy and unkept or did he just get out of the asylum and gets hands on a gun? Are you going to duck for cover or pull you gun and shoot him. Some will say that he has a right to carry and is not a threat until he pulls the gun and this is true. But do you want your wife and kids walking next to him? I’m all for the right to carry, and I have when the circumstances require it. But use some common sense when you do. That makes sure that the left wing nuts won’t have an incident to put on the national news that looses some of the gains we have made in the last few years.
Open carry is legal in my state as well. As a permit holder, I take great pains to conceal my handgun.
In my opinion, it is to my advantage that an potential adversary NOT know I am armed. Granted, if they saw my handgun, they might choose to accost someone else….unless they wanted the handgun. In that all-too-likely scenario, I might never see the attack coming.
I understand the appeal of ruffling the feathers of the PC crowd. There are so many productive ways to do it, open carry is not the way I would choose to do it.
My state, Texas, does not allow open carry. It does offer a Concealed Handgun License, I have one, and I exercise it daily. I do not believe I would open carry, if allowed, for several reasons:
You’ve mentioned scaring people. Yes, and what attitude are these scared voters going to take to the polls in the future? Pro gun control or anti gun control?
Operations security (intelligence). You’re advertising to a potential assailant what you’ve got, where it is, and which arm he needs to disable or hinder to keep you from using it.
That’s why we use camouflage and concealment, to hide our capabilities.
I am in a conceiled carry state, I have a CCP and carry. I prefer conceiled that way no one knows who is or who isn’t carrying. This way it keeps the criminal types guessing. The problem I have with open carry is you can become a sitting duck, enter a convience store about to be robbed the perp has the drop on you. For the people offended by law abiding citizens carrying guns hopefully any of them who survive a criminal attack because of a leagally armed citizen will rethink about their objections
SEMPER FI
GOD BLESS AMERICA
DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR
Open carry in the People’s Republic of Wisconsin. Yeah, right.
Wisconsin statutes may technically allow open carry. If you attempt to carry openly off of your own property, however, you’ll quickly get a lesson in the difference between “technical” and “practical.” And if you try carrying openly in an urban area, I guarantee you’re going to see the inside of a detention facility and be added to the NICS database before your educational adventure is over.
I was fishing off of a pier in Milwaukee one day, when no less than six MPD officers descended, guns drawn, on another fisherman a few heads down from me. Seems someone had reported him for having a .22 pistol in his fishing box. He was cuffed, and everybody around him was moved away, while the cops searched his tackle box. Not finding a pistol there, they searched him. After not finding a pistol on him, either, they considered searching others on the pier, but decided against it. They then proceeded to give everybody a lecture on how carrying guns was illegal, and anybody doing it would be arrested. Needless to say, they left without apologizing for what was a flagrant abuse of police power. That was the only personal experience I ever had on the subject, but virtually everybody I knew up there had a similar story.
I generally carried concealed in Virginia while living there. I made a point, however, of tucking my shirt behind my weapon when I went into a restaurant or a place selling alcohol, simply because carrying concealed in such places was illegal, while open carry was legal. Nobody ever gave me any heat about it, although that did happen to a few of my buds, mostly from cops who should’ve known better, but who evidently didn’t like the idea of peons being visibly armed. The VCDL was among the best pro-gun organizations it has ever been my privilege to support, and they pressed several very high profile cases of legal open-carriers who were harassed by law enforcement. Their advocacy resulted in court judgments in their favor, and instituted training in LE offices across the state to the effect that open carry was legal, whether cops like it or not. If the VCDL’s commitment and resolve were shared by similar organizations throughout in the United States, the legislative and statutory landscape WRT the RTKBA would be materially different. And gun control forces would long ago have been relegated to toothless irrelevance.
I am mortally tired of being told that I shouldn’t do this or that because it will, or might, “offend” someone.
It depends on your goals. If you want to win political battles, you don’t offend unnecessarily. If you want to express yourself, and don’t mind losing, then go ahead, open carry even when you don’t need to; it’s more important to express yourself than to win political struggles.
The cure is to see it more frequently; to normalize it. More people should do it, not less. Advocating otherwise cedes the high battleground to the opponents. Imagine if it got to the point that, say, 10% or so of the populace carried openly. No big deal, then.
I think well before we got to 10%, states that allow open carry would find some way to completely prohibit it (even in the small number of cases where I agree that it may make sense now). And it would also create a perception of gun owners as deranged exhibitionists in the large percentage of Americans who aren’t particularly hostile to guns right now.
If gay pride parades like San Francisco’s were held in every city of 10,000 people in America, gay rights would go down the tubes in no time at all. Even the Democrats would be running from it.
Wow.
There was a time when the “reaction of other patrons was distinctly negative” when some Negro had the audacity to try and sit at the same lunch counter or use the wame water fountain as everybody else.
And remember, speaking out against run away socialist spending may also be offensive so while we have a right to free speech it is really best if we keep quiet about our desire for smaller government as it is really counterproductive to get people worried about it.
Your analogy is incorrect. The correct analogy would be saying that calling Obama a communist, or claiming that it is all about oppressing white people, is not an effective strategy for arguing against the government’s insane spending orgy. Why? Because it offends with style rather than with substance. Make the argument effectively, and you don’t need over the top rhetoric.
I’m not proposing that you not be armed; I’m proposing that if you have the option of carrying concealed, do so.
The offended wimps you mention should be more concerned with the good will of their armed neighbors than with their prissy dislike of the sight of an “equalizer.” The folks carrying are equipped for far more contingencies than the folks who aren’t — and if something nasty should arise, the unarmed will “free ride” on the expenditure, foresight, and courage of the armed.
Except that my argument isn’t against being armed. I strongly encourage being armed–but not openly, unless you have no other choice.
Couldn’t agree more.
“With a gun in open sight, someone that wishes to do you harm can easily approach your blind side and make a grab for it. A concealed weapon makes this much more difficult, and more unlikely.”
Clueless! First, except in the dead of winter it isn’t possible to truly conceal the average handgun.
Spotting a concealed carry is simple. Second, if you have your act together, there are no blind spots. Period. Part of maintaining situational awareness is turning your head. If you are physically unable to turn your head, no amount or type of weaponry will save you.
Open or conceled, if you walk around with your head up your ***, then nothing will prevent anyone that wants to from smacking you upside the head with a blunt object. Shortly thereafter, you will lose your weapon.
And then there is the strap across the hammer I use when I pack my pistol.
As far as freaking out the neighbors….. SO WHAT! That is their problem. I have no control over other peoples mental issues and I don’t let those mental issues control me.
I exercise my 2nd amendment rights because if I don’t, I’ll lose them. I DO have a right to pack a pistol. They DON’T have a right to be offended by that pistol.
Women drivers are MUCH more dangerous then people carrying handguns on their hip. Point that out the next time somebody says anything about the Ruger Speed 6 on your hip.
The gun control movement is dangerous, in spite of their small numbers, because they exercise enormous influence over the entertainment and legal communities.
Yes, they kill thousands of people every year. Oh wait…that’s the other people.
Yet another cowardly politics-before-liberty article from Cramer. Big shock.
Here’s a newsflash dummy – rights aren’t subject to focus groups.
There are seemingly infinite variations of subjective standards that other people have regarding everything they encounter – it is impossible, absurd, and non-rational to tailor ones individual conduct to be in accord with such a vast, unknowable, and incoherent standard.
What you are suggesting is *stupid*.
I’ve educated plenty of people when I OC. They may ask “are you a cop?”, but I soon set them straight. They are often surprised that OC is legal, even though many know that CC is lawful. The most important thing anyone can do when OCing, is look like a ‘normal’ person. Don’t dress like Marilyn Manson. Don’t dress like Fifty Cent. Don’t dress like Bubba the banjo-playing ass-rapist. Shave. Have neat hair. Smell good. Wear well-cared-for clothes, regardless of your ‘style’. In short, look like a person that gives a damn about being part of society.
Visual cues are vitally important. They inform people of more than even they realize. It’s a significant factor in determining how your OCing is received.
At certain times of the year, and in certain situations, OCing is by far the most practical thing to do. Yes, you must be aware that the attention of criminals may be drawn to your sidearm – file this away with your other responsibilities as an armed individual. Accessing your gun while OCing is faster and less prone to snag or fumble.
The Constitution exists to protect our RKBA, not Cramer’s cowardly suggestion that we meekly subdue ourselves in the hope nobody objects. Let your neighbors see you OC. Let them become acclimated to it. Let them realize that the people the anti-gun fascists and weaseling politicians are condemning as ‘nutcases’ etc , are in fact their friends and colleagues and golfing buddies and family.
I CC when convenient, and OC when practical. My choice.
I notice that no one has so far brought up the example of the man (apparently a Ron Paulian) with a legally carried so called “assault rifle” (an AR-15) and a holstered gun, pictured outside a recent Obama town hall meeting in Arizona.
According to the coverage of this incident on MSNBC, their very carefully cropped pictures of this guy–a portion of the AR-15 stock and sling and his hand–illustrated their “narrative” about those evil, dangerous, white extremist, “teabaggers.” However, if you pulled out to show the entire picture of this man, you would see that he is Black.
It seems to me that this was a deliberately set up, inflammatory incident that–among many other things—was probably intended to help anti-gun forces.
@20. justasimplepatriot: – As a permit holder, I take great pains to conceal my handgun.
Clay, I have to agree with ‘simplepatriot’s rationale here, and if you’d invoked something closer to this practical premise, I would agree with you. But as stated, I don’t think you’ve made a case – rather, you’ve asserted something that’s tantamount to demanding that gays should go back into the closet. In that sense, I can absolutely understand why some folks would come unhinged at this recommendation.
Hiding a firearm because some brainwashed citizen might choose to take offense is exactly the sort of thinking that has allowed our Republic to slide closer to the abyss every day. When you write “gun owners should think long and hard about whether it serves our best interests to offend, disturb, or concern people that would prefer that we keep our guns … well hidden“, you are pandering to moral adolescence – a broken morality which “feels” it has a “right” not to be offended or frightened. That may not be your intent, but in fact that’s what you’re doing.
The more we pander to broken morality instead of confronting and educating it, the more we enable it and the more it will grow. That’s precisely what’s been happening for 70+ years, to where now we are at a tipping point.
“Yes, they kill thousands of people every year. Oh wait…that’s the other people.”
No. You were right with the first part of your sentence. They have killed thousands of people with the prohibitive laws they succeed in passing in various (typically urban) areas of the country.
They create helpless victims. Blood is on their hands.
Any other constitutional rights you think that we shouldn’t practice just because we might offend someone?
Maybe we should stop having church services since it offends atheists. Maybe Fox News should start copying MSNBC and CNN since they are offending the Obama administration – wait, that would mean this website would probably have to start copying the Huffington Post as well.
With an attitude like your, we might as well not have the right at all.
Gay rights protestors offend me. The mix of washed-up hippies and trendy young marxists who sometimes gathered downtown to protest Bush offend me.
Would they argue that they should not express themselves in order to avoid offending folks like me? Throughout American history, carrying guns in public has been much more common and acceptable than homosexual freak and marxist parades.
In the case of the gay rights advocates, they choose to be in front of us to get us used to them. We should bear arms in public in order to get the public used to guns, especially the liberal pukes who move to places like Idaho and then try to turn it into whatever statist craphole they came from.
But then, what happens as the fed bring in more and more muslims, when we know that at least 25% of them think a bit of jihad is a good thing?
I could not agree less. What is needed is more open carry! Personally, I don’t worry about offending socialists and fascists.
The surest sign of a coward is when he says something like “don’t fight back, it will only make it worse” or in this issue “if you have a gun, the bad guy will take it from you and use it against you”.
Well, if you think that you are such a wimp and moron that someone could just walk up to you and swipe your iron, than maybe you just need to expidite that gender-reassignment surgery that you have been saving up for.
I would gladly open carry, if given the chance. Also, I wouldn’t care if someone on the Left was offended. But in my state (Illinois), we are not allowed concealed carry.
Recently, I was interrogated on the street by a police officer who was “concerned” about my pouch knife (a folding knife, of legal length, carried in a pouch from the belt). ANYONE can look at me and determine that I am not about to go postal with a pouch knife, especially when I’m with my wife.
I told him, “Get Mayor Daley to stop sending people from the Projects … people who bring their gang-banger kids with them … and I’ll stop carrying my knife.”
I might be tempted to kill to have the right to openly carry …
When I was in Israel, I saw open-carry by regular citizens. I thought it was great, and I felt a whole lot safer. Indeed, I think open carry is fine and it should be permitted for all who own firearms. Also, I note that the police carry openly and no one thinks they’re private parts are showing, so why isn’t it the same for the good people?
NB — Concealed carry is preferable because of the uncertainty it raises in the minds of the bad guys, insofar as they can’t know who really is carrying. Economists call that, positive externalities.
#32 Bob:
“Here’s a newsflash dummy – rights aren’t subject to focus groups”
That’s totally uncalled for. Mr. Cramer is far from being a dummy.
And in fact, it’s “focus groups”, (of a sort), that was directly responsible for the mass of gun-”control” legislation that we had to fight against, and after Heller v. DC, are STILL fighting.
If you don’t think public opinion has anything to do with making laws, good and bad ones, then who the “dummy” is here is manifestly obvious to even the most casual of observers.
How DARE you jeopardize what decades of effort and sacrifice has won?
I don’t know your history in the RTKBA movement, but Mr. Cramer’s is long and well-established.
All the man is basically saying is that we should take care to avoid becoming our own worst enemies.
And yet here you are, insulting and pissing off other gun owners and bearers because it’s too much of an imposition upon you to accept the friendly suggestion that you conduct yourself with a bit of tact and consideration for the situation you are in?
Pulling your shirt over your gatt would infringe your liberties, huh?
So, I guess you’re the type who really DOES carry a piece while using the toilet, then.
There’s an old saying you should acquaint yourself with, chappie.
“Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face.”
Bob
What you are suggesting is *stupid*.
Unlikely: because if it were stupid you’d be agreeing with it.
Also, cognitive dissonance much?
There are seemingly infinite variations of subjective standards that other people have regarding everything they encounter – it is impossible, absurd, and non-rational to tailor ones individual conduct to be in accord with such a vast, unknowable, and incoherent standard….
Don’t dress like Marilyn Manson. Don’t dress like Fifty Cent. Don’t dress like Bubba the banjo-playing ass-rapist. Shave. Have neat hair. Smell good. Wear well-cared-for clothes, regardless of your ’style’. In short, look like a person that gives a damn about being part of society.
Discretion can be the better part of valor.
Your error, Mr. Cramer, is in the assumption that the right to keep and bear arms is and should be a “political battle,” subject to political resolution. That’s a battle that we cannot win. It should never have been undertaken in the first place.
Politics is about power: attaining it, retaining it, enlarging it, and above all denying to one’s adversaries the means of resistance. Under no conceivable circumstances will the State ever concede in practice that the individual has a natural, inalienable right to keep and bear arms. How narrowly has the Second Amendment been interpreted in the decades since the Bill of Rights was ratified? How cleverly have its guarantees been qualified with notions of “compelling government interest?”
My rights are not a grant from the State. I will not seek anyone’s permission to exercise them. They are not subject to political arbitration or limitation. Anyone who tries to do so will face the harshest consequences I can dish out. That’s the duty of a free man.
The proper way to combat the prevailing tyranny exercised over gun owners is to ignore it completely — and to resist arrest by force of arms, hopefully with the assistance of your neighbors, when the occasion demands it. Any other course is self-subjugation in the vain hope of being thrown a few dessicated crumbs of liberty.
There are more and more things in the country that are legal but not right. I have had a concealed carry permit for a very long time, and I carry my little Dragnet gun with me when I leave the house, just like the way I wear a seat belt. And while it is perfectly legal for me to walk down the street with it exposed to the world, I don’t think it’s right to do so and, more important, it’s completely unnecessary. For self-defense it is often better to surprise the attacker than to “forewarn and forearm” him.
Get your license, carry your piece, know how to use it, never pull it unless you intend to use it, and keep it hidden. Come on folks. This is obvious.
If your gun is for your own protection it’s not bad advice to refrain from advertising it to a possible would-be assailant.
Screw you Cramer, and the horse you rode in on! If the PC crowd is nervous tell them to read the Constitution. I’m sick of ass hats like you telling me to worry about the gun grabbers. If they want my guns, let them come and get them. Yea; just let them try. In the mean time maybe you should start looking for another publication to speew your PC bullsh!t for, you seem a little more than nervous to be writing for the one you work for now.
I live in an open carry state and a carry conceal state. If you are a law abiding citizen you can get the CCP. I carry a concealed hand gun often. I carry one open when trapping or hunting. I am a big second ammendment advocate, but think it is best (for me) to keep the gun concealed for a number of reasons listed above, but not for political correctness or because someone may not like it. I think I am better protected with the element of surprise on my side.
The negative responses to this blog constitute the strongest arguments for gun control that I have ever read.
For all of you that choose cowardice – go sit at the back of the bus – I’m sure you’ll feel all smug and warm at how ‘sensible’ you are.
I’m sitting with Rosa…and laughing at your weakness & stupidity.
Cutting off ones nose is not nearly as shameful as your pathetic self-castration.
Granted, I live in a country that has experienced a lot more terrorism than in America (and I pray that this continues!), but I find Mr. Cramer’s point a bit puzzling. The purpose of carrying a gun is to use it to save innocent people’s lives. It is not a clothing accessory, to be put on or taken off depending on the environment you find yourself in. Where I live the men carry guns at all times – including when they go to synagogue, because a terrorist attack can happen anywhere. Wearing a gun when going to the zoo with your family sounds like a great idea to me, since it is probably one place where there are very few, if any, policemen. Who else is going to protect the kids if a crazy decides to go “postal” there?
I don’t see anything wrong with going out to the ball game like this:
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.towntopics.com/apr2507/cinema.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.towntopics.com/apr2507/cinema.php&usg=__MoJ1540IGE3AM767cGrhsDUO1PU=&h=380&w=420&sz=140&hl=en&start=5&um=1&tbnid=WNfie9H1B1ZtDM:&tbnh=113&tbnw=125&prev=/images%3Fq%3Darmed%2Bto%2Bthe%2Bteeth%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dsafari%26rls%3Den%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1
Why not?
I see valid arguments for and against open-carry.
I’m not sure that self-censorship based upon the sensitivities of the most hyper-sensitive is the way to go.
You know, by golly, I’ve been looking all over the conservative media swarm and can’t seem to find a single thing about Michael Ledeen and Rush, et al, lying about Obama’s thesis. Anybody know why? Drudge has some critical info about Andrew Lloyd Webber having cancer. Fox News updates us on Kirstie Alley. (With any luck, they’ll exhume anna Nicole Smith for some more in depth investigating reporting.) As for Rush, he’s going around for a third lap trying to convince the world that the bloods and crips are responsible for his getting bitch slapped. And PJM? Well, they’ve got the Naked Guy in Kitchen Scandal covered. Nice work, right wing. You report. We’ll decide. And we decide you’re shallow, juvenile, disingenuous, and hopelessly self absorbed. You have a tremendous future.
Hail Rush! Go Sarah!
#8FIREFIRE You forgot the most important part:The target!WINK WINK!
I am a licensed CCW holder, and I think first of all we have to accept the reality that we are part of a tight knit minority. We all believe that there is absolutely nothing wrong with carrying a firearm, and that it is our right to do so. I believe we are the good guys, not a threat to society. But even within my own small circle of friends and within my own family, carrying a pistol in the open is not acceptable. The concept of carrying a firearm AT ALL is alien to them.
Put aside the issue of having children around and the affect it may have on them or their parents. From the point of view of those who do not carry or are not firearms enthusiasts, seeing someone carrying a handgun out in the open instantly brings flashbacks of Columbine or recent news stories of some nut shooting up the local mall or healthclub. This is sad and pathetic, but this is the reality our times. I also think, for them, this is the equivalent of rubbing our belief in their faces, similar to what one might feel when the Jehovah’s witnesses knock on the door or when watching a gay-pride parade.
So I think it is to all of our advantage, all of us that are supporters of the 2nd Amendment and are proud of it, to be sensitive to those who do not share these beliefs or are simply ignorant on the issue. We don’t want to come across as gun-nuts, even though we all know we are not. And carrying concealed helps all of us reduce these perceptions. I think a lot of folks know subconsciously that there are legally armed citizens around them, but similar to learning about how hotdogs are made – they don’t want to think about it.
On rare occasions, some of us may have the opportunity to save ourselves, a loved one or and perhaps innocent bystanders from the real gun nuts – the criminal(s) trying to harm someone. It is during and after those moments, rare as they hopefully are, that we will show our value to society and to our community: that we really ARE the good guys and should be supported, not feared.
Perhaps then they will realize that the local and State Police can’t be everywhere all the time, and we therefore have to rely on law abiding citizens – patriots – to step up to defend ourselves, our families and our community on the rare occasion a situation demands it.
Stay safe out there. God bless America.
jaywhitingny@gmail.com
At this juncture in our history, I think it would be useful for citizens to start attending political meetings,especially those involving our “representatives” (of both mafias) fully armed,and kitted out in BDUs.The filth need to be intimidated,before we can retake our nation
Nice to see a more balanced approach. The problem with open carry is that we have no idea if you are a nut or a robber, and are going to use that gun on us.
The people who do need to open carry, like security and police, need to do so because there is a higher chance of needing to draw a weapon, if not to fire it in their daily work. They also are trained and screened to not be nuts, for the most part.
But if joe jethro is walking out to the store open carrying I kind of get nervous. I have no trust in him not to be nuts, or a robber the same way I do for cops or soldiers. Most of our exposure to guns is in limited scopes. Be it hunting, target ranges, reenactments-generally if we see a gun, it’s not in a situation where uncertainity exists about it being used on us.
That’s the dilemma a lot of us who believe in gun control see, and honestly, given the rhetoric a lot of pro-gun people use, I am not reassured.
they really just need to put more effort into promoting gun safety
Ok so its ok to carry a gun as long as you are in a polo and khakis.
Instead of dividing into two warring camps why not work out a reasonable protocol between the two pro-gun rights factions? Unless you’re in a dorm room at 2 in the morning, everybody agrees that there’s some level of prudence that should go into exercising rights.
So what should the pro-prudence people say to the open carry brigade when they see something that they think goes over the line. And how can the open carry brigade properly respond to that? What’s the right way to respect the differences in approach and keep it all on a friendly level among strangers in public?
Open carry in the People’s Republic of Wisconsin. Yeah, right.
The Wisconsin A-G has recently issued an opinion clarifying that open carry is constitutionally protected, and that arresting someone for disturbing the peace requires more than simply having a holstered firearm.
It seems reasonable and yet the erosion of rights often starts with the notion that something is offensive. Political Correctness, still a prevalent dogma, is just one example. Maybe the answer is more open carry? Maybe the answer is more concealed licensing? But I think the least, best answer is infringement, legal or social, on the Second Amendment.
I am offended by your article, perhaps you should not write openly. After all, your writing and your excretory organs have something in common.
Are planning to vote for more gun control because what I wrote offended you?
A nut case in the mall might think twice about shooting innocents if he sees a few armed guys walking around. Or he may challenge the armed instead of the defenseless.
If a nutcase or a terrorist decides to do a mass murder in a mall, who’s the first person he’s going to shoot? The person that is obviously armed: a police officer, an armed security guard, or a civilian who is openly carrying. I would prefer that he have to make a random decision on this–so that the odds are strong that someone carrying concealed will be able to respond.
I can completely understand conservatives being sick of having to moderate speech, values, even actions so as not to offend the liberal communists who are supposedly so tolerant. Still when you’re in a community, you do have to be practical about what views you choose to express and when – probably not a good idea to go off on the teacher’s union in the middle of a PTA meeting.
I would rather live in a place where open carry is normal and accepted, and if that’s not possible, a place where concealed carry is OK. But you’d have to be crazy to push the envelope on this one unless you’re part of an organized protest with a political strategy. And on that issue specifically, remember that one tea party protester who had an AK-47 and was all over the news – he did his cause much more harm than good.
You need to get over your bigotry. You need to support freedom, especially the freedoms that makes you uneasy. Otherwise, who is going to support your freedom when it comes under attack?
What astonishes me is that I emphasized that I was not proposing making open carry illegal–but pointing out that it is bad politics to offend people that may not care one way or the other.
Just because you have the right doesn’t mean that exercising it in all situations is wise politics.
To #30
“Women drivers are MUCH more dangerous then people carrying handguns on their hip.”
Please tell me you’re just referring to the women drivers with cell phones attached to their ear that don’t know how to use a turn signal or else I’ll be offended!
On the issue, I think just because it’s your right to “open carry” that you shouldn’t flaunt that right. In my individual opinion, I would opt for “conceal carry” given the choice. Maybe because I’m a little ole lady and the sight of me packing heat on my hip…well that’s not a pretty sight. Guess what’s in my handbag!
As far as freaking out the neighbors….. SO WHAT! That is their problem.
If they elect antigun politicians who promise to do something about this, it is the problem of all of us.
Moho writes:
Yes, they kill thousands of people every year. Oh wait…that’s the other people.
The gun control crowd certainly kills hundreds of millions of people per century. (At least, they did in the last century.)
I exercise my 2nd amendment rights because if I don’t, I’ll lose them.
Odd. The Black Panthers said the same thing when they marched into the California State Senate, armed, in 1967. The bill under consideration–to ban open carry of loaded firearms in cities–was at that point controversial, and not certain of passage. But the Black Panthers decided to exercise their 2nd amendment rights–and the bill was passed immediately, and with an “urgency provision” so that it took effect immediately.
Please: consider the possibility that the Black Panthers are not exactly the best model of how to win friends and influence people.
The Constitution exists to protect our RKBA, not Cramer’s cowardly suggestion that we meekly subdue ourselves in the hope nobody objects.
In case you haven’t noticed, we are in the process of trying to get the Supreme Court to incorporate the Second Amendment against the states, in McDonald v. Chicago. I believe that we are going to be successful at this. It may take another case, in another year, to resolve questions related to the “bear arms” part of the Second Amendment. The last thing we need is for a bunch of people who think that they need to open carry to make some sort of point, demolish the relatively thin support we have from federal judges on the issue of the Second Amendment.
Wow.
There was a time when the “reaction of other patrons was distinctly negative” when some Negro had the audacity to try and sit at the same lunch counter or use the wame water fountain as everybody else.
Bad analogy. Open carry is legal in most Western states (and surprisingly, in some Eastern states). Blacks sitting at lunch counters, using the white water fountain, etc. was not a matter of social custom, but law, enforced by the government.
When I was in Israel, I saw open-carry by regular citizens. I thought it was great, and I felt a whole lot safer. Indeed, I think open carry is fine and it should be permitted for all who own firearms. Also, I note that the police carry openly and no one thinks they’re private parts are showing, so why isn’t it the same for the good people?
Because police officers and uniformed armed security guards are assumed to have passed some sort of criminal and mental illness background. Therefore, there is little concern that either is going to become tomorrow’s national news headline.
I suppose if we made some serious effort to lock up violent felons and hospitalize those who are dangerously mentally ill, open carry wouldn’t cause quite so much concern. But neither of those is going to happen in the near future.
At this juncture in our history, I think it would be useful for citizens to start attending political meetings,especially those involving our “representatives” (of both mafias) fully armed,and kitted out in BDUs.The filth need to be intimidated,before we can retake our nation
Oh yes, that will definitely turn the vast swarm of people in the middle of the political spectrum to our side. Guaranteed!
Dear Mr. Cramer,
I think I do get your point, but I have an objection: the most important weapon of politics is “subconscious propaganda” and it deals with creating a NEW common sense (on which the political maneuvering will then hinge to attain its goals). When you consider that, you understand that we should never help the anti-gun lobby in creating a MODIFIED common sense about weapons: the more “hidden” and “concealed” guns are, the more probable it is that the anti-gun groups will be successful in presenting gun-ownership as a kind of “sin”. Even in your article you present a comparison (with bodily parts that don’t need to be shown) that goes already in the direction of creating such MODIFIED common sense.
You can choke people with your hands, but nobody gets scared if you show your hands.
You can kill a lot of people in a very short time by driving your car, but nobody gets scared if you show your car.
WHERE is the difference ? In the subconscious perception THAT HAS BEEN ARTIFICIALLY BUILT by the anti-gun groups.
We must pay a lot more attention to this hidden level of political propaganda.
Just now, we suffer under a marxist administration that could reach the White House quite because all the last forty years have been used to alter and modify common sense.
Let’s not collaborate with the subversives.
Thank you for the opportunity to comment.
Unless you’re in a dorm room at 2 in the morning, everybody agrees that there’s some level of prudence that should go into exercising rights.
A lot of the comments above must have been posted from a dorm room at 2 in the morning.
On my way to work Friday I saw an old pickup with two umbrellas in the gun rack. Thirty years ago it was very common to see such a pickup, but with two or three guns in the rack instead. It was a good place to keep guns because they were handy, and visible to the law.
When guns were common people did not remark on them. By hiding them we have marginalized ourselves.
“An armed society is a polite society”. RAH
File under: “Eek! A gun!”
Charlie
Quite right. People that carry guns in the open “because they can” are like loud mouthed slogan spouting speakers in a mall annoying everyone for the same reason. Neither wins friends.
That’s the dilemma a lot of us who believe in gun control see, and honestly, given the rhetoric a lot of pro-gun people use, I am not reassured.
Rest assured, the rhetoric that you are seeing here is NOT typical of “pro-gun people.” Open carry is not just legal, but constitutionally protected in Idaho, Arizona, Montana, Colorado, New Mexico, Washington State, Oregon, Wyoming (and a fair number of other states), but relatively few gun owners do so. Most rely upon the relative ease of obtaining concealed carry permits because they are more interested in self-defense than loudly making points.
On my way to work Friday I saw an old pickup with two umbrellas in the gun rack. Thirty years ago it was very common to see such a pickup, but with two or three guns in the rack instead. It was a good place to keep guns because they were handy, and visible to the law.
Thirty years ago, the owner of that truck probably couldn’t get a permit to carry concealed. In many Western states, you don’t see rifles in gun racks because there’s no longer a legal need to have the gun visible.
You can choke people with your hands, but nobody gets scared if you show your hands.
I think that is because there are, to my knowledge, few incidents where crazy people go into malls, and kill a dozen people in a row by choking them. Most people believe that they have a decent chance of defending themselves against being choked to death, and no chance of defending themselves from a crazy gunman. They are overestimating their chances against the unarmed attacker, and underestimating their chances against the guy with a gun. But perceptions matter more than reality when it comes to politics.
What is socially acceptable and what is not constantly changes. As of this time OC is not socially acceptable. But that can and is changing.
A women wearing pants was not acceptable,but now it is. Being gay was not acceptable but now it is. The way gays got acceptance was by challenging our bigotry. The same as OC is challenging bigotry.
Your contention that states will change their laws to outlaw OC is suspect. I doubt that VA will do that and VCDL has been very strong in pushing gun rights. They have strengthened preemption and have been successful in getting localities fro banning guns in violating of state law. Politically there is little chance of VA outlawing OC.
I believe that in other states the gun rights community will be as successful in defeating any effort to ban OC.
Banning gun carry will only work when the gun rights community is scared and quiet. That is not the case at this time. Idaho, AZ WY, VA, PA, WVA, DE, are states that the default is OC. I don’t think that any effort to ban OC will succeed.
Do not take counsel of your fears but rather celebrate that we can OC by supporting it rather than denigrating it. As others have said it is more important that OC be done while well dressed and looking normal.
Texas will probably allow OC soon as well as FL.
I hope that OC becomes fairly common, though it will never become the majority because many will not want to be inconvienced and carry a gun.
Well, if you think that you are such a wimp and moron that someone could just walk up to you and swipe your iron, than maybe you just need to expidite that gender-reassignment surgery that you have been saving up for.
Smarty, it happens. It doesn’t happen anywhere near as often as the gun control crazies like to claim, but it does happen. And not just to police officers.
Your error, Mr. Cramer, is in the assumption that the right to keep and bear arms is and should be a “political battle,” subject to political resolution. That’s a battle that we cannot win. It should never have been undertaken in the first place.
Politics is about power: attaining it, retaining it, enlarging it, and above all denying to one’s adversaries the means of resistance. Under no conceivable circumstances will the State ever concede in practice that the individual has a natural, inalienable right to keep and bear arms.
That’s why most states now make concealed weapon permits readily available? That’s why state supreme courts in the 1980s and 1990s repeatedly struck down restrictive arms bearing laws? That’s why most Western states have recognized open carry as constitutionally protected? That’s why the Supreme Court struck down a restrictive gun control law last year?
You have this wonderfully paranoid view of the government which might make sense if every state was California or New York. But it doesn’t fit most of America.
Cramer wrote:
And this is just window dressing? (BTW, HR-45 – Blair Holt’s Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act of 2009) Yeah, right. Fer G-d’s sake man, do you have any idea how lame you sound?
Oh, and the poster “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town, Son:” = shill for the Dhimmicrats/Demonrats and perhaps a moby. Get back under your bridge, troll.
Tolbert @ 15 said:
Too true and funny to boot! I was on a flight from Dallas to home on Friday and perusing the newest “Guns and Ammo”. The lady in the middle seat was visibly nervous. I engaged with her and her questions ran: “Are you an air marshal?” (No.) “Why are you reading that?” (Why not?) It turns out that me reading the magazine made her think I was to leap up, pull the dangerous gun that I had snuck through security and hijack the plane to Iran or something. BTW, I am 5’7″, 195# doughboy who is as innocuous as can be, but the mere thought of guns scared her. I agree with your first statement 100%. A nation of ‘wimps’ indeed and fact.
Cramer, you just got assigned to the GFW bin.
And moho is still and idiot.
#52 Bob:
“For all of you that choose cowardice – go sit at the back of the bus – I’m sure you’ll feel all smug and warm at how ’sensible’ you are.”
Be careful what you dictate. While we all know that YOU have a gun, you have no idea if and how many of US are packing heat.
“I’m sitting with Rosa…and laughing at your weakness & stupidity.”
With your attutude, the only person you’ll be sitting next to is your next husband, and it’ll be on the bus that takes you to prison.
“Cutting off ones nose is not nearly as shameful as your pathetic self-castration.”
And in that sentence probably lurks the underlying cause of your attitude.
Y’know, every stereotype has at least some kerenel(s) of truth to it, and here you are, a poster boy for what the gun “control” people have said all along. You’re compensating for what isn’t in your pants by wearing something larger outside of your pants.
Why don’t you go work your issues out with a therapist and a supply of “Extenze” instead of with a firearm out in public?
Just because Mrs. Bob has to lead an unfulfilled life because of your shortcomings is no reason to jeopardize the rest of us and our hard-regained liberties, y’know.
In case you’re the kind of dullard who needs it spelled out for you:
It’s not your d!ck…it’s a firearm.
Stop pretending otherwise.
Screw you Cramer, and the horse you rode in on! If the PC crowd is nervous tell them to read the Constitution. I’m sick of ass hats like you telling me to worry about the gun grabbers.
Most of the angry comments above are insisting that we MUST open carry to protect our rights from those gun grabbers! Now you say that there’s no reason to worry about them?
What I was saying is that you have to be worried about the possibility that open carry in the wrong place may drive some people into the arms of the gun grabbers.
I see valid arguments for and against open-carry.
I’m not sure that self-censorship based upon the sensitivities of the most hyper-sensitive is the way to go.
My guess is that this “most hyper-sensitive” crowd is at least 40% of the U.S. population who would find open carry in an urban setting a little discomforting, but are not intrinsically hostile to gun ownership, or even to concealed carry. But who cares if 40% of the voters join the 25% of Americans who are hostile to gun ownership? We’ve got the Constitution on our side, and that’s really all that matters, isn’t it?
My rights are not a grant from the State. I will not seek anyone’s permission to exercise them. They are not subject to political arbitration or limitation. Anyone who tries to do so will face the harshest consequences I can dish out. That’s the duty of a free man.
The proper way to combat the prevailing tyranny exercised over gun owners is to ignore it completely — and to resist arrest by force of arms, hopefully with the assistance of your neighbors, when the occasion demands it. Any other course is self-subjugation in the vain hope of being thrown a few dessicated crumbs of liberty.
Are you sure that you aren’t Moho’s sock puppet? This is the sort of rhetoric that suggests that you haven’t spent much time outside your bunker recently.
Do you know how few Americans actually care about an abstract concept like liberty? They may care about losing their job. They may care about higher taxes. They may care about having their gun taken away from them. (For most, they would care if their football games were taken off TV.) But this over the top rhetoric reminds of the sort of delusionary trash that the Weather Underground used to spout in the 1960s and 1970s, because they spent all their time talking to similarly deluded hard leftists, and didn’t actually talk to ordinary Americans.
RagnarD writes:
And this is just window dressing? (BTW, HR-45 – Blair Holt’s Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act of 2009) Yeah, right. Fer G-d’s sake man, do you have any idea how lame you sound?
And HR-45 has gone where? Nowhere. Even Nancy Pelosi told A-G Holder to shut up about assault weapon bans–that it just isn’t going to happen. Pelosi didn’t become our friend; she figured out that pursuing gun control is a losing strategy.
I was on a flight from Dallas to home on Friday and perusing the newest “Guns and Ammo”. The lady in the middle seat was visibly nervous.
And if she had met you while out shopping, with a micro-Uzi in a holster, what would her reaction have been? “Nice gun, sir! I’m so glad to see you carrying that!”
Being gay was not acceptable but now it is. The way gays got acceptance was by challenging our bigotry. The same as OC is challenging bigotry.
That’s why the voters in California overturned the California Supreme Court, and defined marriage as “one man, one woman”? Sorry, but when even Californians won’t buy into this says that “but now it is” is simply not the case. Media energy put into promoting homosexuality has been effective; the equivalent to OC are gay kiss-ins and gay pride parades–which tend to produce the opposite result.
Banning gun carry will only work when the gun rights community is scared and quiet.
Why do you keep conflating open carry with ALL gun carry?
I do understand the author’s premise of offending people in public places. I was born and mostly raised in California. Our family moved to Arizona in 1997. I remember working outside in the front of our home with my young son and seeing a middle aged man walking down the center of our street with a rifle hanging in front of his chest. I was terrified and ordered my son into the house. We ran inside and locked our doors. I had not realized that Arizona was a right to carry state after spending most of my life in gun-hating California. I love Arizona – one reason is their gun laws that actually promote safety for your family.
Allow one pro-open carry fact, please. Note that since the New Hampshire Tea Party incident of open carry, there have not been any more physical assaults by Service Employee International Union (SEIU) goons on Tea Party participants. Yes, I know, post hoc ergo propter hoc, but if Ken Gladney had been openly armed in Missouri (fat chance) do you think he would have been put in the hospital for the “crime” of handing out Gadsden flags?
IMO if someone goes to a Tea Party event openly armed, and is questioned about it, the answer should be “I”m armed so that union goons cannot easily threaten me” or some variation thereof. Put the onus back on the questioner, let them justify the union goon violence.
I’m with number 37. The list of things that offend me daily is pretty long, even those things that are illegal, yet the law is not enforced for whatever reason.
Not among the Rights in the Bill of Rights is the Right to not be offended.
RagnarD: HR.45 was submitted by Rep. Bobby Rush back in February. It was referred to the appropriate committee and subcommittee. There has been no action since. There is no chance of this bill even coming to a vote in the House, much less passing, or passing the Senate.
Any Representative can submit any bill on any subject he wants to. A few years ago, Rep. Dennis Kucinich submitted a bill to ban “psychotronic weapons”. (Really.)
The real danger is not in overt anti-gun legislation, but in the subversion of the Constitution and democratic principles by transnationalists like Harold Koh (former dean of Harvard Law, chief legal adviser to the State Department). Koh has openly called for the judiciary to incorporate “international norms” into American law and override the First and Second Amendments.
To “Don’t Take Your Guns to Town, Son:” Well stated! I’m an old guy who fought for CCW in MO – & I’ve had a permit since law took effect in ’04. When I see some civilian in public who is OC – & he doesn’t have a badge on his belt next to it – I’m on the ‘defensive’! Go ahead, call me a ‘wimp’– that’s the way I react. Imagine the reaction of today’s suburbanite mom w/ kids who’s never been around handguns!
#98 Rich Rostrom:
“A few years ago, Rep. Dennis Kucinich submitted a bill to ban “psychotronic weapons”. (Really.)”
Well…he would know, if anyone did.
I agree with everything you say and I am a member of the NRA. Just because you have the right to carry doesn’t mean you should carry in a totally inappropriate setting. Use some common sense for cryin’ out loud. All you are doing is aggravating anyone who doesn’t agree with you and we all know they have the loudest most obnoxious voices around. The quickest way to get the debate going again is for some idiot to say they feel “threatened” or worse yet, the person carrying was threatening. Besides, who straps on a piece just to go shopping? Guns are an excellent way to defend yourself. Defend don’t offend.
“If a nutcase or a terrorist decides to do a mass murder in a mall, who’s the first person he’s going to shoot? The person that is obviously armed: a police officer, an armed security guard, or a civilian who is openly carrying.”
I think that an openly carrying citizen may cause the nutcase to re-think his target entirely. Such nutcases abhor armed citizens, carrying open OR concealed. It causes them to have to think about such things as who may be the better shot, and therefore takes away their sense of control over the situation. That is why they love sitting duck targets such as college campuses where firearms are banned.
I am puzzled that a self proclaimed proponent of second admendment rights would make the argument that open carry would cause offended citizens to run into the arms of government protection. In fact, I think that repeated exposure to open carry may cause them to become more educated and less offended.
Amazing how the right is told it’s never OK to offend, but the left considers it their duty to offend. The left is winning because their offenses have become the norm, while the right is scared into the closet.
The negative responses to this blog constitute the strongest arguments for gun control that I have ever read.
I agree. I find Cramer to be quite thoughtful on this topic. And though I don’t have a strong opinion on the 2nd amendment, I think he does a pretty good job of defending his thesis using reason and logic. But the comments on this blog indicate he might just be one lone voice in the wilderness, and the people whose rights he is defending are complete whackos.
“An armed society is a polite society”. RAH
He was also in favor of group marriages, homosexuality, “other” sexual relationships, and cloning, and presented eugenics in a favorable light.
Shall we take those endorsements into consideration as well?
Of course that is all rather irrelevant when we consider that the majority of replies in this thread rather thoroughly refute the assertion in the first place.
So many armed people, so little politeness.
The irony is transcendent.
Bob…sitting in the back with Rosa:
There’s a problem with this parallel. First of all, Rosa Parks was fighting for the right to use in equal ways public conveyance and public areas. This is a right that everyone needs, because it is a necessity of life. Gun ownership may be a constitutionally protected right, but it is not a question of equality, under the law or otherwise. Since legalized weapons are not the purview of any one group, then outlawing them does not hurt any one group. Outlawing guns would necessarily put everyone at the back of the bus. The right is meant for the “people”. Most of the people don’t want this right and don’t actually care what ends up happening to it. The fact that you are keenly aware that your right to gun ownership isn’t limitless does not make you a persecuted minority.
The gun control crowd certainly kills hundreds of millions of people per century. (At least, they did in the last century.)
Explain, if you can. This should be good.
Are you sure that you aren’t Moho’s sock puppet?
I suppose that may be a compliment. But even if I were trying to create the image of the most perfectly vile stereotype of a 2nd amendment barrel fellator, I could not have done such justice.
Wise up Clayton,along with your neighbors,and quit being offended.
I think that an openly carrying citizen may cause the nutcase to re-think his target entirely. Such nutcases abhor armed citizens, carrying open OR concealed. It causes them to have to think about such things as who may be the better shot, and therefore takes away their sense of control over the situation. That is why they love sitting duck targets such as college campuses where firearms are banned.
What asinine logic. I’d like to see your armed citizen flex his marksmanship with a bullet to the back of the head, after he’s advertised himself as best target in the group with his revolver tucked under his beer gut. If anything, you’ve proved Cramer’s point.
Our can only be helped if we desensitize them by constant exposure . Always carry legally and shoot whenever you can . Moho has a murder fantasy .
Oh blimey. I forgot a crucial sentence!
5. Don’t Take Your Guns to Town, Son:
Couldn’t agree more.
Open carry should be normalized by carrying open, often. After the initial discomfort that ignorant bigots feel, eventually they will get used to it…and gun rights will be less threatened because of it.
Its OK to come out of the closet, with your pistol, and declare to the world, Im here, Im armed, and Im proud of it.
There are always two types of people in any movement, those who are actually trying to find the best way to change things and those who are trying to “stick it to the man” regardless of consequences. Some of the divide over open carry is between members of the first group who are divided on what strategy actually works best, but some of the commenters this website sound like the “stick it to the man” types. Hopefully they remain a minority, because often you can stick it to the man until the man sticks you back-and you have no allies against him because you convinced them you are a nut-job.
Grrr. I can’t BELIEVE I misspelled propaganda twice in one short post at #2. Really, folks, I CAN spell. (Self-flagellation ensues)
http://patriotboy.blogspot.com/
scroll to:
Things you see a monster truck rallies.
It answers so many questions, doesn’t it?
Moho, it’s simple- the fact that a majority doesn’t want a right does not negate the minority’s right to exercise it. As for gun grabbers killing a hundred million people last century, the first thing a totalitarian does to secure his dictatorship is disarm the population. Do you honestly think the Communists would have been able to slaughter so many had their victims been in any position to fight back?
Blacks sitting at lunch counters, using the white water fountain, etc. was not a matter of social custom, but law, enforced by the government.
Forgive the snark, but how/why do you think those laws, as enforced by the government, were initially passed and generally upheld (until effectively challenged)?
Helpful hint: the answer is in your own comment.
As such, the analogy stands, though the analogy of the Norfolk 17 is potentially a better one.
Cramer – I like that you engage with your audience. Perhaps, you do it too much. Some of your argumetns are very weak, also.
Re: the Black Panthers. Well, yes, they caused a panic, but what if, instead, they were armed businessmen coming in to defy the bill?
Personally, I was on a bus in Seattle, one day, and some guy got on while packin’. I had not seen this before in Seattle, and I had to assess how I felt about it (danger?)… for about a half-second. I then mentally shrugged my shoulders. I’m a rational person, and I know my Constitution. No problem for me.
For others, though, it is a problem. Why? Ignorance. So, if I’m packin’, how is their ignorance my fault? THEY are the problem, not me. I really do not care if it offends them. They would be just as alarmed if I were carrying concealed and they spotted it under my coat. It is their ignorance, and the inculcation into our society the idea that guns are evil. They’ve been drinking the kool-aid. Again, not my problem.
What they need to see is more of this, not less. It is NOT rubbing their noses in it. It is the process of normalization… or rather, re-normalization. They NEED to see ordinary Citizens going about their daily affairs while armed.
Your argument of becoming the target of the crazed gunman also holds no water. First, I’d rather be the target, than someone who is unarmed. I’m willing to die for others. Second, your premise relies on me being the only one, rather than being one of very many. If I’m the only one, that’s a maybe. If I’m one of ten guys openly-carrying, then the bad guy might want to re-think his plans. He wants to be the killer, not the killee.
This article is based on the current twisted norms of society and the ignorance. All your position is, is the acceptance of, the bowing to, these false norms. I refuse. If it makes them want to ban guns, I am willing to take up that fight, any time. As Jefferson said, “A little revolution is a good thing from time to time.”
The reaquaintance of society with guns is what is required, not kow-towing to false norms. The re-education of society to our Constitution and Bill of Rights is what is required. You cannot achieve this by sweeping the problem under the rug. Open Carry! Either they will get used to it again, or we provole the debate, which we will win. Either path rolls back the tyrannical Leftists, and America wins!
Open carry at a shooting range? Some sort of redneck hangout, perhaps, not at any properly conducted shooting range. I have been a multi-discipline competitor all my life–in college, in the Marine Corps, in various clubs, participating in all kinds of matches and shoots. Walking around with a holstered,loaded weapon, conceled or open, would be an automatic cease-fire situation in any of these venues.
Free speechers should think hard about whether it serves our best interests to offend and disturb our neighbors.
Bloggers should think hard about whether it serves our best interests to offend and disturb our neighbors.
Writers should think hard about whether it serves our best interests to offend and disturb our neighbors.
Demonstrators should think hard about whether it serves our best interests to offend and disturb our neighbors.
People with, oh, long hair… should think hard about whether it serves our best interests to offend and disturb our neighbors.
What is wiser? To be oh so polite, or to give clear notice of intent? Sorry Mr. Cramer, you’re way off. Pajamas Media is not an “excretory organ”, but your article needs, er, special handling?
Moho, it’s simple- the fact that a majority doesn’t want a right does not negate the minority’s right to exercise it.
Hmmm…this has nothing to do with my point. My comment was directed at the idiot who fancied himself some kind of Rosa Parks-esque martyr confined to the back of the bus. That would only be true if he was a member of a group which was denied gun ownership because of a characteristic, while others not sharing that characteristic were allowed to own guns. Example: a black person in fifties Alabama unable to vote, because of racial characteristics, while others not sharing that characteristic were able to. Because all people are equally subject to state law and federal law concerning gun ownership, this is a self-centered, stupid, and frankly offensively ignorant analogy.
As for gun grabbers killing a hundred million people last century, the first thing a totalitarian does to secure his dictatorship is disarm the population.
If you’re trying to draw some parallel between advocates of gun rights regulation and autocratic regimes–and I’m guessing here, because its not clear what you’re trying to say–its a deliberately false and misleading cowardly analogy. Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian, it doesn’t make vegetarians anti-semites. Stalin outlawed littering, it doesn’t make people who want tougher littering laws Stalinists. Outlawing gun ownership in itself does not cause death, as is clear–its a conclusion that you can reach not only via common sense, but from the examples of dozens of countries where there is no right to own a gun. The people who kill other people with guns own guns. The people who seek to limit ownership do not own guns, although I suppose you might make an argument that they are more likely to kill with knives. I mean, you might, not that a sane person would.
With this kind of logic its no surprise that the average person–who, keep in mind, probably doesn’t give a shit if you own a gun or not, so long as you don’t arrogantly brandish it in his/her face in public like some ill-hung bully–leans more and more toward strictly limiting your crazed ass from owning a gun.
One of the most common argumentative tactices of the left is the attempt to belittle the purveyors of ideas they don’t want to hear. Why they don’t want to hear them is a another issue, but they do this for two basic reasons. One is that they are devoid of arguments to combat the irritant. They tend to believe that, in any debate, whoever shouts the loudest and longest wins. They will continually use these shallow minded approaches in an attempt to brow beat their opponents into submission. It has never worked for Now and Then, but I suspect he/she is suffering enough from a superiority complex to keep dumping more drivel on anyone that makes him/her feel uncomfortable.
“…with a bullet to the back of the head, after he’s advertised himself as best target in the group…”
Can you provide an example of such an incident?
I think the commenter who wrote that nailed it. Just as some people may be offended by open carry, there are those who will be offended merely because I express an opinion. Sometimes, it’s ok if people get offended, if the alternative is I have to forgo the exercise of my right just so they can keep their peace of mind. Sometimes, it might even be my purpose to provoke a disruption of their peace of mind. It is what happens in a vigorous debate. Being able to brag that you never offended anyone is an accomplishment of dubious merit in my book.
“Carrying a gun openly in a city can — and does — offend people who might not have a strong opinion one way or the other about gun control.”
OK using that logic, gay people should not be allowed to show any public display of their gayness. because it can – and does — offend people who might not have a strong opinion one way or the other about homosexuality.
Why they don’t want to hear them is a another issue, but they do this for two basic reasons. One is that they are devoid of arguments to combat the irritant. They tend to believe that, in any debate, whoever shouts the loudest and longest wins.
The funniest thing about your criticism is that it was completely devoid of evidence or fact–literally devoid of arguments. On the streets they call it Self-Pwnage Media.
Individual rights are almost by design made to offend people. What good is it to make a speech that everyone agrees with?
Or all vote for the same candidate?
We wouldn’t need the freedom of religion clause if we were all Methodist, now would we?
The mere fact that you and I have rights will offend those that wish to take or supress them.
So openly carrying a weapon will cause fear and offend some. Well so what? Get over it.
The gun control crowd certainly kills hundreds of millions of people per century. (At least, they did in the last century.)
Explain, if you can. This should be good.
Auschwitz. Red China. The Turkish genocide of the Armenians. the Gulag Archipelago. Each and every one greatly assisted by restrictive gun control laws that disarmed the victims.
“Carrying a gun openly in a city can — and does — offend people who might not have a strong opinion one way or the other about gun control.”
OK using that logic, gay people should not be allowed to show any public display of their gayness. because it can – and does — offend people who might not have a strong opinion one way or the other about homosexuality.
Except that I didn’t say that open carry shouldn’t be allowed. I said that doing so drives people into opposition to gun carrying.
Amazing how the right is told it’s never OK to offend, but the left considers it their duty to offend. The left is winning because their offenses have become the norm, while the right is scared into the closet.
Why should we adopt the left’s tactics? Because they are effective? So is mass murder and the police state. But that’s no reason to adopt the left’s tactics on those, is it?
Cramer – I like that you engage with your audience. Perhaps, you do it too much. Some of your argumetns are very weak, also.
Re: the Black Panthers. Well, yes, they caused a panic, but what if, instead, they were armed businessmen coming in to defy the bill?
The reaction would have been less severe–but it would probably still have caused the bill to pass. (Maybe not so easily.)
Personally, I was on a bus in Seattle, one day, and some guy got on while packin’. I had not seen this before in Seattle, and I had to assess how I felt about it (danger?)… for about a half-second. I then mentally shrugged my shoulders. I’m a rational person, and I know my Constitution. No problem for me.
For others, though, it is a problem. Why? Ignorance. So, if I’m packin’, how is their ignorance my fault? THEY are the problem, not me. I really do not care if it offends them. They would be just as alarmed if I were carrying concealed and they spotted it under my coat. It is their ignorance, and the inculcation into our society the idea that guns are evil. They’ve been drinking the kool-aid. Again, not my problem.
You describe yourself as a rational person. Guess what? Many people aren’t. They respond emotionally. Indeed, it seems like most people respond emotionally. I’m not sure the rationality circuits exist in many people. (There’s a reason only some of us make a living programming computers, and it isn’t because others prefer lower paying jobs.)
If you want to desensitize people to guns, it helps if there is something in between 0 (can’t see it, because it’s concealed or not present) and 1 (it’s openly carried). But there isn’t any half-step in that binary choice, so you aren’t really going to desensitize in the way that media has desensitized Americans about homosexuality. If the same binary choice existed with respect to displays of homosexuality (0=completely closeted, no discussion at all, the condition of 1965; 1=two guys having explicit sex on TV), the media campaign would have FAILED.
Wise up Clayton,along with your neighbors,and quit being offended.
I’m not offended. And you can wish all you want that it won’t offend, disturb, or worry average Americans. But wishing doesn’t make it true.
Your argument of becoming the target of the crazed gunman also holds no water. First, I’d rather be the target, than someone who is unarmed.
This isn’t a binary choice: “target” or “someone who is unarmed.” I seldom go anywhere in public without a handgun readily available to me. If I am traveling by car, I have a 9mm carbine secured but available to me on short notice.
I’m willing to die for others.
See the speech at the beginning of Patton. Paraphrasing it, you don’t save lives by being willing to die when a madman goes on a rampage; you save lives by shooting him before he kills others. If the madman shoots at the first armed person he sees, that’s one less armed person available to shoot the madman.
Second, your premise relies on me being the only one, rather than being one of very many. If I’m the only one, that’s a maybe. If I’m one of ten guys openly-carrying, then the bad guy might want to re-think his plans. He wants to be the killer, not the killee.
Unless you make open carry MANDATORY in public places, you are not going to be one of “ten guys openly-carrying.” Even with the current shall issue concealed weapon permit laws, only about 5% of the population gets permits–and it is likely that only some of them will be carrying at any given time. To get even two people openly carrying in a shopping mall, you are going to need at least 150 people in range–perhaps as many as 300 people. To get to ten, it’s going to require quite a crowd.
But the comments on this blog indicate he might just be one lone voice in the wilderness, and the people whose rights he is defending are complete whackos.
The “I’m going to carry openly, and I don’t care how many people it offends” comments on this blog are not at all indicative of gun owners.
If it makes them want to ban guns, I am willing to take up that fight, any time. As Jefferson said, “A little revolution is a good thing from time to time.”
Revolutions are usually disasters for freedom. The American Revolution is something quite remarkable in history: an armed revolution that increased the freedom of every day people. The French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, and the Spanish Civil War are far more typical, where the most brutal thugs ended up in charge when all the bloodshed was finished.
There are times that there is no realistic choice in the matter. Decause the consequences are so serious, violent revolution is a last resort, as the Declaration of Independence reminds us.
Moho writes:
Because all people are equally subject to state law and federal law concerning gun ownership, this is a self-centered, stupid, and frankly offensively ignorant analogy.
Except that some of the surviving state laws were written specifically to allow discrimination. California’s current concealed weapon permit law, passed in 1923, was part of a package of laws openly stated to disarm Hispanics and Chinese. (One provision prohibited non-citizens from owning handguns–at a time when Asian immigrants could not by law become citizens, and many Hispanics were recent refugees from the Mexican Revolution.) And there is a strong correlation today between the whiteness of California counties, and their rate of issuance of concealed weapon permits.
In addition, there is a considerable body of evidence that the post-Civil War laws that first created concealed weapon permits were intended to disarm blacks in a manner that would not run afoul of the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibited discrimination. As a result, these permit systems granted unlimited discretion to the sheriff, police chief, or judge, as to whether there was sufficient cause to issue a permit. See Watson v. Stone (Fla. 1941):
It is no coincidence that the most restrictive gun control laws in the U.S. are often in the blackest cities: Washington, D.C., Chicago, being two good examples.
Hitler disarmed the Jews then unleashed his Brownshirts on them.
Stalin and Mao disarmed the peasants and then did their dirty work. Ukraines forced famine, Maos cultural revolution etc.
The British were clamping down on a populace that was getting sick of their crap, and decided that before they could really clamp down on us, they better disarm us.
When it comes down to it, we need to desensitize people to the idea of an armed populace.
Doing events like “go to the zoo armed”, where the group in question has a lawyer ready to deal with dumbshit cops is a very, very good idea. I like the idea of decently dressed, polite people doing things like that. I personally never carry open unless I am in the mountains or desert. I would be willing to do a day at the zoo kind of thing though, just to force the liberals to deal with it.
Blacks sitting at lunch counters, using the white water fountain, etc. was not a matter of social custom, but law, enforced by the government.
Forgive the snark, but how/why do you think those laws, as enforced by the government, were initially passed and generally upheld (until effectively challenged)?
Helpful hint: the answer is in your own comment.
More useful answer: look at Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Many of these laws were passed because social custom was insufficient to segregate private businesses–hence, the need for laws to force private businesses to discriminate based on race.
Sometimes, it might even be my purpose to provoke a disruption of their peace of mind.
I hope you enjoy losing elections.
If you want to desensitize the average person so that they don’t see guns as a bad thing–mentioning to someone you know (and haven’t been a jerk to) that you have a concealed weapon permit is vastly more likely to be effective.
I teach a State & Local Government class right now at a local college. One of the students, an older woman, is clearly very, very hostile to concealed carry, from remarks she has made when the subject has come up. (I often use regulation related to concealed carry as examples.)
When discussing bureaucracy and the problem of regulatory discretion, I discussed how the change from discretionary to shall-issue laws has changed the landscape of gun ownership in the United States these last 20 years, and the history of racism in issuance of permits. This student suddenly asked, “How long is a concealed weapon permit good for?” One of my brighter students suddenly turned around and said, “Five years” and handed her his permit. I suspect that having someone that she has been taking classes with for many months do that has probably done FAR more good than any display of open carry.
I grew up in New Mexico on a farm; so it may not be surprising that I grew up around firearms. My dad had a Smith & Wesson, my adult sister kept a sawed-off shotgun under her bed. Friends’ parents had guns in their homes (properly stored); and many people went hunting. Living a slightly more isolated, rural existence, gun ownership made some sense.
Now I live in a large urban center, and if I were to see an armed individual in my everyday life, I would be worried. NOT OFFENDED, but concerned for my safety and that of others. Where I live, there is not enough crime to require being armed on the city streets. And because of recent events, it would seem plausible that a gun-carrying individual was intent on a rampage. And I would definitely call the police — better safe than sorry.
Screw that. More people should carry guns regularly so people get used to people carrying guns again. And I’ve experienced that effect first hand. While I did shoot a couple guns in Boy Scouts growing up and my father did own a couple guns which he showed me once, I still was raised in a very anti-gun environment. That is to say I grew up in your typical democrat household… But when I traveled to Israel, Switzerland and other parts of the country where carrying guns openly was very mainstream I instantly got used to it. We need to make gun ownership mainstream across the entire country if we want to protect our personal freedom. Or else we’re constantly on the edge of them being banned for good by some left leaning politician that gets elected.
Who may or may not be offended by exercising my Constitutional Rights is of no concern to me. To agree to hide your weapon lends credence to the morons who don’t want folks to have the right to carry at all. I have a CWP and how I carry my gun is my choice. The statement “Is guy planning to be a national news headline tomorrow” (sic) is asinine. At least with OC you are AWARE someone is carrying. Most mass murderers don’t allow their weapons to be seen until they are ready to start firing. Just because a gun is not seen does not mean a threat is not there, and seeing it doesn’t mean there is a threat either. Logically, if EVERYONE was carrying openly folks would have impeccable manners and consideration for others!
Clayton Cramer and Bildgeman: You’ve been the voices of reason on this thread. It disturbs me that conservatives can fall iinto exactly the same rhetoric used by, say, gay rights activists who parade around wearing revealing clothing at rallies: “Who cares if it offends people? We have the right to offend and if you don’t like it you’re just uptight! I have my rights, damnit!”
Being conservative should mean a basic respect for the sensibilities of others. I am a firm proponent of the 2nd amendment. I have no problem whatsoever with concealed carry. I would not like to see people openly carrying arms on the street. If it bothers me, it will certainly upset people who don’t feel strongly about the 2nd amendment one way or the other. Right now, the majority of Americans oppose gun control. Obama won’t change that. Zealots who insist on brandishing their guns openly and in total disregard for others certainly will.
justasimplepatriot (#20): if it’s that likely a scenario, then surely you can reference some news accounts of it actually happening?
And Clayton, you really ought to come hang out in Western Washington for a while, so you can get a closeup of how “liberal Seattle” views this question. The short version is: quite favorably to gun rights. Outgoing Mayor Nickels of Seattle is massively unpopular for his anti-gun stance. I was at the public hearing for his prior attempt at a gun ban, and there were even people there who (a) weren’t gun owners, (b) just happened to wander by the hearing room and give a listen, and (c) signed up to speak against the ban because it angered them so much to see law-abiding handgun carry being attacked.
Meanwhile, just about every major law enforcement agency in King County (including, yes, Seattle PD) have issued training bulletins reminding officers that peaceable, non-threatening, holstered open carry is completely legal. It sure appears, from my vantage point nearby, that open carry activism is having a net beneficial effect.
Cramer said: The Wisconsin A-G has recently issued an opinion clarifying that open carry is constitutionally protected, and that arresting someone for disturbing the peace requires more than simply having a holstered firearm.
The AG issued a memo, not a binding opinion, asserting that open carry alone did not constitute sufficient grounds to press a disorderly conduct charge. While it alluded to unresolved constitutional questions regarding open carry, it most certainly did NOT hold that such was constitutionally protected. Wisconsin statutes are silent on open carry, which only means the state’s legislature has not yet adopted pertinent regulations. The AG was clearly stating the need for the legislature to do so. The AG was careful to state that existing regulations – such as one that prohibits carrying an uncased firearm in a vehicle – remain in effect.
Wisconsin’s governor is a die-hard anti-gunner, its bureaucracy is demonstrably anti-gun, and a majority of the state legislature is strongly predisposed against private gun ownership in any form. The reactions to the AG’s memo from Wisconsin LE have been uniformly anti-gun, maintaining that open carry may be technically legal, but remains sufficient grounds to question and harass anyone doing it. While “technically” legal, open carry is “practically” prohibited, and will precipitate adverse consequences for anyone with the temerity to try it in the People’s Republic of Wisconsin.
Which is what I said in my original post, and is not changed in the least by the AG’s memo.
Mr. Cramer, I agree with your destination, I disagree with the route you have chosen to get there. I do admire your willingess to stick it out here and go toe to toe ( verb to verb?) with those that disagree with you.
The best way to change attitudes about firearms is thru familiarity with firearms. A lot of the fear involves the fear of the unknown. When I was in High school (mid 50′s) shooting was an elective. You tagged along with Jr. ROTC to the Arsenal range and got to poke holes in paper with a .22 Weapons safety was a range requirement. Gun control should be taught in high school. I’m talking real gun control. The kind where you learn how to make it go off or not go off when you want it to and getting rounds if not on target, close enough so they know you care.
As I pointed out in my deleted post, If the Feds can force people to buy Health insurance, then the feds can force people to buy firearms.
Hiding a handgun on your person just increases the fear level of those that already fear them. I haven’t seen any explanation of why that is a good thing.
“We shouldn’t allow mere untrained civilians to carry guns, there will be firefights over parking spaces and shootouts at the mall.”
“We shouldn’t carry openly because we’ll scare the general population and they’ll be motivated to make the laws stricter, not more lax.”
Those two statements have two things in common: They’re both based on emotion driven prejudices rather than objective fact and neither has come to pass anywhere that they’ve taken place.
Do a few very vocal GFW’s cry out in agony over the sight of a person lawfully carrying a firearm? Does the press lambaste the practice, try to paint it in the most unflattering light possible and draw comparisons to “the wild west”? Of course.
Do either of those things affect public opinion in the way they hope? Nope.
The non-hoplophobes sit back and wonder what all the hubbub was about, while realizing the real significance: Lawfully armed citizens openly carried firearms in a public place and NOTHING BAD HAPPENED.
The hoplophobes and media (but I repeat myself) are exposed (again) as harboring irrational fears and those unafflicted with unreasonable fears are again reminded that the vast majority of their peers are stable, law abiding people who pose no danger to anyone.
Evidence? Someone already mentioned Virginia, VCDL and the open carry dinners.
Yup, the media went nuts, the hoplophobes wet their panties in fear, we had a few high profile incidents where the police were called…and in all of those incidents the one thing that the general public noted is that the only ones remaining calm and unflustered were the open carriers. The general public realized that the citizens were harming no one and the over-the-top reaction was the problem, not the citizens exercising their rights.
And what’s been the result? Open carry is MUCH more accepted in Virginia than it was ten years ago when I first began doing it regularly…in one of the most anti-gun urban areas in the state.
The past two legislative sessions in a row, we’ve gotten laws passed overturning the “restaurant ban”, that have been vetoed by the governor and both of the incoming Gubernatorial candidates are pro-gun and have promised to sign the bill into law if it reaches their desks again.
In short…all the hissy fit doom-saying scaredy cats like Clayton Cramer are flat out wrong.
The only place that their fears are played out are in the media (which virtually no one trusts any more anyway) and the halls of the Brady Campaign.
Open carry is a great outreach tool for getting the “squshy middle” to think about the issue in terms that WE determine…in terms of law abiding citizens peacefully bearing arms and harming no one…rather than only thinking about it when the Brady Campaign and the Media sensationalize another crime and paint gun ownership in the light that THEY prefer.
Open carry CANNOT be demonstrated to harm public opinion about gun ownership and carry. And there is strong evidence in the State of Virginia and others that PROMOTES general societal acceptance of defensive firearms carry.
Prognostications of doom and despair from Clayton and others are no more prescient than the the inevitable claims that blood will run in the streets every time another bill is proposed that would relax a restriction on civilian gun use and ownership.
To both Clayton and all the commenters who agreed with him, I have one thing to say:
Thank you for the suggestion. You are entitled to your opinion but I respectfully decline to follow your suggestion.
And what I find offensive is that some people think it’s perfectly acceptable to self-righteously proclaim which constitutional rights are “wise” to exercise and where. My rights aren’t subject to your opinion. Thank God.
Desensitization…yes. Agree.
There’s a correct way to go about it, and that would be incrementally.
When I lived on a cul-de-sac in the DC ‘burbs, I was in the habit of sitting on the porch keeping an eye on the neighborhood kids, (my own among them), playing hoops and suchlike after they’d gotten out of school.
Occasionally, I’d be open carrying, not as an overt political statement, but simply because I’d taken off my coat and didn’t feel like going through the hassle of unthreading my holster from my belt, locking up the gatt,etcetera.
And besides, with a nipper in the house the safest place for a handgun was on my belt.
I didn’t necessarily advertise the fact, but my neighbors knew that I was the “Official Cul-de- Sac Gun-Nut”.
Being a seaman,on vacation I was usually at home during the work-day, and shared the ‘hood during these hours with the stay-at-home “Mommy Squad”.
Only in one instance did any of them ever ask about my piece, and I explained to her that I was really wearing the heater mostly because of the hassle involved in “demilitarizing” myself, I then pointed out that as long as I WAS carrying, the kids in addition to my own playing out front could be considered to be protected by an armed guard. The discussion then moved on to other more mundane neighborhood gossip.
It must have been the right answer for her, because I noticed that her kids could henceforth usually be counted on to be running around like maniacs with the rest of the little squealing booger-eaters.
I reckon that if I’d have spooked her, she’d have told her children to stay away from in front of the nasty gun-wearing man’s house
When you desensitize the Mommy Squad, and put them into a comfort zone about open carry, you not only get them, but you get their kids as well, who will go about their kooky kid activities.
They’ll notice your pistol, but it won’t be a big deal…and THAT’S what we’re aiming for isn’t it?
Present and future citizens with neutral or positive childhood memories of folks carrying firearms.
It was a much easier “sell” with a .45 than it would have been with an FAL or an AR-15 slung over my shoulder, though. I do not as a rule dress like some half-assed Rambo…unless I’m hunting.
I wrote once that I’d like to install pastel grip panels and have smiley-faces, “Hello Kitty” and cartoon bunnies and shit engraved on my firearms…the point being that people who saw it,(like juries, in the second-worst case scenario), might say:
“Awwww, that’s so CUTE!”
as opposed to shrieking in fear and diving for cover when the Prosecutor holds my gun up in the air in open court as “People’s Exhibit #xxx”.
Anything to help the verdict go my way, y’know?
If you want to open carry and get a neutral or positive response, be pushing a baby stroller or holding your child’s hand.
That way other parents will figure that if you flip out, it will be because of the kid, and then the one you’ll most likely be using the gun to shoot is yourself.
Gotta give folks something that they can relate to…
Cramer wrote: “When discussing bureaucracy and the problem of regulatory discretion, I discussed how the change from discretionary to shall-issue laws has changed the landscape of gun ownership in the United States these last 20 years …”
Florida led the nation in passing a shall issue in 1996. Your article misses the point and demonstrates a lack of understanding about who owns guns. In the south and the west open carry existed and was replaced by cwp laws. In areas where hunting and firearms are a part of growing up there is little perception that guns if handled and carried properly are dangerous. On the other hand visit the Northeast and west coast urban centers and you’ll find that guns are dangerous because that what’s being taught in the grade schools. Then there are the paranoid areas, upstate New York, Northern Michigan and Wisconsin, southern Illinois, eastern (YES) California where local enforcers may turn a blind eye to firearms enforcement.
Did you intend to inflame or did you fail to realize there is a difference in the personal perception of readers who live in states that have a different attitude about individual rights to keep and bear arms. In the best and worst states pro gun attitudes to RKBA varies. Open carry in Vermont and Wisconsin or getting a permit in Florida or in New Jersey. Until an individual constitutional right is affirmed over the states right to impose regulation over the individual RKBA the nation is in limbo. What you fail to realize is that a “victory” giving a minor expansion of the RKBA freedom in a restrictive state may at the same time impose a major restriction of the individual right of a citizen in a pro RKBA state.
You critique or attempt to paint the sentiments of a nation with one broad brush is a mistake and from the responses you probably won’t do that again. Follow Montana’s challenge rather than Chicago. Personally, time to leave the campus and talk to people face to face and just because you have a column to right you don’t have to fill it with things that haven’t been thought out.
moderators please edit last para: column to right = column to write
#148 sailorcurt:
” The general public realized that the citizens were harming no one and the over-the-top reaction was the problem, not the citizens exercising their rights.
And what’s been the result? Open carry is MUCH more accepted in Virginia than it was ten years ago when I first began doing it regularly…in one of the most anti-gun urban areas in the state.”
It’s harder to do this, but learn from your successes as well as your failures.
The Open Carry nights consisted of groups of citizens, regular Joes and Janes, in a group, who were polite, well-dressed and engaged in a totally normal and mundane activity…who just happened to be openly armed.
They also kept it low-key.
When asked about what it was all about, they didn’t jump up and get in their questioners faces and hotly shout about their civil rights and stupid laws and such, did they?
They explained calmly and quietly what they were doing and why they were doing it. Obeying a Blue Law.
They deliberately didn’t make a big deal about it, and that meant that it was the hoplophobes who had to make the fuss.
(For those of you from Other Lands, in suburban NoVa, making a public fuss is the equivalent of being cited for Godwin’s Law on the internet, the place is so intrinsically genteel.)
“Prognostications of doom and despair from Clayton and others are no more prescient than the the inevitable claims that blood will run in the streets every time another bill is proposed that would relax a restriction on civilian gun use and ownership.”
Where did Mr. Cramer or I or any of the rest of us predict doom and despair?
Since when does counseling some common sense and circumspection equate to predicting impending tyranny?
Are you in the habit of climbing the gangway and then straightaway running athwartship to the seaward gunwale and jumping overboard from YOUR vessel?
“The past two legislative sessions in a row, we’ve gotten laws passed overturning the “restaurant ban”, that have been vetoed by the governor and both of the incoming Gubernatorial candidates are pro-gun and have promised to sign the bill into law if it reaches their desks again”
I have it on pretty good authority that while Guv’nah Kaine, a great and good friend of the Hampton Roads Longshoremen’s Union Local…in fact Candidate Kaine spent Labor Day of 2004 clustered with about thirty of them aboard my ship in Newport News…(being recorded in a conversation is NOT a crime in VaJanYa, while it IS on Federal territory, if you follow what I’m sayin’ here), is a political hoplophobe, his award-winning eyebrows ARE pro-gun…he’s in the habit of shooting them enough.
Repeat after me: Get a gun, learn how to use it, get a permit to conceal it, take it with you when you leave the house, keep it out of sight, pull it in a real emergency, never pull it if you won’t use it, take it back home and put it in the nightstand.
Never brag about it or show how tough you are by making people stare at it. It’s just stupid.
Walk softly and carry a concealed .38 special.
Florida led the nation in passing a shall issue in 1996.
Uh, no. Washington State did so in 1961, as part of a compromise that made unlicensed concealed carry into a felony. Florida started the current movement towards shall issue in 1987 (not 1996).
Your article misses the point and demonstrates a lack of understanding about who owns guns. In the south and the west open carry existed and was replaced by cwp laws.
Uh, no, again. Florida prohibited open carry of pistols without a permit into the 1960s. See Davis v. State, 146 So.2d 892 (Fla. 1962). Concealed carry without permits in Florida was pretty common, and at least if you were white, and hadn’t done something stupid or criminal, unlikely to get you in trouble. The permit system became more rigid in the 1970s, perhaps because of increased violent crime, perhaps because the good old boys approach of racially discriminatory issuance was so clearly unlawful.
In areas where hunting and firearms are a part of growing up there is little perception that guns if handled and carried properly are dangerous.
Try again. Idaho, like many of the other Rocky Mountain states, has higher rates of gun ownership and hunting than even the South. And yes, gun ownership is perceived quite positively here. But open carry in cities doesn’t go over well.
On the other hand visit the Northeast and west coast urban centers and you’ll find that guns are dangerous because that what’s being taught in the grade schools. Then there are the paranoid areas, upstate New York, Northern Michigan and Wisconsin, southern Illinois, eastern (YES) California where local enforcers may turn a blind eye to firearms enforcement.
You don’t suppose that the “guns are dangerous” perception might have something to do with the increase in mass murders the last 25 years? It wasn’t gang activity that pushed through California’s Assault Weapons Control Act in 1989, and many of the other state and local bans: it was Patrick Purdy’s mass murder in Stockton, and that of several copycats in the following months.
The statement “Is guy planning to be a national news headline tomorrow” (sic) is asinine. At least with OC you are AWARE someone is carrying. Most mass murderers don’t allow their weapons to be seen until they are ready to start firing.
This is incorrect. The majority of mass murderers don’t even make any serious attempt to hide their weapon (which is usually a rifle or shotgun).
Clayton, compared to the others at Self-Pwnage, you’re practically a beacon of reason. However, your problem is that you have a lot of blind-spots, issues where reason excuses itself to let your emotion run the show. Your stretch on my comments about gun laws applying equally to everyone [what do I care about a law that was taken off the books 38 years ago? 38 years ago miscegenation was illegal too]. And you can’t draw a line between autocratic governments banning hand guns, and broad coalitions with multiple agendas trying to regulate hand guns. That last one is a particularly crass attempt that may hold water with the Self-Pwnage media drones that visit your blog, but will certainly turn off people who though receptive to argument, have not time for moronic bs.
The AG issued a memo, not a binding opinion, asserting that open carry alone did not constitute sufficient grounds to press a disorderly conduct charge. While it alluded to unresolved constitutional questions regarding open carry, it most certainly did NOT hold that such was constitutionally protected.
You can read the memo here. To quote from that memo:
Is that clear enough for you? What amazes me is how some people are intent on seeing the imminent loss of their firearms rights even when we have won! It is not binding on local prosecutors–but having this behind you is a pretty powerful counterweight to a local prosecutor. A judge or jury has to decide: “Was this guy breaking the law? The state constitution seems to protect open carry; the state’s Attorney-General agrees. The local prosecutor wants to prosecute this guy for disorderly conduct when he was just walking down the street. I wonder what I should rule?”
I fear that a lot of people are taking their general anger about how this country is going down the tubes (and it is), and are expressing that anger in an area where we are increasingly winning–and in the next few years, idiot legislatures like California are going to get their heads handed to them on a platter.
You critique or attempt to paint the sentiments of a nation with one broad brush is a mistake and from the responses you probably won’t do that again. Follow Montana’s challenge rather than Chicago.
Montana’s challenge is far more serious, because it threatens federal authority to control darn near everything, and overturn among the most crazy precedents ever created: Filburn v. Wickard (1942). Precisely because it would so dramatically limit federal power, I do not expect the Court to uphold Montana’s law (even though it clearly should).
Personally, time to leave the campus and talk to people face to face and just because you have a column to right you don’t have to fill it with things that haven’t been thought out.
I teach one class. I spend most of my time talking to people face to face–and even here in Idaho, open carry, except when you are obviously going to or from hunting, is going to get some serious stares, and not out of admiration. (If you are actually out hunting, you are allowed to have your gun concealed. Our concealed weapon law only applies in cities, mining camps, and on public roads.)
Wisconsin’s governor is a die-hard anti-gunner, its bureaucracy is demonstrably anti-gun, and a majority of the state legislature is strongly predisposed against private gun ownership in any form.
Is that why the Wisconsin legislature has twice passed a shall-issue concealed weapon permit law? And the only reason that it didn’t go into law is the governor vetoed it? That’s a pretty weird way to show that they are “strongly predisposed against private gun ownership in any form.”
I personally come down against open carry as a practical decision. Why should I tip my hand to any potential threat that I am armed? That gives away a potential advantage I may have, and as others have noted, makes me both a physical target and a political one.
As a practical matter, open carry is not wise as a tactical decision for most civilians in most situations. We’re left to infer that the “it is our right and so we will” crowd has ulterior motives for their dogged desire to be seen in public with a firearm.
Your stretch on my comments about gun laws applying equally to everyone [what do I care about a law that was taken off the books 38 years ago? 38 years ago miscegenation was illegal too].
Except that many of these laws originally passed for racist reasons remain on the books, and enjoy the support of the gun control movement. The California ban on non-citizens owning handguns was struck down in People v. Rappard (1972)–but the rest of the bill passed in 1923 is still on the books, including the discretionary permit issuance system.
And you can’t draw a line between autocratic governments banning hand guns, and broad coalitions with multiple agendas trying to regulate hand guns.
Except that gun control groups in the U.S. often admitted (at least at the start) that their goal was gun prohibition. The second chairman of Handgun Control, Inc. (now the Brady Campaign) stated in a 1976 New Yorker interview that his long-term goal was completely abolition of handgun ownership. Quite a number of gun control advocates (such as Michael Gartner, then President of NBC News) have admitted that their goal is a complete ban on gun ownership. (Not just handguns.)
Yes, it is possible to ban guns without building extermination camps–but the two are sufficiently well correlated that it makes people more than a bit nervous. Especially because the core ideology of the crowd pushing for gun control in America is fundamentally the same as the core ideology of genocidal governments of the past.
As a practical matter, open carry is not wise as a tactical decision for most civilians in most situations. We’re left to infer that the “it is our right and so we will” crowd has ulterior motives for their dogged desire to be seen in public with a firearm.
I think the best analogy might be if there was a rapidly growing movement to force homosexuals back into the closet. But we’re winning the battle about gun rights!
Clayton,
“Washington State did so in 1961, as part of a compromise that made unlicensed concealed carry into a felony.”
I was not aware that it was originally a felony, but currently unlicensed concealed carry by someone who can legally possess a firearm is only a misdemeanor (RCW 9.41.810 cf 9.41.050.) And note that for a licensee, carrying w/o one’s license is merely an infraction.
KH (150): “west coast urban centers” except Seattle, please!
And regarding Wisconsin, their Supreme Court has weighed in on the issue, too:
Yes, it is possible to ban guns without building extermination camps–but the two are sufficiently well correlated that it makes people more than a bit nervous. Especially because the core ideology of the crowd pushing for gun control in America is fundamentally the same as the core ideology of genocidal governments of the past.
You failed to show any correlation. First, motive: A private citizen or even director of a non-profit group wanting to ban handguns for reasons x,y, z is not the same as an autocrat banning hand-guns to prevent uprisings against his non-democratic rule. Second, effect: the effect of even a complete ban on handguns carried out as a product of popular pressure would not be the same as the effect of an autocratic ban on handguns designed to stifle the non-democratic overthrow of state institutions. Its silly to even contemplate. But not as silly as your last assertion, that those who want to ban handguns have the same ideology as genocidal governments of the past. Aside from having shown absolutely no evidence for the assertion, YOU HAVE THE SAME IDEOLOGY AS GENOCIDAL GOVERNMENTS FROM THE PAST! The US of the 19th century set a benchmark for genocide that few countries have equaled. You are the heir to that same ideology, minus, perhaps, a few of the racial components. If I were a communist in ideology, it would not meant that I mean to practice that ideology as Stalin did. Nor you, a free market proponent, are necessarily a proponent of slavery where the market allows. These are specious arguments on your part. You have the research and background to do better.
The Bill of Rights says “to keep and bear arms” it makes now requirement regarding the manner of either keeping nor the bearing thereof. It leave those considerations and details to the individual.
Since these rights have existed since before the Constitution but were codified thereby, we have seen more than a few instances wherein citizen were arrested for simply the use of these rights, in effect being told that if you use these rights you will be arrested for other crimes that we wish to charge you with because you are choosing to use the right which we done wish you to use.
Some of us think that this is not only a wrong thing to do but in fact an evil abuse of power, by government against it’s people. Both a threat and a theft of rights by person who do not have the right to make any of those choices or threats. We find that a troubling circumstance and are considering our options in dealing with said circumstances. And that last sentence does indeed mean what you think it does. At some point this becomes more than an academic matter.
It offends me for a woman to breastfeed in public in a way that doesn’t even try to be considerate of others, but I believe she has every right to do so. Rather than raising a stink about it or thinking less of the woman involved, I just congratulate myself on my tolerance. Everyone in an open carry state should do the same with guns.
Cramer wrote in quotes:
“Uh, no. Washington State did so in 1961, as part of a compromise that made unlicensed concealed carry into a felony. Florida started the current movement towards shall issue in 1987 (not 1996).”
Duh no … you started the retort! Florida’s Jack Hagler Self Defense Act of 1996 is regarded as the national boiler plate language for concealed carry.
Cramer wrote: “Try again. Idaho, like many of the other Rocky Mountain states, has higher rates of gun ownership and hunting than even the South. And yes, gun ownership is perceived quite positively here. But open carry in cities doesn’t go over well.”
Duh no … per capita numbers nowhere near to the actual numbers of the south. … Would those in the city be the ones that moved there from Kalipornia.. Your state says in 1995–2000, 182,929 people moved into the state and 149,082 moved out, for a net gain of 33,847, most of whom came from California.
Cramer wrote “You don’t suppose that the “guns are dangerous” perception might have something to do with the increase in mass murders the last 25 years? It wasn’t gang activity that pushed through California’s Assault Weapons Control Act in 1989, and many of the other state and local bans: it was Patrick Purdy’s mass murder in Stockton, and that of several copycats in the following months.”
Duh no again read the accepted fact that the as a direct result of the Luby (1991?) massacre, in 1995 the Texas Legislature, passed a law over the veto of Governor Ann Richards that allowed Texas citizens to obtain a concealed carry handgun permit in part as a reaction against the massacre. Soon after, many states considered similar weapon permits for citizens.
Either you omit the national climate or you use it but the earth does not revolve around the beautiful state of Idaho. That leaves your perspective as the center of your universe. Causation – correlation learn the difference between the two before you pick up a pen again.
DonnaV, that is false. The Gay Parade in New York City is not outrageous anymore, its a crashing bore. The shock factor has been removed, the parade has been normalized.
This is what gun owners must do…normalize their gun ownership and right to carry. Make people desensitized to the behavior.
That way they will be more protected, in the end.
I dont like the New Left’s Establishment Zeitgeist either, however whining about it doesnt do a damn bit of good, in the culture war, (as with any war) adopting successful tactics by the enemy is good policy…if you want to win the war.
Im sorry it has to be like this, but alas…
I don’t think Cramer went far enough when he said, “Handguns and our excretory organs have something in common: we know that they are very, very common, they are necessary, and many people have them under their clothes…But it doesn’t mean that we all want to see them.”
What he SHOULD have said–for the sake of complete accuracy–is, “Handguns are the compensatory mechanism for a guy whose [urinary] organ is very, very, tiny and/or dysfunctional…and no one has EVER wanted to see it.”
C’mon, you KNOW that’s true…right, Tiny?
MR CRAMER: I seem to recall a few years ago,Louis Farrakhan making public appearances escorted by his own schutzstaffel of AR15 toting anti-white enthusiasts.I heard not a single word of complaint from the MSM scum.I read about a Russian general who encouraged his snipers by saying:”Every German must feel that he is living under the muzzle of a Russian gun.”We should promote that exact feeling among the libtards,lest they mistake Obama’s transient victory for a license to trash the constitution.Let’s keep them worried,ruin their sleep,and their ability to enjoy their temporary triumph!
When asked about what it was all about, they didn’t jump up and get in their questioners faces and hotly shout about their civil rights and stupid laws and such, did they?
And who are these open carriers “jump[ing] up and get[ting] in their questioners faces…”?
I sure haven’t seen any. The open carriers that are being shown on TV are just politely minding their own business.
It is the media, the anti’s and…well…you guys…who are accusing people of being in someone’s face.
Sorry, but I refuse to accept blame for your own faulty perceptions of reality.
Besides…I don’t just open carry at demonstrations…I do so almost daily. As do many others here in Virginia.
Again…as I mentioned before but no one bothered to try to rebut (I wonder why), open carrying allows us to bring the issue to the attention of the uncommitted on OUR terms: as law abiding citizens exercising our right to bear arms for self defense.
Hiding the fact that we carry only allows the opposition to control the narrative. To only talk about it in terms of THEIR choosing…i.e. in terms of the criminal use of guns.
One other thing that I’m curious about.
For all of those who believe we should get a permit to carry concealed or not carry at all: do you believe that we should have to get government permission before being allowed to exercise ANY of our constitutional rights? Or is the right to bear arms somehow the special exception?
As far as the “tactical” arguments against open carry:
I will admit that there is some slight validity to the fear that a criminal might try to disarm an open carrier or just shoot them at the outset of an encounter…and as soon as someone comes up with some statistics or data indicating that this occurs often enough to be anything other than a one in a million aberration, I might start considering it…but I’ve never heard of it happening once…let alone often enough to consider it a real threat.
Most criminals aren’t exactly “heroic” in nature. They prey on the weak and signs of strength are often all it takes to dissuade them.
I would say that the most likely scenario would be the criminal seeing an openly carried firearm and deciding to seek out a softer target.
I don’t carry because I want to shoot someone. I carry to defend myself if the need arises. If, simply by carrying a firearm, the need is averted…my firearm served its purpose, even if it was never touched and I wasn’t even aware that the threat existed.
Of course I have no data to support my contention that open carry has a better chance of averting a situation than of getting me shot at the outset of one (not many studies to determine how many attacks DIDN’T occur)…but, at worst, this means that my contention has no less validity than the unsupported contention that concealing a firearm is somehow tactically advantageous.
In short: I don’t buy it.
Social attitudes get enacted in law. That is how anti gun laws got enacted and also how pro gun laws get enacted.
So how to we change social attitudes about guns? There are many ways. .Crime increases despite gun control showed the populace that gun control was failure. This was starkly true in DC. Total gun ban and for years it had the highest murder rate.
9-11 changed a lot of minds. Te idea that there are terrorists among us that want to kill us firmed up opinion on self defense.
CCW laws in states that the anti gun folks promising blood in the streets turned out false. That also lead to opinion changing. TV shows that show the usage of guns like Mythbusters show that guns are cool and fun. Ads in Maxim for a Bushmaster push the meme that having a EBR is manly.
The real attitude is to trust normal people with carrying guns. We have been conditioned to trust security and police with guns and are not fearful or offended.
CCW helped but it never confronted the public with the reality that normal people are carrying guns. Out of sight and out of mind.
OC does confront the observant.As they see that nothing bad happens they get aclimitized to the idea the normal folk carrying guns OC are as safe as the police officer.
We are in the beginning of social attitudes changing on guns.
Many who really do not like OC are actually CCW holders and gun owners because they assimiliated the idea during training that being concealed is better and tactically sounder.
People like you Clayton, and Sebastian. I do not read others arguing against OC as much as CCW holders who are pro guns.
I wonder about that. Even the Brady people don’t complain about OC as much. The vitriol against your position on this comment thread is the reaction of pro gun people who feel you are betraying them by saying OC is wrong and shameful.
Unless you have studies and documentation to prove your assertion, your assertion is only an opinion and not backed up by evidence.
I know about the Black Panthers and California but that was during a time of high racial fears. None of these OC events are on that level or during similiar circumstances. If motions are raised in Boise to ban OC then your assertion may have credence. But Idaho law is very solid on OC. I believe the mayor tried that once before and was slapped done on the account of Zach, who carried OC around town.
So yes your fears are based on an emotional response and you may want to examine why your believe OC is wrong in populated areas and check your reasoning against believing just others will react negatively. You may be projecting your own opinion.
All people can determine their preferred method of carrying guns. But just as it was considered bad manners 60 years to carry concealed versus open. Your current opinion on it being bad manners to carry open may change also. Carrying OC is generally more convenient and does lead to more conversations about the positive items about pro guns.
The aptly named “D’oh!” says, “It offends me for a woman to breastfeed in public…but I believe she has every right to do so. Rather than raising a stink about it or thinking less of the woman involved, I just congratulate myself on my tolerance. Everyone in an open carry state should do the same with guns.”
Yeah, GOOD analogy there, d’ohpe. Breastfeeding’s purpose is to give life; a handgun’s is to take it. But breastfeeding in public nonetheless “offends” you and therefore needs to be “tolerated,”–the same way in which some idiot walking around publicly with an instrument of death strapped to his hip should be tolerated too, because after all, he has to have the right to compensate for his small, seldom-used genitalia in SOME way, right?
“D’oh!” indeed. It’s no doubt the only sound you hear whenever you try to “think.”
EscapeVelocity: In fact, I think pictures of the antics at the Folsom St. fair did impact the Prop. 8 vote – and not in a way that benefited the proponents of gay marriage. If you’re trying to convince people you’re just plain folks who want to marry, parading about in leather chaps with your bare butt exposed is not the way to do it. Similiarly, if you want to convince people that the 2nd Amendment is about protecting and defending oneself, and not about bullying and intimidating one’s fellow citizens, you don’t stroll around looking like you’re headed for a shootout at the OK Corral.
It offends me for a woman to breastfeed in public in a way that doesn’t even try to be considerate of others, but I believe she has every right to do so. Rather than raising a stink about it or thinking less of the woman involved, I just congratulate myself on my tolerance.
I too wish breast-feeding women would use some tact and judgement about when and where they decide to pop a boob out, but nobody have ever been killed by a bare breast. Ordinarily, I have no qualms at all about calling people out when they try to cut in front of me at the grocery store. I would feel a bit differently if openly pistol-packing Pete did so. Why? Because I don’t know if pistol-packing Pete is a reasonable man or a hot-headed loon and I’m not willing to die because I told someone to get out of the “10 items or less” line. The fact that he feels the need to openly brandish a gun in a supermarket makes me think “hot-headed loon” is the more accurate description.
Every German must feel that he is living under the muzzle of a Russian gun.”We should promote that exact feeling among the libtards
But it won’t just be the libtards who feel like that, but people like me who support gun rights but do not want to see people walking down the street showing off their hardware everywhere they go.
james has it exactly right:
Repeat after me: Get a gun, learn how to use it, get a permit to conceal it, take it with you when you leave the house, keep it out of sight, pull it in a real emergency, never pull it if you won’t use it, take it back home and put it in the nightstand.
Never brag about it or show how tough you are by making people stare at it. It’s just stupid.
Walk softly and carry a concealed .38 special.
If you’re trying to convince people you’re just plain folks who want to marry, parading about in leather chaps with your bare butt exposed is not the way to do it. — Donna
Earth to Donna!
Gay marriage wasnt even a consideration many moons ago. Something changed the attitudes of people, and Gay Parades were one of them….(and teaching deviant sexual (homosexual) behavior to children in public schools), along with promotion of homos in media on television, etc.
Everyone of those was offensive to people. However we now have special protections for gays in law, and there is a feasible push for Gay Marriage further normalizing the activity, nationwide. (especially through the courts as the Left likes to bypass the people and legislatures that way…a signiture Leftwing tactic).
DonnaV, you are the perfect example of someone whose attitudes will change via the normalization of open carry. You wont give it a second thought, after it becomes common place. And furthermore, you will then defend the right to open carry, when others assert that it is bullying or offensive or it makes them fearful…because you will realize through experience, its value to deter crime, enforce polite public behavior, keep the peace, and improve civil society, including trust of strangers.
But alas…some will prefer to stay in the closet fearful of the societal backlash….a sure way to give ground to the gun snathcers and fearmongers. Cowering alone clinging to your guns and religion.
Interesting how many people react irrationally to a very rational argument being made by the author.
I am a firm believer in the 2nd Amendment and I think most people who open carry in public places are unwise at the very least. Let me emphasize however that only applies when they have other options besides open carry, those who can only carry their weapons openly are forced to do so to exercise their right. Here’s why I think they’re foolish.
1) If I don’t know you and you are wearing a gun you are high on my threat meter thus causing me tension and thus making me “uncomfortable”. I have no way of knowing your intent or your state of mind, to meekly assume because you’re carrying a gun openly that you’re “okay” is stupid on the level of being the “sheeple” many gun owners accuse non-gun owners of being. The fact that you want to open carry in public places (meaning the mall, a restaurant, or the grocery store not the range or other appropriate public setting) immediately makes me doubt your judgment and question whether or not you really should be allowed to have a firearm.
2) Letting the real “bad guys” know you’re armed, what you’re armed with, and where it is being carried is just plain stupid. You make yourself and if you’re with family/friends the primary target if some armed criminal were to attempt something. Take this scenario, a criminal with a concealed knife with plans to rob the store you’re in sees you’re armed. He/she follows you, stabs you, and takes your gun. Suddenly they’ve become much more deadly thanks to your foolishness.
3) Just because you can doesn’t always mean you should.
4) Many people because of #1 are going to be turned off by people carrying openly, especially in places they feel “safe”, thus you’re goading them to support gun laws that don’t keep guns out of the hands of criminals. You say it doesn’t matter how they feel or what they think but you’re really cutting your own nose off to spite your face.
Concealed carry really needs to be an obtainable thing in more states and areas. I have no issue with CC people at all. They show good judgment in keeping their weapons concealed, they respect their neighbor’s feelings enough to not alarm them, and they are more likely to be useful if the manure does hit the fan since they won’t be high priority targets.
“The gun control movement is dangerous, in spite of their small numbers, because they exercise enormous influence over the entertainment and legal communities. But for those who haven’t been following the news: the gun control movement is in such sorry shape that if I worked in that area, I would be getting my resume up to date and looking for some other windmills to joust against.”
I don’t know what drugs your on but send them my way because I know ppl who would pay $1,000s for a single hit of whatever your on.
The gun control movement maybe losing a bit of speed however their has been near zero reversal of current gun control laws. The Hellar case barely amounts to a minor victory in the long range and amounts to near ZERO victory in the short run…. And what did those “victories” costs… millions in private funds and millions wasted in tax payer money to try to stop it. DC hasn’t changed they’re gun laws and basically run as if still under a complete ban… as do most places… and how many BILLIONS of dollars of both private and tax payer money will be spent to get basic constitutional rights BACK.
The simple fact is the gun control movement is winning… the pro-gun movement is at the top of the grand canyon and throwing shovel fulls of dirt trying to fill it up… mean while the gun control movement is down at the bottom using dump trucks to dig the canyon deeper.
Its truly a joke to believe that pro-constitution groups are winning the gun rights battle… The pro-constitution movement can’t afford to many more victories like Heller and expect to win the war.
Our friend and societal expert “EscapeVelocity” opines here:
“Gay marriage wasnt even a consideration many moons ago. Something changed the attitudes of people, and Gay Parades were one of them….(and teaching deviant sexual (homosexual) behavior to children in public schools), along with promotion of homos in media on television, etc. Everyone of those was offensive to people. However we now have special protections for gays in law, and there is a feasible push for Gay Marriage further normalizing the activity, nationwide.”
Nope EV, what’s actually happening is that equal rights for gays will be inevitable DESPITE the more extreme elements of the Gay Pride Parade (and despite rightwing fascination with the above), not BECAUSE of it.
No EV, rational people realize that within every group there are extremists and exhibitionists, but the truth is that most gay people are no more into that flamboyant weirdness than most straight people are into the lewd, hypersexual, demeaning “heterosexual” activity you can find any time you’d care to on any porn site.
A much more RATIONAL view–(there’s that word again; you’d best look it up)–is presented above by Real Deal:
“If I don’t know you and you are wearing a gun you are high on my threat meter thus causing me tension and thus making me “uncomfortable”. I have no way of knowing your intent or your state of mind, to meekly assume because you’re carrying a gun openly that you’re “okay” is stupid on the level of being the “sheeple” many gun owners accuse non-gun owners of being. The fact that you want to open carry in public places (meaning the mall, a restaurant, or the grocery store not the range or other appropriate public setting) immediately makes me doubt your judgment and question whether or not you really should be allowed to have a firearm.”
But finally, the most rational argument of all is this: You really don’t need a handgun at all, because with your “thought” processes, you’re likely much more of a danger to yourselfj, your family and society at large than you are to any hypothetical “badguys” your paranoid imagination might cook up.
A distinction without a difference? I don’t even think it gets that far. Your criticism is so petty and moronic that to categorize it as anything but mental masturbation would be generous. The link that you provide doesn’t say that Israel had weapons in 1968; it only says that they had started their program. Its only in 1974 that there anyone even posits a number of weapons. The reality is that no one knows, but that the incipient programs of Pakistan and Israel were contemporaneous. That was the point, you boob.
If you really want a distinction without a difference, that would be a completely bald loser like you trying to hide his glisten with a fedora. That’s a distinction without a difference. You’re an ugly bald imbecile with it on, and you’re the same bald imbecile with it off.
Donna V: Carrying a firearm in a holster is not brandishing. The use of that term is an appeal to emotion in and of itself.
But your entire argument is based on emotion, rather than logic.
You would be afraid to chastise me for doing something rude if I was openly carrying my gun, but not if it was concealed?
Why? Is an openly carried firearm more dangerous than a concealed one?
As far as I’m concerned, only low-down scoundrels who are up to no good feel the need to conceal their arms. If you have no ill intent, why would you hide the fact that you’re armed? Are you just cowards who like to sneak up on people? *****I’m being facetious, of course. The point being: if you have to be insulting to make your argument, perhaps your point lacks some substance. Anyone can impugn the motives, physical endowment, intelligence, or sanity of anyone else…but doing so hardly proves anything, other than that the person doing the impugning is an a$$.*********
Cramer – You make some good arguments in defense of your position, but the direction is faulty. I agree we are winning, and you want us to seal the victory, or at least, prevent reversals. You come at it from the point of view of winning elections, but you’re allowing the other side to frame the debate. When you do that, you fight on their battlefield, not ours.
Normalization is the key. The problem comes down to definition. The 2nd amendment refers to the “Militia”. People today do not understand what that meant. It was the armed Citizenry keeping us all safe. Men went around armed, even in town. As soon as people recapture that image, we win completely.
Try this: “Folks, if you don’t keep a gun in your home, to whom will you run for immediate help? Which of your neighbors can help you; provide you protection? For your own safety, talk to your neighbors. Know who has a gun; who can help.”
As soon as people start thinking of the Citizens with guns as protectors, not possible attackers, the nonsense will end.
As an aside, big, muscular guys often get the same fearful reaction from people. Maybe they shouldn’t OC their muscles and size.
Boo Boo
I think you’re looking for Roger L. Simon’s column, lol
Sailorcurt: who’s the one being insulting? I am basically asking people to use common sense and good judgement and to consider the feelings of their fellow citizens. Saying “Screw them, I don’t care what they feel, I want the world to know I’m packing heat” strikes me as the emotional argument.
Real deal’s post makes excellent sense. Yeah, it’s cutting off your nose to spite your face alright – because it’s so “cowardly” to have your shirt covering your prized pistol instead of showing it off to the world.
Just Sayin’ said..
“If I don’t know you and you are wearing a gun you are high on my threat meter thus causing me tension and thus making me “uncomfortable”. I have no way of knowing your intent or your state of mind, to meekly assume because you’re carrying a gun openly that you’re “okay” is stupid on the level of being the “sheeple” many gun owners accuse non-gun owners of being. The fact that you want to open carry in public places (meaning the mall, a restaurant, or the grocery store not the range or other appropriate public setting) immediately makes me doubt your judgment and question whether or not you really should be allowed to have a firearm.”
——-
This is exactly why we need more open carry, so that your irrational fears about other people packin’ will be proven to be just that. Unwarranted irrational fears.
Its hilarious that you are making the argument that proves my point, but are oblivious to it.
LOL!
Marc Malone said…
As soon as people start thinking of the Citizens with guns as protectors, not possible attackers, the nonsense will end.
—–
Bingo! And we can reinstitute trust in this society, instead of the fear filled suspicious world the New Left has created since the 60s with thier insane “take it easy on criminals” criminal justice policies among others.
Let’s put the fear of God in the criminals and would be criminals and not the law abiding citizens of this nation.
A right not exercised is a right lost.
OC is just an exercise of the RKBA.
The problem I see arrising with those opposing widespread open carry, is that they are basing their arguments on the current zeitgeist, and arent seeing the trasformational effects of widespread open carry on the zeitgeist…which suggests the limited thinking that is infecting the GOP or self proclaimed conservatives at this time…short term tactical advantage vs pursuit of grand strategy. Or more simply put Scozza vs Hoffman.
The problem I see arrising with those opposing widespread open carry, is that they are basing their arguments on the current zeitgeist, and arent seeing the trasformational effects of widespread open carry on the zeitgeist…which suggests the limited thinking that is infecting the GOP or self proclaimed conservatives at this time…short term tactical advantage vs pursuit of grand strategy. Or more simply put Scozza vs Hoffman.
Jim Zumbo a long time writer once posted a blog that said about “black rifles.” “This really has me concerned. As hunters, we don’t need the image of walking around the woods carrying one of these weapons. To most of the public, an assault rifle is a terrifying thing. Let’s divorce ourselves from them. I say game departments should ban them from the prairies and woods.”
Cramer, like Zumbo made the mistake of posting before thinking, and making some broad generalizations without being properly educated on the weapons he was boycotting.
Zumbo said in a reply “I was wrong, BIG TIME. Someone once said that to err is human. I just erred, and made without question, the biggest blunder in my 42 years of writing hunting articles.
My blog inflamed legions of people I love most….. hunters and shooters. Obviously, when I wrote that blog, I activated my mouth before engaging my brain.
You’re not a bad guy Mr. Cramer and I think by now you know what you need to do.
You’re not a bad guy Mr. Cramer and I think by now you know what you need to do.
He needs to apologize for offending you?
If you can’t take a person who is basically a strong proponent of the 2nd Amendment disagreeing with you about open carry, who is being the bully? The most emotional, hysterical comments on this thread come from the open carry people.
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.
MR.CRAMER:I seem to recall, that a few years ago,the flamboyantly psychotic Louis Farrakhan,took to strutting around our streets complete with a schutztaffel of AR-15 wielding anti-white enthusiasts.Not a peep from the MSM and presumably from MOHO.LIberals ARE Stalinists,and will send us to gulags no matter how prudent or sensitive we are when exercising our 2nd amendment rights.Just to own a bb gun ,is enough, in their eyes, to condemn us. There is no purpose in accomodating the weak-need,limpwristed fence sitters;they’re irrelevant cowards,while there are positive benefits to advertising to the Stalinists who temporarily control the country,the fact that armed resistance is a certainty should they attempt to trash the constitution.We should remember the words of a Russian general(CHUIKOV) who said during the battle of Stalingrad:”Every German should feel that they are living in the shadow of a rusian gun.”That goes for libtards as well. Nothing less than fear of armed popular revolt,will deter the assorted stalinists,maoists and assorted nut cases that comprise the obama regime from thinking that they can shut down the constitution.Look at their attempts to ban free speech (FOX news,Rush)Think how happy MOHO would be running a GULAG! Let’s remember comment about fertilizing liberty trees. MOLON LABE!
if your state gives you the option to carry concealed, then carry concealed
if I were to go to the local supermarket with a .45 on my hip, it would be completely legal- and would cause a helluva commotion. people who are ignorant of the law would call the police: “there’s a man with a gun in the frozen food section! He’s got a pizza!”
so be discreet. carry concealed. wearing a gun on your hip, solely for the sake of doing so, is not what responsible gun ownership is about.
#169 JUST SAYIN’ belched:”Handguns are the compensatory mechanism for a guy whose urinary organ is tiny or dysfunctional”. !What a deep and original libtardism!And the mindless repetition of a distorted pseudo freudian trope,compensates you for what? A tiny/dysfunctional brain?
Cramer said: You can read the memo here. To quote from that memo:
Under Article I, § 25 of the Wisconsin Constitution, a person has the right to openly carry a firearm for any of the purposes enumerated in that Section, subject to reasonable regulation as discussed herein. The Wisconsin Department of Justice (the Department) believes that the mere open carrying of a firearm by a person, absent additional facts and circumstances, should not result in a disorderly conduct charge from a prosecutor.
Is that clear enough for you?
Mr. Cramer: Stick your condescension where the sun don’t shine. As was obvious to a dead man with a glass eye, I had read the Wisconsin AG’s memo prior to responding to you. I had also read reams of reaction to it, having deep roots and numerous friends and family in that area. You stated nothing new or revealing about that memo in either of your responses, or about Wisconsin’s historic perspective regarding private firearms ownership and use. I stated that the AG’s memo did not assert constitutional protection for open carry, and it does not; I stated that it considered mere open carry an insufficient basis on which to press disorderly conduct charges, and it does.
Numerous other posters’ analogies have been valid. Raising awareness has been the typical beginning through which advocates of various causes have successfully redressed statutory wrongs. That has been accomplished by engaging in the conduct at issue, in defiance of the policies and laws at issue, and thereby illuminating their flaws and deficiencies. There is no compelling reason to view open carry any differently, and a great deal of American social history to suggest that raising awareness is a sound opening move.
Your views on the subject of open carry do not constitute the ultimate judgment. Your view is, simply, wrong.
Despite that I think Clayton is GENERALLY wrong about this issue, I am sad to see him attacked with such viotrol. Frankly if I saw some of these posters openly carrying I would be afraid based upon their willingness to assault people verbally for no reason. Gun owners should not be attacking each other over disagreements as minor as this.
Disagreeing with Claytons opinion is anybody’s right, but calling him names, or “stupid”, is bad manners and STUPID. Clayton is a well-published historian, as noted he is cited in HELLER, he was also instrumental in bringing down the guy (forget his name) that wrote the fraudulent book about how guns weren’t commonly owned at the time of the revolution. So arguing with him about history is a dubious proposition.
And no, Cramer is not like “Zumbo”. Clayton has not made remarks that call into question his devotion to the cause of gun-rights like Zumbo did. No, Clayton just stated his opinion that he thinks the open-carry movement may not be the best way to advance the cause of gun-rights. He doesn’t say open carry should be illegal, or not to do it, just that in his opinion “in-your-face” tactics like those of the PA open carry movement may alienate non-gun owning citizens.
I think he’s wrong (and exchanged some pleasant emails with him about it) and that the benefits of the movement outweight the potential alienation of anybody (and I doubt that will happen much anyway). The benefit of course is that we get the average citizen used to seeing arms in the hands of ordinary citizens – not just the cops and crooks. I think Claytons liking the movement to that of the Gay Pride movement is a stretch.
That said, the movement should not be stupid about it – plan their actions carefully and make sure the people doing the open carry don’t include some of the posters on this thread.
Carrying guns is being responsible for it’s use and your action’s. Only the ignorant have a problem with guns.
The problem is irrational people who call the cops on legal gun carriers. Not the legal gun carriers.
This problem needs to be corrected, by hoardes of citizens openly carrying often. After the first few calls…the police will catch on, and quit responding to irrational idiots who keep calling the police.
Allowing others irrational fears to limit your freedom aint my cup of tea.
What if I am offended by all the people who aren’t carrying openly?
Donna V.:
You’re not a bad guy Mr. Cramer and I think by now you know what you need to do.
“He needs to apologize for offending you?”
– - – - – - – - – -
He didn’t offend me at all. He does not understnd correlation and causation. Cramer made a mistake by making a universal assumption from a singular observation. His logic; IF John has red hair and Mary has red hair and their child has red hair, is that all children of people named John and Mary will have red hair.
Zumbo made the same error. Both are writers probably needing a story for deadline, something juicy. What he did was for payment/salary so he has to know their is a price for making a mistake. No good can come to 2nd Ammendment rights or RKBA from faulty logic, especially from a professional.
Publishing facts is one thing, opinions … well you know what they say.
To quote Larry Pratt, president of GOA:
“It is a strange view that accepts as normal a police officer openly carrying a firearm but finds it alarming when a sovereign citizen — the cop’s boss — does the same.”
Jones (192),
Maybe where you live, but here in Western Washington we’re a bit more advanced. Not only have the police in many agencies released training bulletins to their officers emphasizing the legality of peaceable open carry, they’re also training the 911 dispatchers to ask a few more questions when they get MWAG calls.
this is true where
Oops, don’t know how that last little sentence fragment got in there.
And I heartily second Scott @ 195′s motion to chill out a bit and discuss this without all the ad hominems!
The problem is no one has any idea you are being peaceable, they just see a openly carried firearm.
There is no desensitizing to that, because a gun is designed to kill people and is a deadly thing. Even if I owned one, I’d still be on edge if I saw someone openly carrying, just because they have the power to kill me. I don’t see how people argue that it can help.
Marc Malone wrote,
Normalization is the key. The problem comes down to definition. The 2nd amendment refers to the “Militia”. People today do not understand what that meant. It was the armed Citizenry keeping us all safe. Men went around armed, even in town. As soon as people recapture that image, we win completely.
What? What is the evidence that the militia carried guns except on training day or when they were serving? I have just edited the journal of a Revolutionary War soldier and he sells his ammunition at the end of the campaign and he serves many more times. He is always buying and selling guns, but I see no evidence that he carries them in civilian life.
Dwight
Dblade:
The problem is no one has any idea you are being peaceable, they just see a openly carried firearm.
Clearly there are some unspoken assumptions involved.
There is no desensitizing to that, because a gun is designed to kill people and is a deadly thing. Even if I owned one, I’d still be on edge if I saw someone openly carrying, just because they have the power to kill me. I don’t see how people argue that it can help.
Question: when you see a uniformed police officer, are you on edge, because they have the power to kill you?
If so, why? If not, why not?
The Founding Fathers carried in Congress for God’s sake.
#195 scott in az:
“Clayton is a well-published historian, as noted he is cited in HELLER, he was also instrumental in bringing down the guy (forget his name) that wrote the fraudulent book about how guns weren’t commonly owned at the time of the revolution.”
That would be notorious fraud Michael Bellesisles (sp?), of Emory University, whose book, the Bancroft Prize winning “The Arming of America” was based on uhhh…”sh!t he made up”.
Please, let’s not forget his name! I’m sure that he would like nothing better than for all of us to forget his existence.
I just like to toss a brick down whatever hole he’s hiding in every once in a while.
You should too.
I own quite a few guns, but no handguns, and carry only when hunting. I will admit that there is something in the attitude of people who carry, that I don’t care for. I also don’t care for people who are afraid of guns. The attitude of the agressive and paranoid gun folks and the agressive and paranoid anti-gunners kind of cancel each other out. Those of us in the middle, as usual, have to mediate the differences.
Well, at least you got rid of the blatant homophobia this time around. Unfortunately you left in the rest of the article as well.
If you had written this in some small or otherwise limited venue, no comment would have been necessary, as your article would have fit right in with any number of local mores. On a national level, this article falls flat, and is gratuitously preachy to boot.
This is neither gay rights nor civil rights, this is an enumerated Right, and the rules of engagement are different. As well, this is not some rash of folks barging into the local council meeting waving around ARs and shrieking “SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED!!1!!”, these are regular people living their daily lives who happen to have an unconcealed firearm.
I expect hysteria from the MSM; considering your efforts on behalf of the Second Amendment, I expected better from you.
Excepting that one of your “agressive and paranoid” duo isnt trying to confiscate your guns and reinterpret the 2nd Amendment.
This is just another case of Scozzafava vs Hoffman. Hoffman isnt a radical, he is conservative. National Review isnt the flip side of the Daily Kos.
To EscapeVelocity: I don’t think it is your business (or that of anyone else) to “enforce polite public behavior, keep the peace, and improve civil society” by carrying a gun. Perhaps you misspoke, but frightening people into behaving isn’t conducive to a civil society.
And where are these parts of the U.S. which are still as dangerous as the “Wild, Wild West”? There are parts of each city I’ve lived in that would qualify as very dangerous, but most areas don’t require being armed at all times. Thank God this is not Israel, where going to the supermarket is generally dangerous business. Although, to the commenters who have mentioned defense against terrorism, suicide bombers usually aren’t recognized until it’s too late, whether you’re armed or not.
“The 2nd amendment refers to the “Militia”. People today do not understand what that meant.”
I don’t think you do either.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed29.asp
In the 18th century, the Militia was ANY Male physically capable of taking up arms to defend his self and his fellow citizens. That was the English definition, which like so many things American was borrowed from the English.
That is why the expression “A well regulated Militia” is used. It differentiates between those that belong to centrally organized bodies and your run of the mill joe 6-pack. Or Jill 6-pack, nowdays.
Over time the act of drilling and practicing military tasks became a separate thing from the “militia”. So a distinction between ALL armed citizens and trained, armed citizens developed.
That is why you are required to take training before getting a carry permit today.
Since the Framers had a vision of America that didn’t include a standing army, enough of the ‘militia’ needed to be trained so as to provide a core group to add the rest of the able-bodied citizens to.
Dwight, I have a more logical answer. He sold his ammo because he needed money, not having been paid in a while. It is completely illogical that 18th century europeans in the process of taking a continent away from stone age savages would NOT travel armed. Maybe they didn’t slop the hogs with a musket in one hand or plow the fields with that musket slung over their back, but if they were going to visit brother Earl who lived just over the river, yes the musket went into the back of the wagon.
Remember, Pistols were rich men’s toys back then. Used either by cavalry or for dueling, both of which are pastimes for the rich. Rifles were not any more common. Smooth bore muskets were the most common weapon. A smooth bore will shot any almost round rock as well as it shoots a cast lead bullet. Plus muskets came with a powder horn or flask and a bullet mold. Lead isn’t that hard to find. Copper will work too. Most explorers didn’t take “bullets” with them but carried as much powder as possible. As they travled, they would keep an eye out for ores that could be melted and cast,
So selling pre-cast shot and buying powder would be the smart thing to do. Plus, the problem with diaries for history is they are personal highlights. Mundane events don’t get into diaries.
I have read that the Spanish carried saltpeter and sulfur only. They could make charcoal and throw them together to get gunpowder, but the Indians couldn’t. I’m not sure I buy that. I thought it interesting but I never found another source.
John “Birther Samford wrote:
Dwight, I have a more logical answer. He sold his ammo because he needed money, not having been paid in a while. It is completely illogical that 18th century europeans in the process of taking a continent away from stone age savages would NOT travel armed.
This guy was ALWAYS buying, selling, and trading stuff. When he and a Corporal of his Regiment each own half of a gun, they have to work out a deal over who carries it when. Since it is an extra gun, the “honor” of carrying it is limited. He also differentiates between the light gun and the heavy gun.
As for what is logical with 18th Century Europeans and the stone age savages, that “logic” changed a lot in Eastern NE once King Phillip’s War was over after 1676 and in Western NE after the French and Indian war was over in the late 1760′s. After that, hunters and soldiers carried their guns, and many households had them, but guns seem not to have been carried by people unless they were fighting the Redcoats. How many people do you supposed lugged their guns through the streets of Boston, New York, or Philadelphia? The damned things were heavy and cumbersome and people were not clinging to them so much, when they had to carry the damned things around. Then as now (for better or for worse) the average person was a lot more interested in making money than carrying his gun.
Monday evening the VCDL went to the Falls Church Va city meeting with over 50 strong. Generally when they go to city and county meetings they go openly armed as a statement of gun rights.
The anti gun folks knew about VCDL intentions and put out the call for anti gunners to attend and only 10 did so. The reason the VCDL went to the meeting is that the Falls Church VA mayor is a member of Blooomberg’s MAIG. This is very liberal area of VA and though the city council said they would love to be able to ban gun carry at public meeting the law does not allow that.
The VCDL has been a decisive force in Virgina elections and politician are aware of that. The did not start out OC but they do asa political statement and al;so when they eat out do the requirement of OC at restaurants that serve alcohol.
Despite the anti gun sentiments of the council the citizens are getting very used to the sight of OC in Arlington. Alexandria and Falls Church. Many do carry OC in grocery stores and at movies theaters. They generally do cause a scene or are questioned by police. Police and the 911 dispatchers have been trained that when a call of MWAG comes in to ask if any threatening actions are being done. Of not they expaine it is legal and no police are sent.
They are getting to accept OC as legal and people and police are getting used to it. It is in the infancy and most people do not OC. But it is getting accepted which is the goal. Clayton is wrong on his assumptions and ashamed of OC though he supports its legality.
Most of the animus toward OC is tne training the CCW permit.
People get used to a lot of items from poor dress and OC is just another item to get used to. As long as OC’ers dress decently and look respectable then there is generally no problem.
Clayton is just projecting his own prejudice toward OC. I recommend he rethink his objections. Once police stop objecting to OC and no longer believe it is a pretext to arresting a person on disorderly conduct that is half the battle. People then learn to accept and if nothing bad happens they internalize that lesson.
I meant that OC does not cause a scene or police to come in Northern VA.
#215 RAH:
“The did not start out OC but they do asa political statement and al;so when they eat out do the requirement of OC at restaurants that serve alcohol.”
I pointed this out to sailorcurt, but the comment is stuck somewhere in moderation.
The Virginia Citizens Defense League started OC ing in restaurants NOT to desensitize people to OC, but rather to sensitize them to the idiocy of the anacronistic Blue Law that compels OC in a public house that serves alcohol.
This sensitization was done in order to rescind that law and ALLOW CCW holders to carry concealed in such premises.
“Virginia Citizens Defense League, Inc. • P.O. Box 513, Newington, VA 22122 • 804-639-0600
Virginia Citizens Defense League, Inc.
2001 House Candidate Survey
Survey Results
1. Current Virginia law already establishes penalties for anyone carrying a gun while under the influence of alcohol or illegal drugs. However, since 1995, Virginia’s concealed carry law has prohibited concealed carry by permit holders (even if they aren’t drinking) in ABC licensed restaurants and clubs. Prior to 1995, permit holders faced no such restriction and there were no problems. This means that restaurants have become “safety zones” for violent criminals and that law-abiding citizens may be at risk not only at dinner, but when walking to and from their car in a dark, secluded parking lot.
Will you vote FOR legislation to completely repeal this “restaurant ban” on carrying of concealed handguns by permit holders?” -from:
http://www.vcdl.org/surveys/survey_2001.html
It is apparent that you, like sailorcurt, despite claiming to be sympathetic to VCDL’s aims, have completely misconstrued what the Open Carry Nights are trying to accomplish.
To EscapeVelocity: I don’t think it is your business (or that of anyone else) to “enforce polite public behavior, keep the peace, and improve civil society” by carrying a gun. Perhaps you misspoke, but frightening people into behaving isn’t conducive to a civil society. — Laura
How do you think the Criminal Justice system works (or is supposed to work)? Bouncers? Armed Police and Security Gaurds?
Get a clue, Laura! Quit living in fantasy land.
I’ll pick the Big Fight here…I think there is a middle ground.
Talking about open versus concealed carry does not have enough detail. It’s more useful to think in terms of Blatant Open Carry, Unobtrusive Open Carry, Shallow Concealed Carry, and Deep Concealed Carry.
Blatant Open Carry isn’t about the sidearm, it’s about making an in-your-face political statement. I’m with Mr. Cramer on that. In-your-face politics may be amusing to you, but it’s a good way to make enemies among bystanders. Reserve it for empty holster protests.
Unobtrusive Open Carry is another matter. Truly concealed carry requries significant sacrifices in wardrobe or weaponry. Being able to stuff a good defensive pistol into a holster and not bother with a coat in the summer would be very, very practical. But remember, someone accustomed to wearing a sidearm doesn’t draw attention to it. Watch experienced LEOs…they act as if the gun is part of their wardrobe, nothing more. It’s a goal to work toward.
Shallow Concealed Carry should also be a goal…because it is nothing but Unobtrusive Open Carry under a coat. The point being that if someone sees your sidearm, it should be no big deal. Again, it should be a goal.
Deep Concealed Carry? It’s what a lot of us have to use. In many places, this is the reality. CCW may be legal, but it’s on a Don’t Be Seen basis. This is what we want to advance from.
The big point is that we need to concentrate on making headway without maing enemies.
#218 Escape Velocity:
“How do you think the Criminal Justice system works (or is supposed to work)? Bouncers? Armed Police and Security Gaurds?
Get a clue, Laura! Quit living in fantasy land.”
Oy! No, chappie, you’re the guy who needs a cluebat application.
You’re not an unpaid cop. You’re not there to enforce the law.
You’re a guy with a deadly weapon who is authorized to use that weapon to protect yourself and others if you reasonably fear death or grievous bodily injury.
You are authorized to use that weapon ONLY as much as necessary to stop that threat, and even if you do it all correctly, you will likely as not have to stand trial for your actions.
Your posts read as though you think you are now some integral part of the Criminal Justice system, and I can think of few attitudes more likely to lead you into a head-on full-speed collision WITH that system.
And you won’t like it, because it’s no fun at all having a jury decide your fate.
You stated something earlier in your #197 that I also take issue with:
“The problem is irrational people who call the cops on legal gun carriers. Not the legal gun carriers.
This problem needs to be corrected, by hoardes of citizens openly carrying often. After the first few calls…the police will catch on, and quit responding to irrational idiots who keep calling the police.”
Whether these folks are irrational or not, (outside of your subjective opinion), is a moot point.
THEY vote too, and they have voices. and one of the things that those people,(12 of them,at least, speaking for the rest), get to say is:
“Guilty!”
…and then you can stew in your disdain and contempt for them while you rot in a prison cell.
(You will have plenty of company there in that pastime).
That’s the short term personal danger.
The long term danger to all of us is that if enough of those people are offended by your antics and attitude, they might very well institute gun control of the Constitutional kind…by amending the Constitution to repeal the 2nd Amendment.
Again, you can label this irrational all you wish, but if enough of them share that irrational goal, it will be so.
And then where will we be?
For God’s sake man, cool your effin’ jets, willya? Ropes only work when you PULL on them, knock it off with pushing people.
Our culture took decades to get to the sad place it is, so have some patience and exercise a little tact, and we’ll get much further,(and you probably won’t have to go to prison thereby).
Whose side are you on here?
Actually, you’ve answered that already:
“Allowing others irrational fears to limit your freedom aint my cup of tea.”
Only for yourself apparently, and so you are then happy to jeopardize the liberties of all the rest of us gun-owners because basically…you FEEL like doing what you WANT to do.
Thanks for nothing, pal.
With friends like you…
You can do what you like, but the fact of the matter is that you have enemies, regardless of much you subjugate yourself to other peoples irrational fears or hostility towards your rights.
Furthermore, you will win friends when the crime rate goes down, and specific instances of gun carrier saving the day.
So you can conceal carry, and Ill open carry and everything will be grand. The multipronged approach has worked well for the Left. The seemingly moderates can make headway, because their is someone more in your face and radical than they. Without the open carry crowd, then the concealed carry crowd becomes the radicals to be shunned and labeled radicals to be shunned and those who oppose concealed carry become the moderates.
Figure it out.
Escape Velocity said:
This is exactly why we need more open carry, so that your irrational fears about other people packin’ will be proven to be just that. Unwarranted irrational fears.
Its hilarious that you are making the argument that proves my point, but are oblivious to it.
Irrational? Not quite.
There are many instances of gun owners being stupid & irresponsible or just plain losing it. This makes anyone who is armed and whom I don’t know well enough to discern their mood a potential threat. We’re talking about hand guns here not box cutters or utility knives. People in other posts have talked about “being aware” & “being prepared” and so on, yet you imply that one should be relaxed and ignore the guy with pistol on their hip, you can’t have it both ways son.
And to answer the Cop question: Yes I’m a little more relaxed when it comes to the police because I know they have received weapons training, Joe Open-Carry may or may not have, they undergo back ground checks and psychiatric evaluations. Also the officer is required to carry a weapon when on duty, you are not, so their armed presence in public is not abnormal nor does it represent an attempt to intimidate others. Even so I still keep an eye on police as they can snap or do stupid things too.
Some examples of stupidity & craziness for you:
Child kills himself with an Uzi right in front of his Dad and Licensed Instructor. What idiot allows their 7 year old to fire an automatic weapon?
There have been several instances lately of people offing their families and finally themselves, what’s to prevent those same individuals from open carrying into a mall and shooting people in hopes of a “death by Cop”? Yes if those people also OC’d they could defend themselves, but so can the concealed carry folks.
How many gun owners who should know better let their kids get their hands on their firearms and lose a child?
Off duty cop pulled his weapon on “Leatherface” character at haunted attraction. Shouldn’t the cop know better?
Just because you own and/or carry a gun doesn’t mean I automatically assume you’re competent, mentally stable, law abiding, sober, or anything else. So until I can reliably determine those things about you I’m on high alert and ready to put a bullet in you, and I’m prepared without giving away my threat potential or upsetting my fellow citizens.
I know that the VCDL’s OC was a side effect of the law requiring OC in restaurants that serve alcohol. VCDL has not denigrated OC or CC, they push for carry either OC or CC. They do not say their members should not OC unlike Clayton. Many of their members do OC commonly.
I never said their wouldnt be a period of weeding out the crims and ner do wells in society, that the criminal justice system has poored onto the streets in its dereliction of duty for decades.
You will eventually lose your paranoia Real Deal, or not, maybe you are just paranoid by nature.
I find it hilarious that you would eye open carriers with suspicion, while scads of concealed carriers you pass by are perfectly acceptable to you…many of them criminally minded.
Maybe you should build a bunker and wait for the zombie attack?
#223 RAH:
“I know that the VCDL’s OC was a side effect of the law requiring OC in restaurants that serve alcohol. VCDL has not denigrated OC or CC, they push for carry either OC or CC. They do not say their members should not OC unlike Clayton. Many of their members do OC commonly.”
Seriously, dude. Stop digging.
The OC in retaurants was not and is not a “side-effect”, it is what is required by the very law that these folks are trying to have overturned.
They protest the law by OBEYING it.
Got that?
It’s plain that you have either misunderstood or misrepresented the VCDL’s motives in conducting Open Carry Nights in order to suit your personal preference for OC.
Here is VCDL’s own stated position AGAIN:
“Will you vote FOR legislation to completely repeal this “restaurant ban” on carrying of concealed handguns by permit holders?” -from:
http://www.vcdl.org/surveys/survey_2001.html ”
The VCDL wants CCW holders to be legally allowed to carry their weapons CONCEALED in public houses that serve alcohol.
It’s a preference I share, and by default it denigrates OC, since, in mine and apparently VCDL’s estimation, the law whetehr unintentionally or otherwise allows us to be discriminated against for exercising the RTKBA.
VCDL’s position can’t be any plainer, and it just doesn’t mean what you want it to mean, no matter how badly you’d like it to.
You wish to OC, be my guest, but find some other argument to buttress your argument with.
Cuz this one certainly ain’t it.
#224:
“You will eventually lose your paranoia Real Deal, or not, maybe you are just paranoid by nature.
and:
Maybe you should build a bunker and wait for the zombie attack?”
Do you often find that you win people over to your views by drowning them in contemptuous condescension?
You sound just like a Liberal.
Deguello (#191), you’re PRECISELY the kind of guy who shouldn’t carry a gun, ever, for any reason, for the rest of his life. You’re the absolutely PERFECT Exhibit A in any case for toughening controls on gun ownership. Every time you open your mouth, post on a blog, or otherwise spill the fetid contents of that diseased cranium of yours, you weaken the 2nd Amendment and make us all more stupid for having heard your “ideas.”
Why do I say this? Your insane, paranoid, doomsday rant suggests that you and consensual reality have, at best, a distant, only intermittent, and decidely chilly relationship. What planet INDEED do you spend most of your time on? Just listen to the crap that drips from that weird, dark cesspool between your ears:
“LIberals ARE Stalinists,and will send us to gulags…Just to own a bb gun ,is enough, in their eyes, to condemn us…armed resistance is a certainty should they attempt to trash the constitution.We should remember the words of a Russian general(CHUIKOV) who said during the battle of Stalingrad:”Every German should feel that they are living in the shadow of a rusian gun.”That goes for libtards as well. Nothing less than fear of armed popular revolt,will deter the assorted stalinists,maoists and assorted nut cases that comprise the obama regime…”
This is disturbing because:
1. You’re clearly unwell. (Paranoid delusions–”they’re out to get me, gotta shoot ‘em down” etc.) Please. Get some help before you hurt yourself or someone else.
2. When and why did you start revering Communist generals?
3. As I said before, someone with your particular maladies should never be anywhere near a gun, or see pictures of one, or allowed to view cartoons in which they’re depicted, or permitted to own even a water pistol. Demonstrably sane people, OK. You–no effing way.
4. You’re a mindless douchenozzle. (Had to through in this silly ad hominum attack because, as sick as you are, it doesn’t mean I have to treat you with unfailing respect or kindness. After all, I wouldn’t want you to mistake me for some “weak-need [sic],limpwristed fence sitter.”) LOL!
Get some help before you become the next Seung-hui Cho, you drooling cro-magnon cretin.
Im sorry, people that think that concealed carry is better because they dont see others weapons, therefore dont become concerned and paranoid…deserve condescension.
Ignorance is bliss, I guess.
Bilgeman talk to Phillip. He has petitioned to have the requirement to OC only repealed in restaurants because the women wanted it and because they think the restriction is silly. I have yet to hear Phillip ever denigrate OC. Certainly Mike S. who started Opencarry.org does not and he is also a member of VCDL.
I have seen Phillp OC at council meeting and the OC picnics so he doesn’t seem to have anything against OC. If you know otherwise then point to an alert or statement that says otherwise.
VCDL has supported members that have been hassled for OC like Dan in Norfolk Va. I suggest you are twisting the request for CCW in restaurants as against OC when it is not. Just they want restrictions of any carry restriction for either CC or OC to be removed.
Here’s an idea. If politicans violate the public’s second amendment rights and if any member of the public, who was denied their second amendment rights to self defense, becomes a crime victim, the Govenor of the State or the President who signed the law prohibiting the victim self defense, must serve equal time in prison as the offender.
JUST SAYIN’ What’s the matter dear?Did the libtard government school you went to, forget to teach you that”saying” is spelled with a d at the end.? Nothing disturbs a crypto stalinist more, than having his cover blown .It really shows in your pathologically inane little screed. I would never mistake you for a “limp” wristed anything It’s not your wrist that’s limp:it’s your brain, that and another part of your body which you attempt to exercise on helpless little boys on your NAMBLA-sponsored tours of Thailand.A few corectives to your statements: 1. I thought a liberal would be PLEASED that I quoted a Russian general approvingly, but then I realized that I quoted him as a good tactician, and russian patriot,not as a gulag murderer,and That’s what upset you! I guess that you, like your marxoid dweeb of a president,won’t be attending the celebrations commemorating the end of the Soviet empire in Berlin.After all, there is so much work to be done recreating it here.Which leads me to #2 You accuse me of paranoia,let’s test that statement,shall we? We are ruled by aa affirmative action marxoid buffoon who grovels before,and admires,such paragons of democratic liberty as Qadaffi,Biil(the terrorist) Ayres, Chavez,Ahmadinejab,and Putin.A president whose minister of propaganda is an avowed Maoist,and whose government is infested with unacountable commie tsars:Environment (Jones);Dr. Mengele enthusiasts,ZekeDdeath-panel) Emmanuel;Cass(the first amendmendment needs to be abrogated) Sunstein,and the cretin(whose name escapes me )who defamed gun owners and and veterans as “terrorists”,(remember reader,I’m suppossed to be the paranoid one);A president who is trying to maul the first amendmenment, by shutting down Fox,talk radio and blogs(through yet another commie tsar,the unctuous Lloyd).It must really fry your brain to know so many of us recognize these people for what they are STALINISTS.3. It’s AD HOMINEN not AD HOMINUM,can’t your special needs teacher spell?4. If you don’t like my posts,tell your special needs teacher to stop reading them to you;it’s obvious you don’t deal with contradiction well(it’s the stalinism).4. Who is Seung hui Cho?Is another one of your NAMBLA molestations?Leave those kids alone! See ya at the revolution creep! DEGUELLO!
#231 deguello:
That’s IT! That Really Is IT!
From here on out, it’s decaffeinated coffee ONLY for you!
DECAFFO!
“If you have no ill intent, why would you hide the fact that you’re armed?”
What an unbelievably stupid question!
Clayton,
I have to vehemently disagree with you on this. We’ve worked together on issues with open carry before, specifically with the state of Washington and open carry being de facto illegal due to police misinterpretation. You may remember me and Jim March, and I was known under a different name.
I take a tremendous objection to your comparison to open carry with same sex affection, and open carry gathers as the same as “San Francisco-style” pride events.
I seem to remember you claiming that if “San Francisco-style Pride events happened in every town above 10,000, LGBT folk would have completely lost their current battle”, I am paraphrasing you on this.
You seem to not quite understand that the Pride parades in places like San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland have always been quite a bit “outrageous”. It has to do with local culture more so than just “the gays”. Do you really think that such activities is similar in Montgomery Alabama, Boise, St. Louis? NYC Pride is also positively subdued in comparison to San Fran Pride. It’s about the local culture.
As for gay kiss-ins, those are methods of political protest. Straight people (such as yourself) can at their own option take for granted the ability to have low-key public displays of affection without being spit on, challenged by security officers (who ignore opposite gendered couples doing the same thing), threatened with violence by third parties, etc.
It also doesn’t matter if you personally believe that PDA’s should not be shared at all in public no matter the genders of the couple. It doesn’t bolster your moral argument, and doesn’t cloak the fact that you’re not only bigoted against a constitutionally protected choice of open carry, you’re also bigoted against an aspect of mutual affection between consenting adults of the same gender.
The open carry movement in Washington State and in Oregon, which has grown in the last 4 years from my early efforts to educate the local law enforcement agencies on it’s legality, makes your entire argument essentially an utter falsehood. 3-4 years of open carry in Washington State has not resulted in open carry ban proposals by the State Legislature.
The only issue that we are really dealing with Seattle asserting private ownership over public parks and banning gun owners via trespass. SAF is going to be filing a legal challenge to that soon, and a coalition of gun owners and other groups in Seattle made Mayor Nickels a lame duck, getting him 3rd place in a primary. Seattle will likely pick Joe Mallahan for Mayor, who made it very clear that he doesn’t support what Mayor Nickels did, and will likely fold as soon he takes office. Though Mallahan is anti-gun, he at least understands that he must ask the State Legislature first, which is legally (though not constitutionally) correct.
Btw, I open carry in my credit union all of the time. They know me by my first name and I have good relations with them, and they actually tell other customers who may ask that I’m one of the good guys. They’re usually pretty relieved that they know me. It’s sort of an advantage of having a credit union based in a very pro-gun state.
Clayton,
I have to vehemently disagree with you on this. We’ve worked together on issues with open carry before, specifically with the state of Washington and open carry being de facto illegal due to police misinterpretation. You may remember me and Jim March, and I was known under a different name.
I take a tremendous objection to your comparison to open carry with same sex affection, and open carry gathers as the same as “San Francisco-style” pride events.
I seem to remember you claiming that if “San Francisco-style Pride events happened in every town above 10,000, LGBT folk would have completely lost their current battle”, I am paraphrasing you on this.
You seem to not quite understand that the Pride parades in places like San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland have always been quite a bit “outrageous”. It has to do with local culture more so than just “the gays”. Do you really think that such activities is similar in Montgomery Alabama, Boise, St. Louis? NYC Pride is also positively subdued in comparison to San Fran Pride. It’s about the local culture.
As for gay kiss-ins, those are methods of political protest. Straight people (such as yourself) can at their own option take for granted the ability to have low-key public displays of affection without being spit on, challenged by security officers (who ignore opposite gendered couples doing the same thing), threatened with violence by third parties, etc.
It also doesn’t matter if you personally believe that PDA’s should not be shared at all in public no matter the genders of the couple. It doesn’t bolster your moral argument, and doesn’t cloak the fact that you’re not only bigoted against a constitutionally protected choice of open carry, you’re also bigoted against an aspect of mutual affection between consenting adults of the same gender.
The open carry movement in Washington State and in Oregon, which has grown in the last 4 years from my early efforts to educate the local law enforcement agencies on it’s legality, makes your entire argument essentially an utter falsehood. 3-4 years of open carry in Washington State has not resulted in open carry ban proposals by the State Legislature.
The only issue that we are really dealing with Seattle asserting private ownership over public parks and banning gun owners via trespass. This was caused NOT by open carriers, but by a concealed carrier with a methadone habit, who was later convicted of a felony. SAF is going to be filing a legal challenge to that rule soon, and a coalition of gun owners and other groups in Seattle made Mayor Nickels a lame duck, getting him 3rd place in a primary. Seattle will likely pick Joe Mallahan for Mayor, who made it very clear that he doesn’t support what Mayor Nickels did, and will likely fold as soon he takes office. Though Mallahan is anti-gun, he at least understands that he must ask the State Legislature first, which is legally (though not constitutionally) correct.
Btw, I open carry in my credit union all of the time. They know me by my first name and I have good relations with them, and they actually tell other customers who may ask that I’m one of the good guys. They’re usually pretty relieved that they know me. It’s sort of an advantage of having a credit union based in a very pro-gun state.
I will add my voice to those who disagree with you on this topic.
I haven’t had time to read everyone else’s comments, but here’s the jist of it….
Allowing other people’s comfort level to dictate whether or not you should exercise a right allows other people’s biases and prejudices to dictate your true rights, as opposed to some theoretical rights. If you feel intimidated into not exercising your rights, do you really have them?
Which is not to say one shouldn’t factor it in, since how other people react is a part of the reality. But it shouldn’t be controlling.
It is beyond obvious that part of the shock is merely because so few people have open carried in the past century…so the public sensibilities dulled, and now they over-react. Perhaps this is a way to correct that. Time for America to grow a pair and grow up.
“But for those who haven’t been following the news: the gun control movement is in such sorry shape that…”
uh- perhaps you missed this….
http://www.gunnewsdaily.com/index.php/article-archives/152-governor-signs-ab962-restricting-ammunition
As one living on the “Left Coast” for the time being, the above news of AB962 restricting ammuniton sales signed by THE TREASONATOR of all people, was only topped by the deafening silence about it in general national news media, as far as I have seen at any rate.
Imho the problem is with the social engineering of the petri dish in which we find ourselves. The frog in the hot water analogy. By the time it gets too hot, the frog has forgotten he’s in the pot, much less able to escape.
“No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.” -Samuel Adams
Update: the same Los Angeles Assemblyman De Leon, who wrote the Ammunition registration bill, “coincidentally” also was behind the bill banning lead wheel weights. take note, reloaders!
http://www.changecalifornia.org/2009/05/leadwheelweights.html
232 Bilgeman:Forget about the caffeine issue,did you enjoy it?Besides if someone opens up on you with both barrels,reply with a howitzer!BTW :Never drink real coffee before shooting;it can ruin your aim! Cordially, Deguello(with an extra shot!)
thanks for all admin
owe you gratitude..
For all those claiming that CC is tactically better and that the OC person “will be the first one shot”, please support your assertions with some statistically significant data. I’ll go solve the world peace and hunger issues while I wait…
For those who cry “hide your guns from the children and weak-willed”, I ask how it is detrimental to either group to see Civil Rights peacefully exercised? Do you teach your children that one may have opinions, but one shouldn’t speak them in public forums? That while you are free from search and seizure without due process, you should just submit meekly to illegal police harrasment? That you shouldn’t try to vote if you are not white and male?
To Dblade, #60:
“Nice to see a more balanced approach. The problem with open carry is that we have no idea if you are a nut or a robber, and are going to use that gun on us.”
Sir, are you under the misapprehension that this is a problem solely for O.C.? Allow me to demonstrate one of the most glaring contradictions to your claim.
Daily, we are surrounded by people with objects capable of being used as deadly weapons. Knifes, clubs, cables, ropes, flammables… The most obvious being cars. Thousands of times the kinetic energy of a bullet, capable of more destruction and yet every day you trust that your fellow citizens will not kill or maim you in your travels. A frequently misplaced trust, as cars kill and injure many more people than guns every year. Yet we allow them to be driven openly by people who are at best poorly trained and NEVER screened for psychological stability prior to licencing. Seldom used purposefully as weapons, yet whenever they are, we express the most illogical shock and outrage.
Our society of freedom is based on trust. We must trust that the great majority will not abuse their freedoms and, wonder of wonders, it tends to be a self-fulfilling endevour. By your accusations, you demonstrate that you lack this trust and wish to abridge those freedoms of the majority because of the abuses of a tiny minority.
How dare you, sir.
To Dblade, #60:
“Nice to see a more balanced approach. The problem with open carry is that we have no idea if you are a nut or a robber, and are going to use that gun on us.”
Sir, are you under the misapprehension that this is a problem solely for O.C.? Allow me to demonstrate one of the most glaring contradictions to your claim.
Daily, we are surrounded by people with objects capable of being used as deadly weapons. Knifes, clubs, cables, ropes, flammables… The most obvious being cars. Thousands of times the kinetic energy of a bullet, capable of more destruction and yet every day you trust that your fellow citizens will not kill or maim you in your travels. A frequently misplaced trust, as cars kill and injure many more people than guns every year. Yet we allow them to be driven openly by people who are at best poorly trained and NEVER screened for psychological stability prior to licencing. Seldom used purposefully as weapons, yet whenever they are, we express the most illogical shock and outrage.
Our society of freedom is based on trust. We must trust that the great majority will not abuse their freedoms and, wonder of wonders, it tends to be a self-fulfilling endevour. By your accusations, you demonstrate that you lack this trust and wish to abridge those freedoms of the majority because of the abuses of a tiny minority.
How dare you, sir.
#239 deguello:
“Forget about the caffeine issue,did you enjoy it?”
You certainly played up, (down?), to his characterization.
I felt like I was redaing William S. Burroughs’ “stream of consciousness” style on one of his particularly bad days.
“BTW :Never drink real coffee before shooting;it can ruin your aim!”
Depends what you’re shooting at, doesn’t it?
Deguello (#231),
Thataboy! Keep writing my friend! You are the gun control advocates’ walking, posting, wetdream. Singlehandedly–typing with one hand while holding a gun and/or your tiny crank in the other–you do irreparable damage to others’ Second Amendment rights with every keystroke.
Yes, you’re the kind of guy who shouldn’t be allowed to handle his own, inadequate, never-used wienie–let alone something you could actually hurt someone with.
So c’mon son! Give me “both barrels” again in one of your rants!
LOL!
mr.cramer,are you suggesting that only police and criminals should be the only people carrying weapons?are you saying that the average person dosnt have brain one in there heads to use such a weapon because they are not of law enforcement?are you suggesting that all law abiding citizens should give up thwere life as not to hurt criminals?if you think walking unarmed is better,then please,walk through a prison yard with you’r wife and children while the nice murders and cut throats are getting there excercise.
Although I understand your (Clayton’s) point, I don’t agree with it. We have let the anti-gunners change America from a country where open possession of firearms was normal to where it is seen as aberrant and indicative of danger. That needs to be changed back to what it once was.
Back in the 1950s, high schoolers carried (cased) target rifles on NYC subways, and no one thought this to be out of the ordinary. Back in the 1960s, ABC’s “American Sportsman” was a very popular television show featuring some of America’s most successful and respected entertainers actually hunting and shooting, and killing game. And no one thought this to be out of the ordinary. Back in the 1970s at my high school we brought guns to school during hunting season and shot on high school rifle teams, and no one thought that a teenager taking a gun to school was out of the ordinary.
Here we are, 30+ years later, and now the culture has changed so that owning a gun and possessing or carrying it openly in public are seen as abnormal and threatening. Why? Because the small minority of anti-gun folks have done a very good job of getting the media to carry their message that gun ownership is somehow equivalent to mental deviancy. Forget taking a target rifle to school. We now suspend first graders if they sneak a PICTURE of a gun, or forget to remove a toy soldier from their backpack, or want to show off their first Cub Scout camping knife complete with fork and spoon.
The best way to change the law is to change people’s opinions. Yes, the first time that family sees a gunowner carrying openly, it is a shock to them… the way they were shocked the first time they saw a gay couple kiss each other in public. Eventually, if enough gunowners carry openly and responsibly, the zeitgeist will change so that gun ownership will once again be accepted as normal, and only the loons will freak at the sight of an otherwise-calm person carrying a firearm in public.
What good can come from ‘hiding our shame’? I feel like Cramer’s article is wasted words, and that he should know better.
Any state that licenses concealment but not open carry is not a state with a ‘better alternative’ to open carry.
A petty criminal, a government, or a foreign invader can secure your home at any time. If this is where you keep your arms at all times, you will have no readily available arms by which to defend yourself.
If OC ‘offends’ people, and government action comes of it, it is simply time for another revolution. We should always act in good conscience toward our philosophies, instead of limiting ourselves in fear of how some people might react, because in the end we shall always have liberty, whether it was easily received or it had to be violently taken.
In honor of Chris Broughton, the gentleman carrying an AR-15 in the general vicinity of where the president was speaking a couple months ago, I have been open carrying almost everywhere I go.
I agree with those who believe that the more people see civilians carrying guns WILL desensitize them.
I will keep in mind Mr. Cramer’s staunch opposition to this and when gun control measures are not passed in Arizona restriciting our open carry rights, I will send him an e-mail reminding him of him being just like the anti-gunners who made claims before every state passed their concealed weapon permit laws that blood would be flowing in the streets if those laws were passed. They’ve been wrong 100% of the time and I am confident he will be wrong on this time.
The problem with people who predict doom and gloom will never give a time frame of when the world will come to an end (a bit of exaggeration there). Just like the global warming people, they will never tell you when the world will come to an end so we can’t nail them down and prove them wrong definitively.
Guess I’ll just do this on an annual basis for Mr. Kramer, but he’ll still have the ability (and I predict he will) keep saying it will happen. Just like the global warming people.
Mr. Cramer, I carry concealed because I choose to and because my little LCP is a ready fit in my pocket. I certainly hope that decision doesn’t make me appear similar to the pandering wimp that you have become.
open or concealed,the gun grabbers will do whatever they can to protect the criminals.the law states,the police are ordered to protect the many and not the one.and the one that hasnt got police protection at the time of trouble may die like a dog because of liberal gun grabbers who hate to defend even the people in this country.the liberals are the gangsters,adl,aclu,splc,and all who believe people dont have the right in this country to protect and defend against hostile intentions.if open carry becomes the law,then we as a people must be willing to open carry a shoulder weapon during times of harsh winters which makes open carry impossible.
More than one year of myself and others open carrying and not only is the Arizona legislature NOT looking to pass any laws restricting our Second Amendment rights, but they’ve got several proposed laws to further loosen gun control laws. Hm. Well, I’m sure Mr. Cramer will stick to his guns (no pun intended) and not admit that he’s wrong.
I’ll report back in another year to let you know how the gun laws are doing in Arizona.
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