So… Apparently while I was busy rooting for the new knife law, one of our state senators decided to introduce a bill that would allow open carry in my state without having a permit, and that bill has passed the State Senate. Of course, apparently the house has stuck it in the finance committee to die, but one can dream.
Unfortunately, this has caused all the idiots to come out of the wood work to scream that open carry will get you killed/mugged/shot first/whatever. First off, I think I’ve made a rather good argument for open carry in the past. Also, I don’t know the exact figures, but a lot of folks open carry every day. Given the attitude of the average mainstream media newscaster, if they got shot with their own gun, I would bet that they would be reporting these incidents all over the place. A quick google search brings up one acccount… and that’s it. Oddly enough, the next hit on the search was a concealed carry guy being mugged and having his gun taken away from him. Granted, the US is actually a fairly safe place to live, but the lack of reported incidents makes me think that this just doesn’t happen.
Of course, the biggest issue I take with the concealed carry only crowd is that it really sounds to me that they would be just as happy if open carry was straight up illegal. At the very least, it’s something they think no one should do… ever. This attitude equates to, in my mind, “yes, it’s ok/legal/your right to do this thing, as long as no one catches you.” Nope. Sorry. If it’s not ok if I get caught doing something, that means that something is not ok. In my mind, the folks that say that you can carry as long as no one catches you (that’s pretty much what concealed carry only means, right?) are almost as bad as the people that say you shouldn’t be able to carry in the first place.
*Just to be clear, if you choose to only conceal carry for whatever reason, that’s your choice. Just don’t make that choice for the rest of us.