Although the comparison is a little uncomfortable I would compare open carry to the public display of homosexuality. Those that do it put it in front of the public to see and "get used to it" whether they want to or not.
If that were my motivation, I could accomplish the same thing by having the 2nd Amendment tattooed on my forehead. Between that and my open carried weapon, most rational folks would
"get used to it whether they want to or not" rather than confront with an eye towards victimizing me, I feel relatively safe in assuming.
But then, I don't care if they get used to it or not, because that isn't my motivation. My motivation is singular. No political statements intended by it, though obviously, as your post demonstrates, some folks will think they understand my motivations for doing just about anything with exactly zero input from me about it. I have no control over that, but I do have the ability to correct the errant assumption, so here it is:
I do intend to draw a minor amount of attention to myself from one group, and one group only - criminals who would mistake me for the easy mark that concealed carriers are mistaken for every single day of the week. I want those who think I'm just another average victim to them to know beforehand that they're getting ready to try to victimize someone who is visibly prepared to defend against it. In the overwhelming majority of such random and unquantifiable encounters, it is my belief, based on my own personal experience and that of many others with whom I communicate regularly, that victimizers will choose to ignore me as a potential victim rather than taking the chance that the consequence for trying will be their own funeral. Criminals by and large are cowards. My openly carried firearm gives them something their inherent cowardice can feed on. Period.
Open carry is the same sort of "in your face" activism that has worked so well for the gay community and it's time we started using it as well.
Utter nonsense. Open carry is a tactical decision first and foremost, and any acceptance of normalcy that the sheeple get from it is a side-effect at best. And I've never gotten in anyone's face about OC. Exercising a right in one's daily life is not "activism," it's exercising a right and that's all. Our Founding Fathers already did the activism for us. The fact that Texas (or wherever) is only now getting around to recognize OC as every bit as much of an exercise of 2nd Amendment rights as concealed carry is only means that state's government has been oppressive of your rights for all these years, not that folks who have convinced them to relax the oppressive laws are somehow different in nature to those who've enjoyed the
privilege of CC all this time.
There is nothing even remotely comparable between one group who forces their lifestyle on a reticent, wary public, and another group who chooses one way of exercising a fundamental, enumerated right over another way of exercising the same right. The right preexisted ratification of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, and no particular way of carrying a weapon was ever contemplated once the right was acknowledged within the Constitution through the inclusion of it in the BoR. Practicing OC isn't asking society to change its moral values, it's nothing more than an embracing of the societal norms articulated within our most vaunted founding documents.
....and I feel that openly displaying a firearm may take options away from me.
Or it may take options away from those who would victimize you
before they actually try. Does such a criminal just go home after they've decided that the odds aren't in their favor at the sight of an OC'ed weapon? Nope, certainly not in most cases I would presume. They most-likely walk down the block and choose another more vulnerable-looking victim, and that may well be a CC'er who not only has to react to an imminent threat, but has to do so from under concealment and possibly while using his/her weak hand to defend against an attack. That's the rationale for OC, that it deters victimization, while CC just makes one look like every other potential victim. Nothing's guaranteed to be sure, but if you've got a logical basis for being in opposition to the stated rationale, you'll be the first that most of us have ever heard, because the logic in the rationale is rather undeniable, whether or not it can be proven that it works as-intended xxx% of the time.
Blues
