Has anyone come across the phenomenon of “Open Carry” that seems to be causing a bit of a stir in ‘Murica recently?

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5hT2Y6syU8[/video]

Worth a watch for the “fists and clubs” statistic bit alone. It all seems a bit crackers to me, the logic that everyone would be safer if more people carried guns, in case someone with a gun decides to shoot a load of people.

I find the whole thing interesting though, even if only to see how different their society can be in some ways.

Seems to me this is a massive own goal by the pro-gun folk.

To many people (including me) all they are doing is highlighting how insane the pro-gun laws are.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICG0MuzEYzw[/video]

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=cglnvXzitOQ[/video]

This makes me sad.

Hilarious. The OCT advocate is – by his own admission – still battling with demons from serving in war zones. And he thinks it’s a good idea – and that he’s safe – to walk around tooled up like that. The mind boggles.

Gawd bless ‘murica.

My friends live just south of Denver in a small town called Castle Rock, they just passed open carry when I was there a few months ago. It wasn’t popular with the people I met, but as one of them said to argue against it is to be labelled “Unamerican”

This troubled her greatly as she is a patriot and upset her a lot.

They do have some strange notions in the US of A

Speaking to a girl in a http://www.cabelas.com/ she said that maybe I should look at Americas gun laws and attitudes as a cultural difference between our countries, to me this makes sense. Still dont like the gun culture but it is what it is.

Grisham is a known figure in this. You need to search out his history and draw your own conclusions about his motivations.

I’m reasonably sure he’s a nutter.

Some of them are really quite insane.

America scares me. I’m sure most Americans are lovely, the one’s I’ve met are, so it’s weird that they are so fixated with violence.

You can see the logic/reason behind it but it really is an eye for an eye and will lead to many being blinded
The rest of the world can see the solution is for them to end their love affair with guns……I wont hold my breath.

So, people want to be allowed to something lawful, because it’s, erm, lawful, and because people shouldn’t be afraid of law abiding people doing lawful things?

to be fair, it’s bollocks, concealed carry is a much better as a deterrent, because criminals never know how many or which law abiding and upstanding citizens might be carrying a gun at any particular place or time.

The problem they have now is one of escalation. The crims know that everyone is likely to be tooled up, so they tool up themselves.

If you suddenly managed to convince the law abiding population that guns were uncool, the crims and nutters would still have guns and it wouldn’t really solve much (think pistol ban in the UK). It would probably help quite a bit with accidental injury and suicide though.

Michael Yon. That’s it.

Read his stories about that Grisham bloke. Makes for worrying reading.

My brother has lived in Michigan for over ten years and is married to the nuttiest, most neurotic woman you could ever want to meet. He says that she and all her friends take medication and see their therapists regularly and she seems to walk out of the marriage in a strop around once a year. He has spent quite a lot of time thinking about this mass neurosis and the American love of guns and he’s come to the conclusion that the frontier spirit is still alive and kicking in Americans’ minds, which explains their paranoia and general lack of security.

Liked the infographic in response the guy @ 5:40

From the outside it looks absolutely crazy but America has so many guns that normal logic doesn’t apply anymore.

In a society awash with guns, their approach actually makes some sense on an individual level.

But its not really addressing the overall problem that there are far, far too many guns in circulation in America

willard – Member

The problem they have now is one of escalation. The crims know that everyone is likely to be tooled up, so they tool up themselves.

richmtb – Member

From the outside it looks absolutely crazy but America has so many guns that normal logic doesn’t apply anymore.

In a society awash with guns, their approach actually makes some sense on an individual level.

But its not really addressing the overall problem that there are far, far too many guns in circulation in America

That’s it I think. It raises the question, if you lived there would you own a gun? Would you carry a concealed gun? As soon as you start to think about it it’s almost impossible not to get stuck in a paranoid logic loop about the bad guy, and what he might do.

Trouble is, the gun debate in America is race/socially based. The overwhelmingly greatest numbers of deaths are caused by and suffered by poor black kids in inner cities using illegally held and unlicensed hand guns. I think it’s something like you are 13-15 times more likely to die in a violent shooting if you’re a poor black kid. At which point you need to able to have a sensible debate about social inequalities which most white republican voting gun owning Americans in places like Texas and Wyoming, and New Mexico are not really interested in doing.

Even the lovely americans can be bonkers. The secretary in one of our US offices is a lovely lady, small, petit, nice as you like, can’t do enough for you. But get her onto the subject of guns and she completely changes and is so aggressively pro-gun it scares me. Between her and her husband they have an arsenal of weaponary in their home that could arm a small army, and she carries a 9mm in the glove box of her car and a small pistol in her handbag!

My take on this is that the confusion of a shoot out it is difficult to identify where the gunfire is coming from let alone if its coming form a good guy or bad guy. Anyone who’s done one of those Paintball events should have experienced the confusion of a shoot out. Give a gun to people who are not trained and familiar with shoot-out situations (more than just firing a few rounds off at a gun range) and within a few seconds everyone will be shooting at anything and everyone that moves. Even proffessional soldiers get it wrong.

The story that staggard me was the one from a few months ago where a 9yr old was given an Uzi at a gun range and she lost control and shot the instructor! I think the lunatics have taken over the assylumn on this one.

The story that staggard me was the one from a few months ago where a 9yr old was given an Uzi at a gun range and she lost control and shot the instructor! I think the lunatics have taken over the assylumn on this one.

A colleague a while back was talking about that. Just to be devils advocate, to try and rationalise why she was even there, I compared it to me that growing up in a rural area which had exposed me to a lot of seemingly dangerous things at a fairly young age, not least driving a tractor, splitting wood, moving cattle about etc.

It all seemed perfectly normal at the time, and as best I can understand, Americans are similarly normalised to guns. Some of them anyway it seems.

I’m sure most Americans are lovely, the one’s I’ve met are, so it’s weird that they are so fixated with violence.

Umm you do realise that a country is a collection of individuals, don’t you? So some of them might be fixated with violence, hence the pro-gun lot, whilst others might not be…

the frontier spirit is still alive and kicking in Americans’ minds

Of course, the actual frontier was a very long way from the East Coast, where people were simply reading Westerns and imagining.

Molgrips you are so keen to showcase your impeccable PC credentials that you haven’t even bothered trying to understand those two points!

My brother argues that only a couple of generations ago Americans were fighting for land and trying to establish secure homes for themselves all over the continent and that the consequence is that the homestead paranoia infects their thinking even today. He himself fantasies about getting out of the rat race and buying land out in Arizona, becoming self-sufficient and a survivalist and pulling up the drawbridge. What he doesn’t realise is that at the age of 60, as he will be by then, the amount of work required to run a smallholding and cover his food requirements would kill him, especially as he has zero experience of growing food or animal husbandry.

Must be comforting for the guy who goes to read their meter.

And, with all those trees in the line of sight, it’s probably rubbish anyway.

It’s a cultural thing we will never understand or support over here in the UK. Kind of like bull fighting in Spain. I don’t want to be part of it. I don’t want it over here. But it’s for the Americans/Spanish to sort it out for themselves, and/or deal with the consequences if they don’t.

(I know guns and bull fighting are completely inappropriate similes, but I couldn’t think of a better one.)

jimjam – Member

That’s it I think. It raises the question, if you lived there would you own a gun? Would you carry a concealed gun?

I like guns- they’re beautiful, functional machines, pleasing to look at and hold and work on, shooting them is immensely satisfying too. So quite likely I would own one, and keep it safe, and use it safely. And probably N+1 applies to guns too so I imagine I’d want an enduro gun and a fatgun too.

But concealed carry? Way I see it is, I’ll be wandering around in my normal everyday daze, thinking about boobs or what I’ll have for tea, and something happens that makes it a good idea to try and shoot someone in a hurry- and I’m not ready and I’m adrenaline crashed and full of doubt and nerves and it’s buttoned down and tangled up under my jacket and tbh I really don’t want to kill someone- up against someone who’s prepared and ready and already has a gun in their hand. The odds of that going well don’t seem good, even for a skilled user. It’s not the wild west but even if it was, things weren’t really settled with a quickdraw in town square, they were settled with one armed man shooting another armed man in the back when he wasn’t expecting it.

I remember on the US motorbike group I was on, how to carry on the bike was a recurring topic. As token limey, I was expected to be anti-gun on principle but I just kept thinking, it takes 5 minutes for me to find and deploy my cock when I’m in motorbike leathers. Meanwhile I’m on a machine that can be quarter of a mile away in about 11 seconds, that’s not even long enough to get my gloves off never mind draw and use a gun. On the other hand, if you fall off and land on it, you’re going to regret it. One dude had a 1911 in a back holster, you might as well strap an anvil to your spine.

The open carry and long arms thing is interesting though. I don’t think it’s all zoomers. For some it’s a point of principle, for others it’s a reaction to the law- “I really want to carry a small everyday sidearm in a convenient holster which I believe is a good idea, but I’m not allowed to so instead I’ll carry a rifle which I am allowed to”

Northwind – Member

And probably N+1 applies to guns too so I imagine I’d want an enduro gun and a fatgun too.

😆

You’re gonna need a road gun too if you don’t get to shoot your Enduro gun enough.

But concealed carry? Way I see it is, I’ll be wandering around in my normal everyday daze, thinking about boobs or what I’ll have for tea, and something happens that makes it a good idea to try and shoot someone in a hurry- and I’m not ready and I’m adrenaline crashed and full of doubt and nerves and it’s buttoned down and tangled up under my jacket and tbh I really don’t want to kill someone- up against someone who’s prepared and ready and already has a gun in their hand.

Imagine if someone started shooting in a cinema or nightclub full of armed people. i imagine it would be carnage.

Molgrips you are so keen to showcase your impeccable PC credentials that you haven’t even bothered trying to understand those two points!

Wot? Nothing to do with PC, it’s just daft to talk about ‘Americans’ as if they are one thing. It’s probably even dafter there than in any other country as it’s such a wildly polarised place.

Anyway:

My brother argues that only a couple of generations ago Americans were fighting for land and trying to establish secure homes for themselves all over the continent

Well, SOME of them were. Most probably weren’t. 100 years ago most of the West was ‘won’ and the cities were just big cities. Even 150 years ago the East coast was a fairly urbane place without Injuns attacking the wagon trains.

I think that a more likely root of it is anti-government sentiment (and my American wife and her family generally agree). America as a country became independent because people resented their government, and in the drafting of the constitution a lot of debating went on about how much government should actually do. The answer was ‘as little as possible’ so many people consider themselves independent and strive to rebel against the government as much as possible.

So you end up with people doing stuff like this in the video, and imagining a public militia as distinct from government forces.

Look on the bright side. If someone goes on a shooting spree down at the mall at least with open carry they’ll know who to take out first.

I reckon its all the news coverage they get…they see so many people in other countries carrying AK47s and RPGs that they feel left out..

My inlaws are quite right wing (certainly they vote Republican) and they are very uncomfortable about US gun law. I think it’s a vocal minority that want it as it is and an (unsurprisingly) very intimidated and unvocal majority that are in disagreement about it.

Conversely I know through family ties a family of Deep South black democrats, who are very pro gun!

His reasons for supporting the right to bear arms are pretty deeply rooted in American history and a desire to protect his community:

https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/bundles/190420

I’ve given up trying to understand the love affair some Americans have with Guns, I’ve tried to understand the logic – but really there isn’t any I can see, just deeply insecure people looking to feel powerful.

The stats don’t lie, 30k ish deaths a year in the US from Gun Violence, a country where an armed man can kill an unarmed man in the street and they need a lengthy court case to decide if it was okay because he was scared (or said he was) and still now they rely on 223 year old law to protect their right to carry about death devices – just in case we try to re-take the place.

I think after one of the latest mass public shootings, the success rate of accurately hitting the right person, with a handgun was something like 18%. Thats a lot of random collateral potential from the good guy with a gun.

I’m happy with America and guns. I’ve written it off as a place I want to go to, I don’t want to understand it or try to change anything about it, after all, I don’t vote or have any influence there and if the powers that be can’t see past another mass killing to sort it out, good luck, its their system.

Finally, all, the guns in America, well, they are all “over there” and I’m not. Carry on.

There is not as much support for open carry (or concealed carry) for that matter as you might think. A lot of it is media born (a bit like saying all of the UK wants to vote in the BNP).

As a gun owner, I can quite confidently state that the real issue in America is the inability to tackle mental health issues and the insane belief that anyone should be able to own any form of assault rifle.

The frontier spirit in America is still alive and well and in all fairness why shouldn’t it be. There are a lot of people in this world who would prefer to have more control over their lives, how they spend their money and to maintain a protected, unintruded life.

Are those who are in favour of open carry the same kind of folk who wear mobile phones and keys on their belts’? If so, I know all I need to know about them. 😀

As a gun owner, I can quite confidently state that the real issue in America is the inability to tackle mental health issues and the insane belief that anyone should be able to own any form of assault rifle.

It’s the culture. Bolt action carbines with decent magazine sizes would be just as capable of mowing down 20 school kids in a single outing. People with little training might be able to mow down a few more with a semi but it’s still going to happen and the casualties are still going to be pretty high.

The guns are too easy to get and their culture relies on either sorting differences out with guns, therapists or lawyers. Canada has a bollock load of guns and don’t have the problems the Americans do to anywhere near the same extent.

I’m from Pennsylvania. Open carry is legal in the entire state, except for (legal term) “first class cities.” Cities are classified based on their population, and Philadelphia is the only first class city. So its legal to openly carry a gun anywhere in the state but Philadelphia. 😉

You can also get a permit to carry a concealed firearm. They’re $20 in the county where I live.

Of course, some places are off limits. Court houses, for example. So, what do you do with your gun while you’re in the courthouse? You may need to go to the Recorder of Deeds for a title search or something not at all court related, but the office is located in the courthouse.

Simple! They have a gun check at the door. 😯 Yes, really. 😀 Just like a coat check at a restaurant.

Hello, I’d like to check my pistol while I go inside. No problem, sir… 😀

Edit – while legal, open carry would likely be a total PITA. Lots of people would freak out and call 911 on you. And even if not, every cop would stop you to see what you are doing. Many would be polite and respectful, and even say “have a nice day” once they realize that you are not some sort of deranged serial killer or worse.