With regard to open carry, I do think it’s reasonable to point out that you have the greatest impact when you choose a prudent order to fight your battles in. The opposition knows well enough to focus on “the gun show loophole”, and build steam from there. We’re accomplishing things I’d previously thought were impossible by going carefully and deliberately through some building steps: we’ve taken a SCOTUS affirmation of individual 2A rights into a near-certain incorporation against the states. From there we can sue to strike down other irrational state and local laws, like bans on light carbines that look like assault rifles, arbitrary licensing requirements, outright and de facto bans on _any_ carry, and arbitrary ammo restrictions. Normalizing open carry is a great goal (just as repealing the NFA and GCA are), but insisting on getting everything we want right now without any concern for whether the public is ready for the parts of our agenda that are further outside their experience will dramatically decrease our chances of success.

MAIG knows well enough not to put full gun registration, carry bans, semiauto bans, and ammo restrictions on its agenda up front. Can we really afford to be less publicity savvy than MAIG? Being right doesn’t mean you’ll win. If you have the strongest idea in the world and market it badly, it won’t sell.

As for restaurant carry, we’d have had that this year if it weren’t for Kaine’s veto. How much of our public and legislative support might have come from nervous fence-sitters facing a somewhat Hegelian choice between seeing the spooky guns (thesis) and putting them out of sight and mind (synthesis) because banning them (antithesis) wasn’t an option? And how many joined our side (or at least stopped being afraid) when they saw that holstered guns don’t jump out and massacre busloads of nuns of their own free will like the Brady Bunch would have them think?

Either way, we’ve moved towards fixing our carry laws and pretty much normalized open carry in most parts of the Commonwealth in the process.

There was no violence to speak of from the town hall attendees and protestors. UNTIL the leftist thugs from SEIU showed up and beat up a black man who was doing nothing but handing out Gadsen flags.

Not long after that started, Mr. Kostric showed up with his pistol with a “It’s time to water the tree of liberty” sign, and then there was “Chris” carrying the AR-15 along with several others open carrying (which was a planned event, by the way…the police were notified in advance and the guy doing the long interview with him helped plan it…but nothing was secret about it).

Maybe there was some overlap, but I would have expected the violence to continue as SEIU PSTs kept showing up at the town halls, bussed in from all over the place. But the reports of violence all but stopped (save one missing finger). I don’t claim to know what conversations took place on SEIU forums or behind closed doors, but it did make me wonder at the time if the halt to the violence had something to do with the potential of (White House endorsed) armed citizens ready to put a stop to any attacks.

Now this is an entirely different scenario that most of what’s being presented here, but it does show that there are times that it makes sense to display a show of force to ward off would be attackers in known volatile situations and simultaneous make it part of the protest (though I suspect many of them, like Kostric, were just doing what they normally do every day). I’m absolutely aware of the huge risk it *could* be due to the high emotions at some of these protests, but sometimes it just makes sense.

The more I think about it the more I believe that this is an absolutely perfect example of a time when the 2nd amendment has successfully been exercised for precisely the purpose of defending the 1st.

(PSTs = Purple Shirted Thugs, as opposed to JBTs ;-))

Most of the noise over open carry lately has been because of the guys at an event where the President was kinda sorta near. I saw a half dozen or so people open carrying at a Tea Party in VA back in April, and it wasn’t in breathless headlines anywhere. Do you think that would be the case if the VCDL, OCDO, et al hadn’t done so much to desensitize the press to ‘man with gun’ sightings?

While the guy with the AR at the town hall in Arizona might make a few fence-sitters unhappy next time they see someone open carrying a pistol, I would imagine most would be like “oh, that’s not so bad, at least it’s not an EBR and the President isn’t here.”

Sorta like that nice gay couple nobody really notices on the street anymore because it takes a man in a crotchless Las Vegas showgirl costume to shock them now.

i’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt here and not pretend you mean something much more insidious than the simple statements of fact. to a certain extent, they are vastly more powerful people than any one of us individually.

I wonder, however, how you approach lobbying. Are you asking people to change their minds or are you asking them to justify their previously unchallenged attitudes? I have found that it is a lot easier to make people think when you force them to justify their attitudes than if you try to get them to adopt yours. Using OC as an issue here, when someone says, “you can’t do that!” you ask them why not. (we are assuming you are not on their private property) When they say, “it’s against the law,” you ask them which law.

Sometimes a stupid look and a question will get you a lot further than a book length recitation of the facts. Once they get their minds open to the fact that they might possibly be incorrect, without once being told that they are foolish sheeple idiots, you can hand them the PA Gun Rights Flyer

http://paopencarry.org/pdfs/Pennsylvania_Gun_Rights.pdf

and smile. It’s the smile that seals it. a warm, welcoming smile that just absolutely forces the recipient to tell his friends what a nice young man that gun nut was, and so knowlegeable too.

as only a recent convert to the whole open carry thing, it isn’t what i expected. the stuff you learned when you started CCing about avoiding trouble and being polite goes double. there just isn’t any in-your-face about it. an aggressive jerk is enough of a problem. and aggressive jerk with a gun gets a visit from Officer Friendly and all his buddies. the key here is, don’t be aggressive and don’t be a jerk.

i try to leave happy people in my wake. the funny thing about it is that all my forced cheerfullness makes me happier as a result. when you are friendly to others, they almost can’t help but to be friendly back. it’s amazing how many friendly people there are around.

come over to the Dark Side, Sebastian. Even if you decide not to stay, you will get a deeper understanding of the actual reactions of others, rather than the distorted picture presented by our political opponents in the general media.

Like it or not they make the law. You can lobby them to vote for this or that, or not vote for this or that, or work to try to get them out of office if they displease you, but that’s about it. Generally speaking, you won’t give very far if you aren’t concerned with making a reasonable case for your point of view.

And try this on for size — you better care what the politicians think because they make the laws. That’s the last group I want getting upset about open carry.

So, Sebastian – when did you make the transition from “citizen” to “subject“?