NavyLT: said:
It won't be legal for a criminal to carry their guns in the open. It's not currently legal in any state for them to open carry. Either they are prohibitied from possessing it due to a previous record, or their possession of it is already illegal with the intent to commit a criminal act while in possession of the firearm.
Someone who hasn't become a criminal yet isn't encumbered by his record, but his intentions might be as sinister as is possible anyway. Some of the worst crimes committed with guns were done by people with no criminal record- Major Hasan at Fort Hood, that creepy kid who shot all those people at Virginia Tech who fell through cracks in the Brady Check, the list goes on.
And unless the cop knows the criminal personally, how is he to determine he's OCing illegally? As I understand it, the cop needs probable cause before he can ask for an ID, and just the presence of a gun being OCed isn't cause enough.
However, I think the reason for our "condemnation" is that his yellow alert is ONLY because of the presence of the gun with little to no consideration given towards the actual behavior of the person carrying it. He appears to be more concerned with the object rather than the person carrying it, which is the entire basis of the propaganda that is spread by the vocal anti-gun groups, that it is the object that is bad and the threat rather than the criminal.
In practical, non-emotional terms, the presence of a gun in ANYone's hands nearby is the presence of a deadly weapon, and to ignore that for any reason- not doing what the antis want people to do, for instance- is foolish. Situational awareness has no political, religious, emotional, or subjective constraints, and there's no room for assumptions or suppositions- a gun is a gun, and knowing when they're present, paying attention to who has them, and giving some thought to contingencies is prudent, and I don't care a damn if I do what the antis want me to do. Alerting on someone who is armed is prudent, period. Maybe the antis got that one right.
TMUSCLE1: Don't confuse what I have said about how some of the non-gun public responds to armed civilians OCing, with my personal response to OCing. It's a right, and it's legal some places and I support those rights. My contention is that CC works just as well for purposes of self-protection, and doesn't incite the otherwise disinterested public into anti-gun stuff so as to preserve their distance from guns, which they desire. CC doesn't arouse anti-gun emotions as directly (if at all) among the neutral public. OCing could serve to force the issue of gun control when too many people become incensed with guns everywhere around them which makes them feel unsafe, and they join efforts to ratchet that presence down a notch or two. Those aren't MY thoughts, they're what I believe are the thoughts of a lot of others.
NavyLT: said:
But the minute a compact .45 appears on my belt in a retention holster, now there is need for "yellow alert". What has changed? Only one thing. And the reason for that change in feelings? Conditioning that guns are bad, not people. I didn't appear to be a person with bad intentions before the gun, and nothing in the entire situation has changed except for the gun in a holster on my belt and now, all of a sudden, I become worthy of concern for my intentions?
In a word, yes, if I don't know you otherwise. Why should I assume you're a nice, peaceful guy? Why should I assume anything at all about you?
But here are the facts: You've armed yourself with a severely anti-personnel weapon capable of killing people easily, and have brought it close to me and others nearby, in plain sight of everyone. What was your purpose? Without the gun you're just another guy in line that I don't know anything about; with the gun you're an armed guy in line that I don't know anything about, but you've made it clear you've got the means to kill me readily at hand, and now it matters what sort of guy you are.
I know, you'd like everyone to assume you're a nice, peaceful guy, but that's an assumption which being realistically alert, aware and reasoning won't make. I'll pay attention to you and keep a wary eye on you since I know you to have the means to kill me readily at hand and I believe that response to be prudent enough; others who aren't as brave as that, or as confident in their ability to respond to you as I am if you go bonkers or get enraged or your meds wore off and you hear voices shouting "kill, kill!"- are made very uncomfortable, run a load of worst-case "what-ifs" and find no place to hide from what you might do, and are certainly equipped to do- their version of situational awareness is remembering where they parked the car.
They'll do whatever it takes to set themselves at ease, and if that means joining an anti-handgun group so guns aren't close to them (the means to kill them aren't readily at hand and obvious) in everyday goings on, well, there you go.
On the other hand, if you were CCing, the issue of guns v. them wouldn't come up, and they'd have no immediate reason to mess with our rights or see our rights as a threat to them. Not everyone in the general public would react like this, but enough will, I believe, to cost us something of our image we don't need to lose.
