Posted by NavyLT: Would you please post a reference that indicates a person has a right to shop without being "made to feel nervous?"
That "right" (a misnomer, but that's not important here) derives simply from the merchant's motivation to sell. For the merchant, it's a judgment call. Will more customers go elsewhere because there's a man in the store with a gun, or because he prohibits open carry? In Elmer Keith's old home town one would likely get one answer, and in Uncle Billy's neighborhood, quite another.
Posted by Uncle Billy: So your local 7-11 might look like the OK Corral when the bad guys, OCing, ...
I cannot imagine a "bad guy" carrying openly. It simply makes no sense to me. Why would anyone in his right mind who was planning a hold-up draw attention to himself by wearing a gun openly? Stealth would be paramount, wouldn't it?
Posted by NavyLT: Again, that statement ["open carry doesn't deter crime"] makes absolutely no sense. Why in heck would a criminal rob a place where there are people KNOWN to be armed, or why would a criminal rob a person KNOWN to be armed, when one block down the road there is another convenience store or any other similar place where there is a much, much greater chance that there will be nobody there known to be armed? or the criminal could wait two minutes for the KNOWN armed person to walk away and a person not visibly armed come along?
Common sense would tell you that no perp in his right mind would choose an armed victim over an unarmed victim--
under most circumstances.
There are two hypothetical circumstances in which he might: (1) he needs or really wants the gun (a sneaky slice of a tendon will get it), or (2) for some reason known only to himself, he is committed to mayhem in the establishment at hand and will simply shoot the open carrier first.
How great a risk do those possibilities pose for the open carrier? Having the gun taken would be the more likely of the two, I think. Personally, I would be more concerned about the gun being taken from my car while I am in a Post Office after I had been seen to have a gun.
Off the subject of deterrence, but on the subject of risk to the open carrier, I would rather walk in on an armed robbery in process (no shooting yet) looking benign than with a gun showing in a holster--but again, that's off the subject of deterrence.
Decades ago, Elmer Keith wrote about a terrible shooting; I think it had occurred in a MacDonalds. He mused, quite correctly, I think, about how long the shooter(s) would have lasted, and about how the number of victims would have been reduced, had the perps tried that in his home town in Idaho.
One might wonder whether they would ever have tried it. Common sense says no, but there are hundreds of "dumb crook" stories. Common sense tells me that open carry can deter many crimes; it does not tell me that it's the right choice for me.
Yes, open carry can make a lot of people nervous. If they are ant-gun, I submit that they will not "get used to it"--they'll have to have something unexpected happen that would change their minds, or they will simply become more opposed to the idea. Again, they react to emotion and conditioning, and not to common sense.
For me? If I worked in a stop-and-rob and a couple of people walked in to shop with guns on their hips, I think my level of discomfort would actually go down, at least until they left. After all, "why in heck would a criminal rob a place where there are people KNOWN to be armed,... ".
