One common error that is made is assuming that the rarity of a particular event is significant.
It MAY be significant if there are frequent opportunities for such an event to take place, but it may simply mean that the circumstances under which such an event can take place don't occur very often.
One needs some control data in order to draw accurate conclusions. In the absence of any valid statistical control data, simply assuming that the rarity of gun grabs involving open carriers is meaningful is completely invalid. That is because without being able to accurately quantify how common/rare open carry is, one can't draw any accurate conclusions about any events involving open carry.
Let's use a somewhat amusing example I recently posted in another thread. Assume that someone claimed it is very dangerous for elderly female rocket scientists to bungee jump in the nude when using frayed and old bungee ropes. Without knowing how common it is for elderly female rocket scientist to bungee jump in the nude with old bungee ropes, one might do a search and find that there have NEVER been any injuries or fatalities recorded involving those circumstances.
That might prompt a person to believe that it's perfectly safe for a 70 year old female rocket scientist to bungee jump in the nude even if the bungee ropes are old and frayed. In reality, what's going on ( in that admittedly ridiculous scenario) is that no one has ever actually been foolish enough to undertake such an action and therefore no one has ever even had the chance to be injured or killed as a result.
In similar fashion, because open carry (amongst civilians) is pretty rare (especially in urban or suburban situations), it is quite unusual to find any incidents at all involving open carry--let alone very specific types of incidences like gun grabs.
This is part of why it's common for the more aggressive open carry advocates to refuse to accept any sort of information based on police open carry and gun grabs. Restricting the data pool to a very limited number of possible data sources (the relatively small number of non-LEOs who open carry) virtually insures that there are almost no negative incidents available.
So--with that out of the way, I'm interested in the statistics you found. Based on the statistics you found, what percentage of the population carries openly and how many of those have been attacked and/or had their guns taken?
What percentage of the population conceal carries and how many of them were attacked and/or had their guns taken?
It's generally very difficult to compare the two because any accurate comparison will absolutely require knowing the percentages of the population that conceal carry and open carry and then how many of each group are attacked/have their guns taken. I'm impressed that you were able to find that information and I hope you will share it with the rest of us.
