Everybody keeps talking about all these negative images people have about guns, and yet 50 years ago these negative images weren't there. Why? What changed in those 50 years? I'll tell you what changed. The Brady Campaign cramming their crap down everyone's throats while the gun community stood idly by and thought that guns were a part of the American way like apple pie and baseball. And now everybody believes the Brady Campaign crap and that is all the ever SEE. We can't stand by and continue to let the Brady Campaign be the ONLY image of guns that people SEE. Can't you understand that? All we are doing by hiding our guns is REINFORCING exactly what the Brady Campaign is saying! We are reinforcing that guns are evil and need to be hidden!
And nobody from the concealed carry crowd yet has offered a solution to changing the negative images that the public has of guns. All the concealed carry crowd has said is "OMG! We need to run and hide from these people."
Again, this seems to be a common attitude among the Open Carry crowd. It's not about self-defense per se, it's an 'in-your-face' approach that says that the general public should support OUR rights, regardless of overall public perception, media presentation, the opinion of gun writers, instructors or police administrators.
It's akin to saying "To hell with what anybody else thinks, it's my right and I'm gonna do it."
To me, this brazen approach is like shouting our rights through a bull-horn. While it may be legal, the media may portray these people as self-absorbed radicals who are trying to force the issue of Open Carry down the throats of the general public.
While CCW laws have relaxed greatly in the last twenty years, the general population may still leery of seeing civilians openly carrying guns in public.
I'd guess that most store managers and many police officers simply do not want to deal with complaints from citizens upset about seeing somebody walking around wearing a gun in plain sight. Even if they get one single complaint, they have to act upon it.
The result of this confrontation may not be favorable to the law-abiding gun owner who makes the conscious decision to carry his gun openly.
Sure, some people will support Open Carry in theory, but many of them wouldn't do it themselves. Like most people, they just want to be left alone while they go about their business.
People do not have to physically see a gun strapped to the side of a regular civillian to form an opinion as to whether or not Open Carry should be widespread practice. I think people form an opinion instantly, whether it is positive, negative or neutral.
And to some people in our society, wearing a gun in public in plain sight may indeed be as offensive as shouting through a bull-horn. While Open Carry may perfectly legal in many places, to some it may be seen as flagrant and reckless. Remember those same people vote, call store managers and sometimes police.
In my opinion, we win our legal carry rights when the opposition realizes that police cannot be there to protect them from a sudden, unprovoked attack. This forces anti-gunners to confront the real question that if police cannot protect them, who will?
This approach takes the media spotlight off the gun itself and puts it onto the bigger issue of an individual's fundamental right to self-defense.
This larger question of self-defense gets to the heart of why we carry firearms in the first place. And this is where we can defeat the media and change public perception.
The issue of self defense is the one question for which the anti-gunners have no answer. This is what makes regular people, often anti-gunners in the past, to reconsider their opposition to self defense. As this realization gains momentum throughout the general public, we have less political opposition.
In my opinion, when a person realizes that he is still armed while legally covering his gun, it just makes no sense to Open Carry if he doesn't want the hassle of being confronted by police, store employees or by curious civilians, as the OP has found.
Personally, I don't want to be confronted by anybody while I'm shopping. I don't want kids getting up close to me, pointing and staring at my gun. That's not what I'm carrying for. I don't want any media attention. I don't want to make a political statement or to challenge people to ask me why I'm carrying a gun. My gun is only there to protect my life. And I don't want anybody to know it's there until I need it.
Sometimes, discretion really is the better part of valor.
