I do have a counter-point as far as "not spooking the general population."
When and where I grew up, most every pickup had a shotgun rack. During the appropriate seasons, those racks held shotguns or rifles. It was not unusual to see people walking around with shotguns or rifles, en route to a field. Nobody blinked.
Point I'm getting at is that conditioning is a real factor to consider. If the only times people see openly carried weapons, those weapons are being carried by cops or crooks, then people get conditioned to think of weapons as only being carried by cops or crooks.
So there is a decent chance that if people were more exposed to open carry by responsible people, it could condition them to spook a lot less, instead of a lot more.
I suspect that would require fairly discreet methods of open carry, by very polite and mild-mannered people. Loudmouths strutting around in their Cold, Dead Hands shirts and carrying Tacticool gear would probably have the wrong impact. I'm in favor of those guys having the right to do so, anyway, but hope they will realize it would not be good for our side for them to do that.
But I do think there's something to be said for discreet open carry by the right folks as a psychological conditioning agent.
OTOH, I like the tactical advantage of the BGs not knowing I'm armed.
My problem is, I get asked, "Are you a cop? Because you look like one," on a kind of regular basis, so I think those sorts may assume I'm packing anyway.