On Open Carry; or, Jesus Keeerist Annie Oakley, Put That Thing Away!

Author’s Note: In this essay, I’m not talking about “open carry” in the sense that you’re camping or hiking in an area with dangerous wildlife, or hunting, working in your personally owned business, or even lounging around naked in your home (you sweet, sweet pervert you); no, I’m talking about openly wearing a firearm, handgun or long gun, in populated, public areas. Also, you’ll have to take into account that my Law Enforcement experiences ended in 2010, and may not reflect cops today.

Standing in the checkout line at my local Northeast Georgia Wal-Mart, I find myself behind a portly gentleman wearing a t-shirt extolling the products of a certain firearms manufacturer, and sporting a large stainless semiautomatic handgun (that I know for a fact retails between $900-$1200) in a kydex pancake holster on his hip. I’m familiar with the holster, I used it myself as a cop in plainclothes assignments. I do have to admit, it is a comfortable holster; although it was banned from being used at the Georgia Public Safety Training Center because it requires you to press a button with your index finger to draw the gun- and the button is in line with the trigger. After a couple of cops shot themselves in the ass trying to draw their guns on the firing range, they nixed that holster.

As I waited in the interminably long line, I idly wondered if he practiced drawing from that holster enough to do it safely; and did he realize that a person standing behind him can easily pluck that thing out because he’s not paying attention to anything but his phone?

I wasn’t particularly surprised to see someone openly carrying a gun in my local Wal-Mart; first off, it’s Wal-Mart, what did you expect? Secondly, there’s been a huge number of people in the past few years pointedly showing off their guns in public even before they started doing it at Trump rallies. It happens so much where I live that I’ve started getting bored with critiquing their weapons and carry styles. Even before recent events, I’ve been immersed in the world of firearms in some way for the past 40 years; starting with the Marksmanship merit badge in the Boy Scouts, through to becoming a law enforcement instructor in every firearm used by Law Enforcement, to serving on two different SWAT teams as entry team leader, as well as rangemaster and armorer for three departments. I’ve been around guns most of my life, and lived mainly in places where guns in private citizen’s hands are omnipresent.

So. You know. One more guy in the checkout line with a gun on his hip is no shock. But…

Why carry it openly? Out there for everyone to see (and snatch fairly easily)? Why is it better to let everyone within eyesight of you know you’re carrying a gun?

If you ask open carry advocates, they’ll usually spout a few similar reasons. Let’s look at the ones that sound sort of reasonable on the surface:

1) It’s the foundation of the Second Amendment

OK, that seems a little of a stretch… Open Carry, by itself, is the only thing holding up the 2^nd Amendment? Without it, guns will surely be banned any second? Usually, their rationale for this is that the Supreme Court ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller in 2008 held that the 2^nd Amendment states that possessing and carrying a weapon, whether open or concealed, is protected by the constitution. What they ignore from that ruling- and subsequent others from lower courts- is that the Second Amendment is not unlimited, and states can regulate how it is carried out.

2) Education

Education, in this case, means “Educating people that there are guns out there and that they shouldn’t be afraid of them”. Hm. I’m not sure carrying an AR-15 over your shoulder to a political rally is a great educational tool. It’s almost as if there’s another reason for it… I think I’m getting closer to the real reason people open carry…

3) Practicality

This usually broken down into 1) it’s more comfortable, 2) it’s quicker, 3) the cops do it all the time, and 4) it lets you carry BIGGER GUNS!

Really. I’m not exaggerating that last one.

-More comfortable… well, yes, it is more comfortable than concealed carry. The whole rationale of why concealed carry is better than open is that in concealed carry, no one knows you’re armed. To do this, you’ve got to carry a relatively small weapon, depending on your body size, and keep it snug against you so it will be hidden by your clothing. Cheap holsters and bulky guns tend to poke, prod, and bruise you when carrying concealed. Even with compact guns and well-made, comfortable holsters, effective concealment is hampered in hot weather by restricting what you can comfortably wear. The only concealable holster I could use with shorts in the summer in Georgia was a fanny pack; which did the job quite well… but that’s not exactly an option for macho men, now is it?

-It’s quicker… Yes, it is this, as well. The time to draw a handgun from concealment can’t compare to the time to draw from an open holster; especially if you’re carrying it in basically a sock with no retention capabilities at all. I mean, that’s why-

-The cops do it all the time… Sure, because they’re automatic targets. You can’t hide that you’re armed when you’re wearing a very visible uniform. But… those cops are also wearing retention

holsters that are very difficult to remove a gun from very quickly- so difficult, in fact, that it takes a lot of training and practice to draw from a triple-retention holster as quickly as from an open one. The first time I tried to draw from one in the Academy, I came damn near to lifting myself off the ground. They’ve also had a lot of practice, from day one, on weapon retention- keeping someone from snatching that gun from it’s holster and shooting you with it. Even with all this, 8% of officers killed in the line of duty from 1994 to 2003 were killed with their own gun.

While we’re talking about cops- and firearms trainers, whether law enforcement or civilian- ask them why they prefer to carry concealed when they’re off-duty. They’ll tell you that they’d rather not be the first target in an armed robbery or some other confrontation. Armed guards haven’t deterred bank robberies; the armed guard gets it first. If you’re a cop in the bathroom of a 7-11 and,  when you’re done, you use caution when you open the door; it’s in case the place is getting held up and you’re about to walk into it. Same reason you sit facing the door- you want to know if trouble’s coming, to give you time to assess the situation and make the right decision on how to handle it. And yes, those are both actual situations that have happened before, and have therefore been ingrained into cops.

Most cops and serious instructors would rather keep their weapon concealed, so they have time to assess the situation and decide how to handle it. Charging in guns-a-blazin’ with little forethought usually ends up in the shooter, the robber, and some bystanders dead. In fact, we were taught in Law Enforcement that if we were off-duty in a store and it was robbed, the last thing you do is start waving your pistol around- in some situations, it’s better to be a good witness, than a gunslinger. (One scenario we ran all the time was being in a convenience store when the guy in front of you pulls a gun to rob the cashier. You fearlessly draw down on him and snarl something along the lines of “Go ahead punk… make my day”, while checking out your look in the mirror

…aaaand the accomplice who came in earlier as backup, who you didn’t notice, shoots you in the back.

Do you think the guy in front of me in this line at Wal-Mart has the situational awareness to avoid such a fate, even if he was carrying concealed and less likely to be a target?

Hell no. He’s still scrolling Instagram on his phone. Remember last post where I talked about the Cooper Color Codes and situational awareness? When you carry a gun, whether concealed or not, you have to be in at least Condition Yellow at all times…

…and this guy, giggling at the funny meme he just saw, is in perpetual White.

– It lets you carry BIGGER GUNS!… It sure does that. Just look at the photos from recent protests where one of the anti-ANTIFA (you reduce the fractions on that one) protesters was carrying Barrett M-82 .50 BMG rifle that is 4 feet in length and weighs 30 pounds. Not exactly subtle. Some advocates will claim that bigger handguns are easier to shoot- for example, this:

 

“It’s that simple. Larger guns are better weapons than smaller guns. Sure, you can compensate for some of this with training, but that same training would make you that much better with a full-sized pistol. All guns make compromises but compact and sub-compact guns make the most. “

 

Hoooold on there, hoss. First off, the fundamentals of shooting a handgun are the same for big ones and small ones, semi-autos and revolvers. You should be practicing with your handgun often to ensure proficiency, but you toss that off with a sneering “Suuuure, you COULD practice until you’re as good with a smaller gun as you are with a bigger one; but who’s got the time?”

This attitude pisses me off to no end. It’s the “I’ve been shooting all my life and I know what I’m doing; you can’t teach me nothin’!” attitude I see in every self-proclaimed expert who then proceeds to 1) miss their target even at ridiculously short distances and 2) do something flagrantly unsafe and get pissy when you call them on it. So don’t use this excuse on me. My best range scores- consistent 100%’s on a more difficult version of the Georgia Double-Action Course- were shot with a compact Glock .40 cal, the weapon I practiced with the most and was most comfortable with. Size didn’t matter; training did.

No, what they’re talking about here is the concept of “ballistic advantage”- the idea that more powerful rounds are more likely to defeat attackers with fewer rounds; which means that rifles are even more betterer because the bullets they shoot are 1) faster 2) heavier 3) both… they’re more ballistically advantageous.

You know… the bullets are thicker and longer than wimpy pistol bullets.

…which means they’re also more likely to overpenetrate the target and hit the person behind the target (yeah, right, you were thinking about your backstop before you pulled the trigger. Sure, sure. You won’t even take a training class; why should I believe you?) or, the more likely scenario, out of the 20 rounds you just sprayed off, one hit the target and the rest went trough three walls before hitting bystanders. Never mind that the weapon itself is heavy, bulky, and hard to deploy from a sling on the back. So why would you even want to open carry a long gun in day to day carry? What could possibly be attacking you in the Wal-Mart that necessitates that much firepower? Hordes of armed robbers wearing body armor? A Hollywood style bank robbery shootout on every corner of your small town?

But having that AR-15 on your back or that 7-inch barrel .44 Magnum revolver on your hip sure looks coooooool.

… Hmm, an idea of why people advocate open carry is forming…

4) It deters crime

It seems like it would, right? Criminals are opportunists; they’re not going to rob a liquor store where the manager is openly carrying a gun, are they? If a large portion of the public is carrying and everyone knows it, the “bad guys” will go somewhere else?

We’ll leave aside who, exactly, a “bad guy” is- and how their skin tone might affect that identification amongst open carry advocates- for now. Is it statistically sound to say that open carry states are safer than non-open carry? Matt Gaetz said in 2015, during his bid to get open carry legalized in Florida, that “It is important to note that in the states that allow open carry, violent crime was 23 percent lower, the murder rate was 5 percent lower, the aggravated assault rate was 23 percent lower and robbery rates were 36 percent lower.”

Is that true?

Well, as usual per Mr. Gaetz, he cherry-picked data from the FBI’s Uniformed Crime Reporting (that most agencies resent having to send data to), and didn’t provide any verifiable methodology behind his research that anyone can validate. However, there have been a lot of studies on this very topic, including a 2020 Rand Group study, and the results are…

Inconclusive either way.

So, while we can’t disprove the idea that open carry deters crime, neither can we prove it. However, mass open carry is a relatively recent thing… will the “bad guys” move away to areas where there aren’t so many people armed, like a giant mass migration of predatory locusts? You know, using those intercity mass transit systems that residents around here always vote against because they’re afraid “those people” will use them to commute from downtown Atlanta into the sticks to rob, rape, and pillage?

Snort. I’m sorry, even in the heart of “white flight” Georgia, that’s never been an issue. No, the “bad guys” will stay local… except, now they know they have to deal with people openly carrying.

But, let’s ask the open carry advocates what they think:

 

“The first rule of not being a victim is not looking like a victim. This is one of basic laws of nature and one that most of us learn in grade school. The best way to avoid a fight is to look like you can win one.“

 

OOOOoooooohh. I think we’re getting to the heart of the matter here. The real reason people choose to open carry, and not the excuses they hide behind that I’ve laid out here.

It’s not because that without it, the 2^nd Amendment would vanish.

It’s not because they’ve been trained on how to do it safely (because they haven’t).

It’s not because of any practical necessity. It’s not because it has any practical advantages over concealed carry other than it’s “easier”.

And the only “educating” of the public that they’re doing is showing them that they’re ready to blast the “bad guys” with overwhelming force and no mercy…

While they’re at a Proud Boys rally where the “bad guys” are anyone who disagrees with you.

No, Open Carry Guy, it’s all really because…

You want to look like a badass. You want everyone around to know that you’ve got the biggest dick, and those “bad guys” better watch out; we’re not taking any shit any longer from them damn Antifas and BLMs and drug dealers and Jews and Ragheads and uppity black folk…

Oh dear. I’ve said the quiet part out loud, haven’t I.