Open carry
Not recommended!
Lawyers argue over this issue endlessly, and they speculate all day about how a jury will react to this practice, what instructions the jury might receive from a judge, whether or not jury members will pay any attention to said instructions, ad nauseam.
All very interesting, but mostly irrelevant!
So, what is relevant?
By the time you get in front of a jury on a felony charge, you’ll likely be bankrupt, having spent triple figures just during “the process.” You’ll probably spend some time in jail awaiting trial. Your life will be mostly ruined, and your mental health will be in serious jeopardy!
Are you particularly anxious to go through all that just to “make a point?”
For those of us who go armed, continuous discrete concealment is a critical and necessary skill. Our gun(s) is always out of sight, out of conversation.
There is a motto among those of us in the security industry:
“Security discussed is security compromised”
We may go armed as routine practice, but we don’t talk about it!
Carrying guns “openly,” in plane sight, is of course appropriate while one is hunting or engaged in live-fire exercises on a shooting range. And, in some rural areas in some states, the practice is so common so as not to garner any particular notice on the part of most bystanders. But, “open carrying in public” in most places will invariably attract attention of police, who may interpret it as “disorderly conduct,” because the practice is “calculated to alarm” others present, causing a “disturbance,” etc. And, responding officers may look upon you, and the situation, as a credible threat to their safety!
Courts’ “interpretations” of this practice are all over the map, and often locality-dependent. In any event, you will almost always be “detained” and questioned. You may be arrested on the spot. You may be charged. Charges may be aggressively pursued, or casually dropped. You’ll likely spend a day, or two, in jail. You might be sued by bystanders for “intentional infliction of emotional distress.” You’ll have to retain the services of a lawyer (at your own expense), maybe those of a bail/bondsman.
Or, responding police may just briefly question you, and then cut you loose!
But either way, your name goes on a “List!”
Even in states where open carry is ostensibly “legal,” contrary local agendas are often in-place, and enforced.
The real question is:
Why are you doing this?
It’s difficult for me, and your lawyer, to imagine how open carrying in public will ever be in your best interests!
Do you really want to be “The Test Case?”
As a trainer, my interest is in providing advice to my students that is designed to promote their “best interests,” like insuring their continued good health, and keeping them away from needless “entanglements” with our legal system, minimizing damage when such entanglements are unavoidable.
So, “open carry” is not recommended. I know there are people who think they want to do it, for reasons that are apparently adequate for them, but for one, “martyrdom” does not interest me!
“The only real difference between suicide and martyrdom is the amount of press coverage.”
Palahniuk
/John
