Open Carry

Going to try to say this without making a latte look flat and lifeless.

The goal of open carry seems to have two main obstacles.  Direct opposition from the same people who hate that we can own guns at all.  Overcoming the inertia of the people who don't really care and will do nothing pro or con.

I am not privy to the plans at places like Florida Carry as to how they intend to get open carry in Florida; but I am pretty sure it is not Guy in a grubby T-shirt with an SKS --> ??? --> Victory!

The Florida Carry open carry fishing events are swell.  But they're really innocuous.  Nobody notices, which is good in a way, but it really doesn't raise awareness if it's so far into the background that its invisible.

The guys in Texas surely got noticed!  It appears that they did so in the worst way possible without actually breaking any laws.

Getting noticed seems to make the usual suspects from the hate us forever crowd to rally around the flag and do what they're going to do anyways.  Advocate for more restrictions, if not from government; from private parties.

Hoplophobes gotta phobe I guess.

I don't think there's a single national restaurant chain that likes gun owners.  They definitely dislike it when we get our boycott on.

I think that on a corporate level they are aching for something like this to come down so that we cannot claim the moral high-ground about their banning our presence.  Now if we boycott them for asking us to not be dicks we ARE the dicks.  The Texas OC people handed the hoplophobes the photo-op they needed to press their case and take away our footing to oppose them.

I think we need to really REALLY stress that no laws were broken and absolutely nobody got hurt, even if some were uncomfortable being around guns.  The present emphasis on "y'all done fucked us," is fodder for the antis; haven't they been given enough?

The thing is, eventually the objections of those who are uncomfortable around guns will have to not matter and we will have to assert our right to be armed peaceably.  Looked at one way, they cannot be acclimatized to seeing guns everywhere until they actually see guns everywhere.

Gun rights are civil rights and we should not shy away from comparisons to other civil rights groups.  There are a lot of parallels to gay rights and gun rights.  The big mistake that the LGBT people made wasn't in getting in people's faces and confronting them but rather not realizing they'd won and declaring victory.

There.  I hope I presented it civilly and rationally this time (because I sure as hell didn't succeed the previous FOUR times including two that I deleted).