Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Concealed Carry vs Open Carry

Lately I have started carrying my pistol again and I've got a few comments to make.

WHY do I have to conceal it? As John Wayne said in the movie "Big Jake" about their ostentatious show of force and guns, "We might just be saving some poor bastards life by letting him know he can't have it."

The inside the waistband pistol holsters are not comfortable. I don't have much of a belly, but what I do have they rub up against and irritate me. If I move the gun around to the back then it's uncomfortable when I get back in the truck and sit down so I have to take it off.

In the Texas heat of summer, a shoulder holster is not feasible if I want to wear a t-shirt. And a boot holster is just silly. "Excuse me, Mr. Thug, while I bend down hear and lift up my pants leg and fish around inside these Redwings for a moment."

 I would like to be able to just take a pistol in a holster on a belt and strap it around my waist when I go into town, worn outside my clothes and my pants and on full display. I'm no more likely to use it illegally that way than I am if it's hidden but it would be a lot more comfortable.

But it might alarm people. Scary hillbilly wearing a gun on his hip has connotations of the Wild West to some folks. Well, I'm here to tell you that the Wild West was safer. We have just as many bandits and "Wild Indians" today as they did back then. Only now our bandits aren't waiting out in the desert to rob Wells Fargo stagecoaches, they're at the 7-11 waiting to rob YOU. And the Wild Indians aren't really Indians. They're just feral humans who don't recognize the rule of law but instead only recognize opportunity, threat, and the prospect of violence. Not violence against you ... they relish that ... but violence that might be put against them. The only thing keeping them from dragging women out of their cars and raping them, or brutally attacking men on the street is the thought of a cop showing up and stopping them, or one of their victims drawing a gun.

So let's save those feral humans the trouble of figuring out who might or might not have a gun. Put it out for display right on the hip. Let them know that the entire area within range of you is a "criminal free zone".

And I wouldn't have to suffer the indignity of a concealed pistol pinching my belly fat.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Lol. I grew up in Alaska and thought for a long time that if you didn't have a concealed carry permit it meant you had to carry your gun in the open so everyone could see what you were doing with it. I guess I assumed that the permit meant you could be trusted with a hidden weapon. Bad guts on tv were the people who hid guns in their waistband or boots.

Gorges Smythe said...

Some authorities argue that wearing guns on the outside might cause some folks to shoot first, losing you the chance to respond. The same folks say that carrying concealed always makes the criminal wonder who is carrying and who isn't, thus helping to protect even those who aren't carrying. While there's some logic to both arguments, I don't feel that it's anything more than speculation. I think we should be able to carry however we chose.