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Why Conceal Weapons?
Despite not carrying a gun, I’m a 2nd Amendment extremist, which is to say I respect the US Constitution as written.
It says “the right to keep and bear Arms” — not the right to bear only “firearms,” nor only the right to “keep” arms in the home. The Constitution’s authors clearly meant the public carrying of weapons, as evidenced by plain language and history.
They meant it for every state. The Bill of Rights lists the common rights of all Americans; the most basic standards of political liberty. State governments are free to qualify and specify beyond those essential freedoms but have no authority to contradict them. Thus, for example, banning public carry of long knives (in Texas, of all places) is blatantly unconstitutional.
But beyond questions of constitutionality are considerations of prudence. Among them: Why should handgun carriers conceal their weapons?
The founders didn’t. Do modern laws for concealed carry permits prevent situations which were evident before the 20th century? Are there both advantages and disadvantages to carrying openly?
Is the common requirement to conceal weapons a burden or just good sense?
Published in Guns
Just to weigh in where many others have already covered the major points.
As a constitutional matter I think you are about right. But concealed carry laws have inverted our perspective. Open carry used to be the standard while permits were issued for concealed to–sort of–excuse one from legal or customary requirements to declare yourself armed. Gun Control advocates then pressed to restrict carry rights and the non-permit custom of open carry was the first to go.
As for the pros and cons:
Open carry opens up (so to speak) your arsenal. You don’t have to be as concerned with size, zippers, or velcro, hammers snagging on clothing. These things can add up to real handicaps for some people to the point where Open Carry may be the safer option. However, it can also be needlessly intimidating & even make one a target. After all, sometimes it’s just broadcasting a $1200 waist accessory.
Concealed carry can avoid the downsides for the average adult. If its concealed, you’re not a target. You don’t have to be concerned with decorum in whichever public space you find yourself. And with the right holster, it’s more safe. Conversely, your options will be more limited. Especially if you are a smaller person or have a dress code for your work.
However, the biggest drawback for concealed is training. It requires much more work–you are no longer just practicing with a firearm, you are training with your holster, your clothing/bag–no matter what anyone tells you, drawing a concealed weapon will never compare to the reaction time of holster right at your fingertips on the outside of your thigh.
Concealed Carry is great. So is being practiced and training with your weapon. I encourage anyone serious enough to put in that effort to get permitted and carry concealed.
But I would like to see more open carry. Not just to chip away at the taboos. Gun culture allows those who may not be physically or financially capable to have more self-reliance. Open Carry can allow people that self-sufficiency, safely, at less time and expense –which makes it that much more egalitarian.
There is a problem with open carry nobody here has mentioned.
Open Carry requires The Public to trust the person who is carrying. When someone casually shows they have a gun, in a holster, the people seeing them must trust the person carrying. This works great in small towns where everybody knows everybody. Ask someone about the person carrying and you may get responses like “Oh, he’s harmless” or “Yeah, he’s a good guy.” Ask the same question in a city, and people go “I don’t know, I’m just keeping an eye on him.” Police officers open carry. Restaurant owners can open carry. Homeowners can open carry. People who do not have trust, “the new dude in town,” or any random person in a packed city, can not reasonably open carry.
The main reason open carry passed in Texas was to protect people who were concealing and accidentally revealed their guns, say in a supermarket. Here in Dallas, open carriers are seen differently, even while a lot of people are armed.
An example of trust: In crowded, panicked environments, such as Dallas right after the Black Lives Matter cop killing, every person openly carrying a firearm had to be cleared by police as not the suspect. The police had no reason to trust them.
Concealed Carry requires no public trust. Nobody knows. Nobody needs to know. Nobody needs to think “She has a gun.” People just live their lives and everybody gets along.
In the preceding scene, the gun was in a belt holster, but he was wearing a sportsjacket. Does that count as carrying “open” or is it considered “concealed”?
If people can’t see it, it’s concealed. He’s open carrying since someone can see it, but it’s concealed if he just does a single button.
I cut my firewood with a circular saw.
(For firewood I use discarded pallets from a nearby industrial park.)
Some people get squeamish when they see an openly displayed weapon – even on police!
I carry concealed because:
I don’t want some idiot coming up to me, punching me in the chest, and saying, “You gonna shoot me?”
I don’t want some weeny liberal saying I drew my weapon and waved it around when I didn’t.
I don’t want some punk sneaking up and trying to take it away from me.
Silly aside:
Feminists think all men are rapists. In that case, are we not carrying a concealed weapon simply by wearing pants? Just a thought . . .
A friend of mine is a pastor and shared that he and his congregation had an unknown guy attend service with a gun on his hip one Sunday. It led to some lively discussion in the community over the next week.
I’ve long imagined the kind of television commercial we might see in a more firearm-enlightened time. The first guy takes his friend aside and says, in a discreet voice, “Bob, I hate to tell you buddy, but, you’re printing.” Bob looks embarrassed, until his friend shows him a nice little pancake holster that conceals well even under lightweight summer wear.
Better yet, make it two women….
It typically doesn’t at all.
I can think of two reasons. One is that it does make some people nervous to carry weapons openly. Many used to carry their weapons concealed. Even in the 19th century most townspeople in the West who carried weapons would have put them in their coat pockets.
I live in a state (Louisiana) where open carry is legal, but few do so. I prefer concealed carry myself because it doesn’t make people nervous. Also, if I’m carrying a gun openly and a shooter sees that then I become the first target. Always take an armed person first. If I’m concealed then a shooter isn’t any more likely to target me than the next guy.
Did I sound that stupid?
We have at least three in our congregation who carry at Sunday services. Including, I think, the pastor.
I would pose that normative is as normative does, minus the generation in the middle. That is to say, if people suddenly started carrying in sufficient numbers, many adults would freak out but their children would be fine with it by the time they gained adulthood.
Any change is stressful to the generation making that change.
This appears to have varied by where you lived. The accounts of the OK Corral indicate that most people living in Tombstone carried their weapons in their pockets, but most who lived outside the city -ranchers and farmers -carried openly. I’ve long wondered how far back that went.
Also, on the founding generation carrying openly -in the founding generation, I think wearing a sword outside of ceremonial and military situations was generally frowned upon -dueling culture in England had certainly reached that point by the mid 1700s. And most Americans wouldn’t have carried pistols. Muskets were carried openly just by necessity, but I wonder how many people just carried them, relative to keeping them at home most of the time. I think I remember that pistols only really became common after the invention of the percussion cap in 1820.
Knowledgeable friends and family are a godsend, to be sure. Spirited competition is always fun, and bragging rights can change hands with each round. (Mr.C says he does his best to not make me mad, as I’m a better shot, at least with a rifle.) On your last sentence—amen, brother!
No, that wasn’t for YOUR benefit, but for any new members who have had a ‘red pill’ moment, turned away from the dark side, and discovered Ricochet for themselves. They’re finding how responsible and level-headed adult people act. Also, this group is very entertaining, isn’t it?
I’m surprised that no one has mentioned it yet (not that I spotted anyway) but this is not so. The Bill of Rights limited only the federal government. When enacted, it did not apply to the states at all. Not until the Fourteenth Amendment were these limitations on government actions extended to state governments, and by that time (1868) all of the Founders were long dead.
Sorry to be dense, but this comment flew right over my head.
The LadyBrains have an interesting discussion of this in Episode 103 of their podcast.
I seem to recall that @vicrylcontessa tackled the subject of concealed carry for women a while back.
Hey, I found two posts she did in 2016
http://ricochet.com/333091/archives/may-4-firearms-group-writing-concealed-carry-a-womans-perspective/
http://ricochet.com/333303/archives/concealed-carry-womans-perspective-picture-edition/
(though the pictures no longer seem to appear).,
And even then the 14th only allowed the court to selectively bring amendments and protections to the states. The 14th didn’t mean states needed to protect free speech until the Supremes said so.
Does this imply that Americans were originally united only by government and not by common culture (including expectations of liberty)? Imagine the Bill of Rights being practiced by one state and rejected by another. Can they be called one people?
No.
But as an example, look at the actual text of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” We had states with established churches until after the Civil War, because the point of the Constitution was to set the powers of the federal government. States were given the right to set their own constitutions with different rules because as the Tenth Amendment says, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
As noted above, the provisions of the Bill of Rights were not thought to apply to state law until the concept of incorporation through the Fourteenth Amendment. This is why states could have established churches and speech restrictions, but most have state constitutions that include some version of their own bill of rights.
Indeed. In fact, the Supreme Court did not rule that the Second Amendment applied to the states until McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010). Heller did not address the issue because it arose in the District of Columbia and, therefore, was a matter of federal law.
Does that mean the 2nd Amendment can be abolished in states like New York and California? Can they ban gun ownership outright?
No.
They could have prior to 2010, but that horse has left the barn.
What makes the original conception odd is that the founders proceeded from beliefs in natural rights. The right of self-defense is a common right of all men, regardless of government, without which no other rights exist.
Limited to restraint of federal government, I suppose it makes sense as a short step from the Articles of Confederation. Basically… “let that other state become a local tyranny, for all I care!”
Not for the first time, I wonder if the this was really one nation before the Civil War.
That’s why we were known as “These United States” instead of “The United States.” We were a group of sovereign entities with a weak and extremely limited federal government, and that’s why people like Robert E Lee could believe things like “I am more loyal to Virginia than to the Union.”
It’s a concept of nationhood we have no context for. Ironically, the South was most often on the side of the federal government overruling state sovereignty with things like a Federal Fugitive Slave Law and demanding new territory be made slave states even if the locals didn’t want slavery (because that would preserve the balance in the Senate). And during the war itself, the Confederate government inserted itself more actively into the daily life of its citizens than the federal government had.