Guest Posted June 28, 2012 Posted June 28, 2012 Simple question, do you or have you openly carried a firearm in public? And have you ever been detained for openly carrying? I've done it in the past myself, but I find the hassle that I've received from ignorant cops to be a bit too much at times. Although there's nothing like standing up to a cop and schooling them. It feels pretty badass. Also, do you support or oppose open carry?
adrenaline Posted June 28, 2012 Posted June 28, 2012 NO! It feel like you may go crazy and shoot everyone.
GrimReaperCalls Posted June 28, 2012 Posted June 28, 2012 I've lived in Sweden my entire life and here carrying weapons in public is prohibited (called "Knivlagen" (the knife-act) and "Vapenlagen" (weapon-act)). The weapon-act as far as I'm aware only states that special permission is required for anyone to be allowed to carry a firearm in public. This is not something a "regular" citizen can acquire. The knife-act is a bit more unspecific. Other than knives and stab-/cut-weapons it also includes "other items befit for using as a weapon during a crime". Which means that just waving a screwdriver around in an unfit manner can get you into trouble. It's worth noting that the same law includes "The prohibition in the first paragraph does not apply if the object, under certain specific conditions, counts as part of the equipment for a specific service or particular assignment". Based on how I've been raised as well as personal experience, I'd have to say I'm against it. There are two major reasons for this: 1: I think any kind of dispute that's going to be solved with violence should only involve your bare knuckles. 2: Carrying a weapon makes it way easier for someone to cause some serious harm in case they should snap. That's just what I think though and I'm not going to blame anyone if they don't feel safe in public unless they're carrying a weapon .
Slammer64 Posted June 28, 2012 Posted June 28, 2012 Most countries don't have anything even remotely resembling the U.S. Constitution's 2nd Amendment, much less the U.S. tradition of the armed citizen (Switzerland is a special exception). In the U.S. it's pretty much a proven fact now, that an armed citizenry causes the crime rate to decrease, not increase. Most of the time, I think, it's because of the hoops you have to go through to get a carry concealed/open carry license, criminals won't do that.
Ashal Posted June 28, 2012 Posted June 28, 2012 I once went to an open carry party at a Souplantation restaurant with a leg holster, you ate free if you were open carrying. There was a lot of weird people there. I do normally conceal carry though.
Kashked Posted June 28, 2012 Posted June 28, 2012 I've lived in Sweden my entire life and here carrying weapons in public is prohibited (called "Knivlagen" (the knife-act) and "Vapenlagen" (weapon-act)). The weapon-act as far as I'm aware only states that special permission is required for anyone to be allowed to carry a firearm in public. This is not something a "regular" citizen can acquire. The knife-act is a bit more unspecific. Other than knives and stab-/cut-weapons it also includes "other items befit for using as a weapon during a crime". Which means that just waving a screwdriver around in an unfit manner can get you into trouble. It's worth noting that the same law includes "The prohibition in the first paragraph does not apply if the object' date=' under certain specific conditions, counts as part of the equipment for a specific service or particular assignment". Based on how I've been raised as well as personal experience, I'd have to say I'm against it. There are two major reasons for this: 1: I think any kind of dispute that's going to be solved with violence should only involve your bare knuckles. 2: Carrying a weapon makes it way easier for someone to cause some serious harm in case they should snap. That's just what I think though and I'm not going to blame anyone if they don't feel safe in public unless they're carrying a weapon . [/quote'] Well, knivlagen does allow the carrying of knifes as long as you have a legitimate reason for carrying them though, such as you work in construction or whatever... I too live in Sweden, and I have carried arms in public many times. Although it should be added, I was always wearing a uniform at the time, so I don't think it counts.
Guest Posted June 28, 2012 Posted June 28, 2012 Most countries don't have anything even remotely resembling the U.S. Constitution's 2nd Amendment' date=' much less the U.S. tradition of the armed citizen (Switzerland is a special exception). [/quote'] Oh, forgot that most countries don't have that right. My bad. In the U.S. it's pretty much a proven fact now' date=' that an armed citizenry causes the crime rate to decrease, not increase. Most of the time, I think, it's because of the hoops you have to go through to get a carry concealed/open carry license, criminals won't do that. [/quote'] I totally agree. I think that if a criminal walked into a convenient store, unless he has a gun or has a lot of guts, if he sees someone in there with a gun, he'll leave the store running. And an armed civilian population would be able to adequately defend themselves which would make criminals more reluctant to commit crimes. Conceal carry is more dangerous to open carry, because the public does not know that you have a gun in the first place. And why would any criminal openly expose his firearm. It can give him away easily. Shame that California and some other states now don't realize this and have banned open carry instead.
thesapien Posted June 28, 2012 Posted June 28, 2012 I used to carry concealed, though I mostly stopped carrying at all because of the pain of just dealing with a heavy and bulky object on me all the time. I would carry a gun or sword or a brick all of the time if they weren't so difficult to deal with on hot summer days or going to the beach. Knives are pretty versatile and more useful and more portable. I'm an odd one who often sides with people who do carry, in arguments, however, I don't really believe in "rights" as absolutes and just do what I think is right in the current context and by what I think is moral.
gregathit Posted June 28, 2012 Posted June 28, 2012 Concealed carry does have its advantages as it too has a proven track record of lowering the crime rate (Texas has had concealed carry for quite some time). The poor criminals simply don't know if that little old lady that they want to mug is going to whip out a .357 and "make their day" I personally have done both. Normally however I don't carry. I do have a rather strange story in which open carrying both nearly got me killed and then saved my life. Me and four other friends were at a free public outdoor gun range and between us we had a rather large number of guns. Two of my friends left early but the rest of us had driven together and we shot for another half hour or so. We notice a group of four shady looking individuals who fired only a couple of shots but spent most of their time "looking" at others. We decided to split and rather than clean our guns right there we would do it at home so we could get out of there quickly. We loaded up but I insisted that each of us have one rifle and one pistol clip full when we left. As I guessed the four shady dudes immediately pulled stakes and followed us. I took a wandering route that clearly was going no where. After making numerous direction changes we decided that they were indeed going to try to jack us soon or maybe follow us home and do it there. Note: This is prior to cell phone days and we were out in the boonies so no help from the normal channels was available. I had the guy in the back seat load all the rifles (we still had our loaded pistols strapped to our legs already) and I slammed on my breaks and we piled out of my SUV and prepared to open fire (we had one AK, and two mini-14's). They hit their breaks and after a couple of seconds of surprise slammed their car into reverse and then did a sliding uturn bailing the hell out of there at high speed. We did the same in the opposite direction. I still am not sure how I feel about the hole incident and it was 6 months before I went back to that gun range (and only then in a large group). Sorry for the wall of text. I do feel strongly that citizens really should have the right to defend themselves. I hate to think what it would be like trying to face down someone with a gun and me without while trying to defend my family or friends. God Bless the USA!
thesapien Posted June 29, 2012 Posted June 29, 2012 Man, Gregathit, I keep coming back your encounter wondering WTF about those guys staking out armed people as someone to rob, and for your guns! That's either ballzy or stupid or both. Did you ever come to any good theories about what they were thinking? What were your guns worth altogether, a couple of grand? LOL, when they were watching you at the range, were you terrible shots? Last year there was a shoot out close to my house and someone left a gun in my backyard, but the cops' dog found it before I did.
gregathit Posted June 29, 2012 Posted June 29, 2012 Man' date=' Gregathit, I keep coming back your encounter wondering WTF about those guys staking out armed people as someone to rob, and for your guns! That's either ballzy or stupid or both. Did you ever come to any good theories about what they were thinking? What were your guns worth altogether, a couple of grand? LOL, when they were watching you at the range, were you terrible shots? Last year there was a shoot out close to my house and someone left a gun in my backyard, but the cops' dog found it before I did. [/quote'] Well, we had as I mentioned 2 mini-14's, and and AK-47. Besides that I had my shotgun and a ruger 22. Then we each had pistols (I had a glock 40mm and a Ruger P89 9mm and one of my buddies had a .357 DE). It would have been a nice little grab for someone. As to their thoughts....well I would have to put them on the stupid end of the criminal types. Perhaps they figured that we had shot off all our rounds (we were at the range for several hours) and wouldn't drive back with fully loaded clips in our guns..... As to terrible shots.... No. If anything that should have been what scared them away. Have you ever seen the damage you can do with an AK or mini-14 with a 30 round clip and someone firing deliberately with decent aim....? Freaking scary! And a Desert Eagle firing? Shit, even with the lowly .357 version there is a flame that is visible even during the day that is over a foot long when that pistol fires! Like I said these were likely potential Darwin award recipients...... Had they attempted any move at all hostile they would have had 90 bullets chew through their car in a matter of 5 seconds or less. I guess the potential good thing could be it may have scared them off from a life of crime maybe......
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