March of the Morons in Missouri; Open Carry Edition

A St. Louis open carry/firearm education walk is scheduled to take place in downtown St. Louis on Saturday afternoon.

Participants are asked to openly carry slung long guns and holstered pistols in an effort to “raise awareness of the right to keep and bear arms under the Federal and Missouri State Constitutions.”

Open carry was passed in the last legislative session over the governor's veto. I predict that, based on events such as these, the state will go back to the way that it was (cities can ban open carry) by the time the next session ends.

It should be evident to all adults that with rights come responsibilities. With rights comes the duty to exercise those rights in an adult manner. For example, you have the right to peaceably assemble. You have the right to petition for redress of grievances.
What you're not going to be able to do is hold a loud protest march outside of the mayor's house at three in the morning. The First Amendment is subject to reasonable restrictions on time, manner and place. Local governments try, from time to time, to enact stupid-ass restrictions that get struck down.

Concealed carry of defensive weapons has a societal purpose. The bad guys learn, quite quickly, that they can't count on a quick assessment of the physical size, gender and age of a prospective victim as a good tool to whether or not they can get away with a little bit of street crime. That aged woman walking with the aid of a cane might have a 9mm handy; a bit of strong-arm robbery could end very badly for the criminal. Concealed carry works something like vaccinations, in that a number of people with concealed weapons end up conferring protection on many more people.

None of that is in play with open carry. Open carry allows a criminal to take into account the potential victim's armed status and, if an attack is chosen, factor that into the attack plan.

Second, there is no reason, to my mind, why any rational human being needs to stroll down the street with a shotgun or a rifle. Those weapons have a reach that greatly exceeds the zone of self-defense that any court will recognize. You are not going to shoot people at fifty or three hundred yards (and if you do, you're going to prison for a very long time).

Third, no civilized person willingly engages in behavior that frightens people and horses. Hell, I have a CCW permit* and I am going to give a wide berth to someone who is walking down the street with a slung rifle or shotgun, because I'm going to question their sanity. If a bunch of folks come into an eatery toting long guns, I'm leaving. When I lived in rural hunting country, deer hunters had the civility to leave their .30-30s in their trucks. They didn't bring them into the opening day breakfasts at the grange hall or the firehouse.

And finally, open carry endangers everything we've worked to accomplish in passing concealed carry legislation. The open carry loons are opening the door back up to restrictions on the right to carry. Once the legislative process is open to considering limitations, we run the risk of having more limits enacted than just anti-idiot legislation.

So please, open carry folks, stay the Hell out of urban areas and towns with your long guns and your open carried handguns. You are not helping.

Update: As GolfFoxtrotYankee alluded to, one might recall what happened when the Black Panthers took advantage of the open carry laws in the 1960s. The state legislature in California passed an act forbidding it in record time, an act that was almost immediately signed into law by Governor Ronald Reagan. Hell, the Gun Control Act of 1968 itself was pushed into law because the Panthers. So one might argue that when white folk want guns rights, they get gun rights. When black folk exercise their gun rights, those rights get taken away. But that's a point I made several years back.
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* Actually, several of them.