Open Carry Specific > OC Questions

Why Open Carry?

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redskin:
I might have missed it, but I was browsing the website for an ordered, succinct, and well thought-out answer to the question: Why Open Carry?

I don't need a reason, I do it everyday, but it seems like it would be a topic we would want to be easily accessible to the new, the curious, and the opposed.

Bronson:
Here's an article written by a gentleman that goes by Mainsail on OCDO.

The Open Carry Argument

My primary goal when I’m out and about, besides whatever I went out and about to do, is to go about peaceably and not be the victim of a violent crime. To that end I carry a firearm whenever I go out as well as follow all the other standard safety practices like maintaining situational awareness, staying out of high crime areas, and avoiding confrontation. I also have a larger overall goal of making it through my life without shooting anyone. Simply put, I don’t want to be responsible, legally or morally, for another’s death. Those two goals might appear at first blush to be mutually exclusive, and with concealed carry it would be a difficult set of goals to realize.

Carry of any firearm or other weapon for defensive purposes is a solemn responsibility. Those of us that do (openly or concealed) are mortified by the idea, constantly promoted by the pacifists, that our behavior is more reckless because we are armed. In other words, because we carry a handgun we take more risks than we would if we were unarmed. While it would be dishonest to claim we are all responsible gun owners, it is my belief that the vast majority of us are. Regardless of what or how you carry, you need to come to the realization that you are setting yourself up to lose. Whenever you are placed in a defensive situation, you will always lose; it’s only the degree of loss that’s negotiable. Ayoob hits on this in his book, In the Gravest Extreme. He suggests tossing the robber a small wad of cash and moving off, even if you could prevail with a weapon. There’s a very good reason for this. Regardless of how skilled you are at drawing your weapon, you are going to lose. It may be only a minor loss, like being very shaken up and not sleeping well for a few days, or it may be a major loss, like becoming fertilizer, or (most likely) it may be somewhere in-between, but you always lose. Your life will not be the same even if you prevail.

Carrying a concealed firearm presents to a criminal that I am unarmed. Every study I’ve ever read, not most but every study, says that criminals will avoid an armed person or home when selecting a victim. That only makes sense, right? Robbers, rapists, or carjackers might be dumb and opportunistic, but they have the same instinctual sense of self preservation we all have. Hyenas don’t attack lions to steal the gazelle the lions have just killed. It’s all about risk management; are the potential gains (a tasty gazelle dinner) worth the risks (pain and damage the lion’s teeth will cause), and does the hyena really need to test the lion to figure out the answer? No, the hyena can see the lion’s teeth and knows to stay well clear.

Deterrent Value:
When I’m carrying concealed I feel like my ‘teeth’ are hidden, and thus of no real deterrent value. If I appear unarmed then I am unarmed in the eyes of the robber, I appear as easy a target as almost anyone else out on the street. My probability of being a victim of a crime, violent or otherwise, is completely unchanged by the fact that I have hidden beneath my shirt the means to defend myself. My goal, however, is not to be a victim in the first place, remember? I don’t want to be a victim that fought back successfully and triumphed; I prefer to not be victimized at all. I recognize that there are some people who (think they) want to be victimized so they can whip out their concealed firearm and ‘surprise’ the mugger; that is, in my opinion, foolish immaturity. Concealed carry is good; it throws a wrench in the works for criminals who might see the teeming masses as a smorgasbord of financial gain. This deterrent effect is, nonetheless, indirect and often nil. At some point the thug will weigh the risks vs. the gains; is his current desperation for money/drugs/booze/gold grille greater than the gamble that one of those people might be carrying a gun? If he decides to play the odds, which helped along with surprise tip the scale in his favor, he will attack. Will his attack allow enough time for me to draw my concealed firearm to affect a defense? Maybe, but then again, maybe not.

Remember, I don’t want to be a victim and I don’t want to shoot anyone. So how do I realize both goals; or how do I make them inclusive? I can do that through open carry. By making it clear and obvious that I am armed, that I have teeth, I tip the risk scale to the point that the criminal’s gains are far outweighed by the risk. There is no ambiguity when the thug is doing his risk assessment, there’s something right there in plain sight that can quickly and painfully change or terminate his life. You may not think his life has much value, but as I mentioned before, he has the same sense of self preservation as any other living creature and to him it’s every bit as valuable as yours is to you. It would be foolish to ignore this indisputable fact when you develop your overall tactical strategy.

The Five Stages of Violent Crime
I am a firm believer in this defense theology and urge anyone who carries a firearm for protection (and even those who do not) to follow the link and read it carefully. Please, for your and your family’s sake, read that. Drill down into the hyperlinks for better explanations; absorb as much information as you can. A violent crime does not begin at the point where one person with ill intent draws a weapon or attacks another.

The Five Stages of Violent Crime:
Crime and violence are processes that take time to develop. The attack is not the first step, the preliminary triangle must be built. There are five distinct stages that are easily identified:
1) Intent
2) Interview
3) Positioning
4) Attack
5) Reaction
I do not believe the act begins after the BG has made his intentions known by drawing on you (attack); it began when he formed the intent. Well, there’s not a lot I can do personally to stop another’s intent, so I need to look a little farther along in the sequence and try to derail that train before it gets to the attack. For the sake of argument, let’s remove weapons from the equation for just a moment. A 5’2” unarmed attacker isn’t going to choose a 6’6” victim over a 5’1” victim, right? He’s going to attack the easier target. Now let’s come back to the reality of violent crime and add back the weapons. Concealed carry presumes it is better to wait until the opponent has drawn his knife or gun and then try to ‘fix’ the situation. It’s seems a bit foolish to promote the idea that it’s better to attempt to stop a violent crime in the fourth stage when you could instead prevent it in the second. A concealed weapon cannot deter an attack at the ‘interview’ stage; it’s completely ineffectual in that role. Open carry is the only method that provides a direct deterrent. Let’s say the bad-guy missed the openly carried pistol and holster during the interview stage, and has proceeded to the ‘positioning’ stage. Chances are pretty good he’ll see it at some point then, right? Then, let’s say the planets have all aligned just so and he, for whatever reason, has begun his attack despite your openly carried sidearm. At this point, the OCer is on level footing with the CCer, the attack has begun. Who has the advantage? Well, I’m going to say that with all things being equal (skill level and equipment) the OCer has a speed of draw advantage over the CCer.

First One To Be Shot:
There are some who criticize open carry and claim it will make you more of a target or ‘the first one shot’ when a robber walks into the 7-11, despite the absolute lack of credible evidence that this has ever happened. If the robber walks in and sees that you’re armed, his whole plan has encountered an unexpected variable. In bank robberies where he might expect to see an armed guard he will have already factored that possibility into his plan, but only for the armed guard, not for open or concealed carry citizens. No robber robs a bank without at least a rudimentary plan. Nevertheless, being present for a bank robbery is an extremely remote possibility for most of us regardless of our preferred method of handgun carry, so let’s go back in the 7-11. If the robber sees someone is armed he is forced to either significantly alter the plan or abort it outright. Robbing is an inherently apprehensive occupation, and one that doesn’t respond well to instant modifications. He is not prepared to commit murder when he only planned for larceny. He knows that a petty robbery will not garner the intense police manhunt a murder would. He doesn’t know if you’re an armed citizen or a police officer and isn’t going to take the time to figure it out. Either way, if someone in the 7-11 is unexpectedly armed, how many others might be similarly adorned and where might they be? Does this unexpectedly armed individual have a partner who is likewise armed nearby, someone who is watching right now? Self preservation compels him to abort the plan for one that is less risky. So we see that the logic matches the history; open carriers are not the first ones shot because it doesn’t make sense in any common street crime scenario that they would be. If your personal self protection plan emphasizes “Hollywood” style crimes over the more realistic street mugging, it might be best to stay home.

Surprise:
Probably the most common condemnation of open carry comes from the armchair tacticians who believe it’s better to have the element of surprise in a criminal encounter. Although this was touched on in the previous paragraph about deterrence, I’ll expand on it specifically here because there are some important truths you need to consider before you lean too heavily on this false support. Surprise as a defensive tactic is often based on unrealistic or ill-thought out scenarios, and seems to exist only in the minds of concealed carry firearms proponents. The circumstance where several street toughs surround and taunt you for a while before robbing you, like in some Charles Bronson movie, is not realistic; the mugger wants to get in and out as fast as possible. In most cases you will have only seconds to realize what’s happening, make a decision, and react. Imagine you’re walking along the sidewalk when two gangsta looking teenagers suddenly appear at the corner coming in the opposite direction. You have only seconds to react if their intent was to victimize you. Do you draw your concealed firearm now or wait until there’s an actual visible threat? If they are just on their way to church and you pull a gun on them, you are the criminal and you will likely forever lose your firearms rights for such a foolish action. If you don’t draw and they pull a knife or pistol when they’re just a couple steps away, your only options are draw (if you think you can) or comply. Imagine staring at the shiny blade of a knife being held by a very nervous and violent mugger, three inches from your or your wife’s throat and having to decide whether or not you have time to draw from concealment. The element of surprise may not do you any good; in fact the only surprising thing that might happen is that your concealed carry pistol gets taken along with your wallet. The thug will later get a good chuckle with his buddies about how you brought a gun to a knife fight. The simple truth is that while surprise is a monumentally superior tactical maneuver, it is exclusively an offensive action, not a defensive one. What many internet commandos call ‘defensive surprise’ is nothing more than damage control, a last ditch effort to fight your way back out of a dangerous situation. I am not aware of any army that teaches using surprise as a defense against attack. No squad of soldiers goes on patrol with their weapons hidden so that they can ‘surprise’ the enemy should they walk into an ambush.

It Will Get Stolen:
Another common criticism of open carry is that the firearm itself will be the target of theft, prompting a criminal to attack simply to get the gun from you. Like the previous example of being the first one shot in a robbery, above, this is despite the fact that there is no credible evidence it happens. It also blindly ignores the more obvious fact that anything you possess can make you the target of a crime, be it a car, a watch, or even a female companion (girlfriend, wife, or daughter). Crooks commonly steal for only one of two reasons; to get something you have that they want, or to get something that you have so they can sell it and buy something they want. I don’t claim it could never happen; just that it’s so remote a possibility that it doesn’t warrant drastic alterations to our self defense strategies. If you believe otherwise, leave your wife, children, watch, sunglasses, jewelry, and cell phone at home, hop into your Pinto wagon, and head out to do your thing. Very often, someone critical of open carry will cite some example of a uniformed police officer who was targeted by a violent criminal. They assume the officer was targeted solely to steal his firearm but there is never any real proof of this. What is more likely is that the officer was targeted merely for being a police officer and the gun was stolen as a byproduct of the attack. However, let’s suppose, for argument, that a police officer really was attacked just to get his firearm. What actions did the police department take to prevent it from reoccurring? Did they demand that their officers carry concealed? No, of course not. You should, like the police, prioritize your defense strategy for the most likely threat first, and the least likely last.

It Scares People:
One other statement against open carry I hear is that it damages public perception of firearms owners, or that by carrying openly we are not being good ambassadors to the public. While there are some people who have a genuine fear of firearms, due either to some horrible past experience or anti-gun indoctrination, the majority of people are either indifferent to them or quite fascinated by them. I’ve never kept track of the dozens of fellow citizens I’ve encountered who have marveled at the idea of open carry, but I do know exactly how many have expressed displeasure at it; one. People are scared of many things for many reasons; however, pretending those things do not exist only perpetuates the fear. Someone who is disturbed by open carry is going to be every bit as disturbed by concealed carry. The only effective way to overcome a fear is to come to the intellectual realization that the phobia is based on emotion and not on fact. By being a firsthand witness that a firearm was carried responsibly and peaceably, and wasn’t being carried in the commission of a crime, one who was apprehensive about firearms discovers their fear is not fact based, but emotional. Thus, open carry can be a very effectual way of helping to overcome the emotionally based fear of the firearm. After all, you’d be much more likely to believe in ghosts if you saw one rather than if you listened to a ghost story around a campfire. In other words, we give significantly more credibility to the things we experience than we do to the things we hear. The bottom line is that this argument is made by people who don’t, cant, or haven’t carried openly; those of us who do so on a regular basis have an entirely different experience.

I’m Not Comfortable Carrying Openly:
This is really the only reasonable argument against open carry for an individual. We all have a comfort zone for any aspect of our lives and we prefer to stay within that comfort zone. We all agree that it’s better to be armed and never need the firearm than it is to need it and not have it. There is a point where concealing your firearm becomes so problematic, due to conditions like temperature or comfort, that some choose to either leave it behind or carry in such a way that it would be difficult or impossible to draw it quickly. If it takes me five or six seconds to draw my firearm from deep concealment and I had sufficient time before hand to actually do so, I would prefer to use that five or six seconds to avoid the entire encounter. I’m glad we have concealed carry laws in most of the states; it empowers and protects not only us but the general public through the offset deterrent effect. Some of us, however, choose the more direct deterrent effect of open carry.

Conclusion
No, open carry is not the be-all-end-all of self defense any more than concealed carry is. The purpose of this essay is not to convince you to carry a firearm openly, but to merely point out the reasoning I used to determine that it is often the best option for me. If you think otherwise, please feel free to write an essay of your own outlining the reasoning you used. I would suggest that you avoid the intellectual mistake of emphasizing rare or unlikely defense scenarios that many of us will never experience. I believe one should prioritize for the most likely threat, not the least likely threat. I don’t put Hollywood style bank robberies high on my threat list because I rarely go into a bank and those types of robberies are very rare themselves. I live in the most crime riddled city in the northwest; the most likely threat here is some young male with a knife or gun trying to carjack me or mug me on the street, in the park, or in a parking lot. With this knowledge I build my personal self protection plan based on that manner of attack. This may not suit you, especially if you live in Hollywood.

Bronson:
Here's one I posted on OCDO when somebody else asked this question:

I carry both ways and it's mostly dependent on what I'm wearing.  My jackets all hang lower than my firearm so when the coat is on I'm CC but if it comes off I'm usually OC.  In weather that doesn't require a jacket I primarily OC.

I have several different reasons.

Sorry for the length of this.

Tactical:  The research that I've read (http://www.nraila.org/issues/articles/read.aspx?id=117) says that a large majority of felons told the researchers that one of their greatest fears when committing a crime against another person was that the victim was armed.  They also told researchers that they would go for the soft target over the hard target even if the hard target would garner them a bigger take.  They would rather rob 30 little old ladies for $10 each than one muscle bound cage fighter for $300.

The OC of a firearm places the wearer squarely in the "hard target" category making them a less desirable target.

Many people say that they prefer CC because they want the "element of surprise", this just doesn't make sense to me.  Surprise is a great tactic for an offensive maneuver like an ambush but it is a lousy tactic for defending against one.  The very fact that you need to draw your weapon means that you are already smack-dab in the middle of a life and death situation....how does surprise help you at that point?  According to the NRA in the VAST majority of self-defense uses of a firearm the mere presence of the gun was enough to deter the attacker.  Logic tells me that the sooner the presence of the gun is known the sooner the attacker chooses to find another target.

This brings me to the OODA loop.  In any interaction (this is very simplified) we go through a series of steps these are Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act.  We first observe and take in all the information around us, we then orient to that information and run it through the filters of our experience, morals, ethics, desires, etc., we then decide what to do and then we do it.

When a criminal attacks you he is already four steps ahead of you.  He is in the Act phase of his OODA loop.  He has already observed you and found you to be a desirable target.  You on the other hand are on the first stage of your OODA loop as you observe the attack unfolding (hopefully).  CC of a firearm does absolutely nothing to affect the attackers OODA loop until you can rally your self to action....at least four steps behind your attacker.  OC of a firearm however provides the attacker with information during the initial Observe phase of his loop and that information is that you are most definitely a hard target.  It is my contention that CC of a firearm does NOTHING to prevent the attack from ever happening while the deterrent effect of OC convinces the majority of criminals to look elsewhere.

Now, onto the idea that if a criminal sees the openly carried firearm that they will choose you as a target and make their attack plans in order to steal your gun.  If I put a security system in my house with the window decals that say "protected by XYZ alarm systems" could a criminal interested in breaking into my house go on the internet and learn all about XYZ alarm systems and learn how to disarm them?  Sure.  Could that criminal get a job with XYZ alarm systems and then learn exactly what system I have so he could disarm it and rob me?  Sure he could.  But the chances are much higher that he will go down the street to find an easier target that doesn't have an alarm system.

Are there people who may target you for your gun?  Yes there are, but this is a numbers game and I feel the OC of a pistol will offer a deterrent to greater number of people than it will entice.

And due to the way Michigan law is written by OCing AND having a CPL I can legally carry in more places.  I can open carry in most of the PFZs where a concealed carrier must disarm.

Technical:  Others have mentioned they can draw faster from OC and I agree.  I also agree that I can carry a larger firearm


I’ve recently come to a realization about the selection process for a carry firearm.  When I talk to people who primarily conceal carry the majority of them are choosing their firearm based on how easy it is to conceal, not on how well they can shoot with it.  They are preparing for a terrible situation by choosing a firearm that places them at a distinct disadvantage.  They are looking for light, slim, guns that are typically short barreled and often small caliber.  I’m of the belief that one should carry the largest caliber firearm that they can shoot the best.  For me and most people I’ve been to the range with these firearms are longer and heavier than most people would be able to easily conceal.  Of my own available choices the two that I shoot the best are a 5” all steel 1911 and a 4” stainless steel .357 magnum revolver.  Neither of these firearms lends themselves to easy concealment but I can shoot them more accurately and faster than any other firearm I own, and to quote Clint Smith:

"I never met a man that had been in a gunfight and wished that he had a smaller gun. Ever."


Another important aspect of open carry is that I can easily draw one handed.  I don't have to fumble with a cover garment with my off hand.  This is important for me because being able to draw one handed frees up my other hand for fending off a physical attack.  If your chosen style of carry doesn’t allow you to access, draw and present the firearm in two seconds or less, one handed and from a variety of positions, you seriously need to reevaluate how you are carrying.

Social:   CC of a firearm also does nothing to show the antis and the neutrals that law abiding citizens with firearms are not to be feared.  They need to see us WITH our firearms, going about our business with our families and doing normal every day things, with guns on our sides.  Fear is bred from unfamiliarity and the only way to make people not fear guns is for them to become familiar with them and the only way for them to become familiar with them is to actually SEE them.

Political:  This one will be short.  A right not used is a right given away.  I don't say it's lost because if we freely choose to not use the rights guaranteed to us by the U.S. and State constitutions then we freely give those rights away.  They were not lost and nobody took them from us.  We rolled over and meekly handed them over.

Bronson

emt805:
 I saw this on another site and it fits well to my own thoughts just better said.

"I open carry for the following reasons:

1. I would rather deter a crime than defend against a crime. Odds are that if a criminal is sizing me up as a target, and they see the gun, they will simply go down the street one block, or wait a couple minutes for me to leave. Why would a criminal choose to attack a target that is visibly armed when there are hundreds of other targets readily available that don't appear to be armed? The criminal has as goals to obtain what they desire with the least amount of hassle/problems, to not get caught, and to not get shot. Attacking a visibly armed citizen is counterproductive to all three goals.

2. Open carry offers faster draw time then having to go through or around the concealing garment to get to the gun.

3. I like to present to the public the image that it is perfectly acceptable and normal for an American to engage in normal activities during normal day to day life and have the means available to them of self protection. The public is never going to get over their negative feelings towards guns if all they ever see are the negative images presented by the media and the Brady Bunch. The sentiments of the "pro-gun" crowd that guns are better concealed only fosters the idea that guns are bad and should be hidden away - in my humble opinion.

4. I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against ALL enemies, foreign and DOMESTIC. By openly carrying my firearm I fulfill that oath in a small way every day by taking an action that supports the Second Amendment - the part of the Constitution that is under attack more than any other part. "

wardog6t:
+1 and also Because its my right!

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