more on gun rights

[Bob Denman]

Flanker,
You and I must have gone to different schools together!
Police officers HAVE to carry... that does not guarantee skill
Case in point:
NYS switched from the K-Frame S&W .357 back in the mid-eighties. They went to the Glock 17...
A State Trooper buddy of mine was having a "gun-Day" at his private range. Allof the troopers in his barracks showed up with their new sidearms.
And so did we...
A B-27 Target was set up at 12 yards, and these troopers were blazing away at it with enthusiasm; but they weren't hitting much!
One Trooper laced the target from elbow to elbow with a magazine-full (It's a full-sized Silhouette), and proudly proclaimed that he was shooting "pretty good" that day..
My Missus stepped up with her Glock 19 (The compact one), and put 15 rounds in it: all K-5! you could cover all the shots with a closed fist...:shocked:
"YOu guys get paid to shoot; I LIKE to shoot", was her response to the gaped jaws and wide eyes that met her as she stepped back off the line.

 

[reverendg]

I take it your comments are based on not requiring a permit to openly carry in certain states. If that statement is not true, you haven't answered my question in the previous post.

Even if open carry required a permit, the act of doing it does not equate to an officer needing to stop you to "assure himself" that you are legal. Absent suspicion a crime is being committed, the officer is supposed to consider you to be a law abiding citizen. Rights aren't privileges, yet. When people treat them as such, and fear being "hassled" for exercising a right, then rights will cease to exist. I open carry often, and have never had to speak with a law officer about it. I imagine a neighbor or two likely has called on me walking my dog armed, but I can't even recall getting a police "drive-by" from it. I have had a few neighbors ask why the pistol, to which I reply "I felt like it, and it is my right".

 

[Bob Denman]

There's no doubt that it's a right; just exercise some responsibility along with it...
After all; The States still consicer it to be a right that is open to interpretation and modification... :shocked:
That stinks; but it is the truth!

 

[Dan McNally]

I disagree with your opinion on open carry, both stances do have good points.

My stance is not anti-open carry. Better open-carry than no carry, but of the two, I prefer concealed carry. My belief comes from years of experience, reading crime reports during my second career, and discussions on the subject at work. If I am practicing open carry and inadvertently come across a gun crime in progress (perhaps as I walk in to the 7-11 for a Bloomberg Special Big Gulp) I am more likely to be shot by a nervous tweaker with a gun who is robbing the place as I walk in, or, at a minimum, I lose my gun to him. If I am just some old man, looking nervous and disoriented, I am just another person to rob . . . and, if the opportunity arrives, I'll use my gun to defend myself. It comes out very fast and I only need him to look away from me for a second. The added advantage of concealed carry is the lack of hassle from police officers called by frightened people.

 

[reverendg]

There's no doubt that it's a right; just exercise some responsibility along with it...
After all; The States still consicer it to be a right that is open to interpretation and modification... :shocked:
That stinks; but it is the truth!

Weird, all this time I have been exercising my right without any hassles, while you think you are being responsible by hiding your beliefs. Me, with long hair and a beard! Of course, I am also showing people that it is legal to carry a firearm, you are trying to comfort them (falsely) that they live in a gun free zone. This whole "with rights come responsibilities" thing is really just a form of rationalization anyways. I have no responsibility to hide my gun to keep from alarming anyone. I have a right, they have a responsibility to understand that. It would be also proper to say that your responsibility is to keep the right alive by keeping it in the public eye. You think that people open carrying emboldens the gun control advocates. You are wrong. Watching pro-gun people cower and try and keep their rights out of the public eye emboldens them, they see it like cockroaches hiding from the light. When you give an inch and cater to them, they know you will give more. You have to stand for something. They do. They have no problem making demands. If your thoughts were right, then dismantling the NRA would probably be the best thing we could do for gun rights.

 

[cuznjohn]

wow

i never expected so many responses for this, i guess i am a trouble maker lol, i did notice in the vid's that not one gun was taken from the people just id's. so this only proved to me that the cop just wanted to brake some chops to make the people say it was not worth carrying the guns to a store. many years ago i used to hunt on a cousins property in GREEN COUNTY in upstate new york, right by windom sky resort, i always hunted with a S&W 44 MAG with a 6" barrel, we were shooting some skeet in the back yard one afternoon and a lady next door yelled at us. we were facing the wood and being wise guys we told her to be quiet and we were on pvt. property. next thing you know state troopers showed up and walked up on us. now there were 3 shot guns and me with the 44 on my side. the first thing the trooper did was tell every one to empty the shot guns and i had my arms folded on my chest he looked at me and took the shot guns. when he took the guys down to his car to run the gun numbers i went into the house and took the 44 off and walked down to them. long story short, he told us that even that we were on pvt. property we were still within 500 feet of another pvt. house and we were wrong. i offered to go say we were sorry to the lady we told to shut up and he said he would take care of it and we should have a nice trip home. we said we were there for one more day and he said no you are leaving today and i will be back later to see if you left. he handed back the shot guns and not once did he ever ask me for my permit or where my gun was. so i think if it's the right cop or trooper and if he woke up on the right side or wrong side of the bed that morning is going to depend on the out come of the situation is

 

[Bob Denman]

Yup! 500 feet is the buffer zone; within that, and your butt belongs to the person who might call the Police and ruin your day... :shocked:

 

[reverendg]

Yup! 500 feet is the buffer zone; within that, and your butt belongs to the person who might call the Police and ruin your day... :shocked:

I also went off half-cocked on that last response, didn't read your words well before opening fire....my apologies on that. I am passionate on gun rights, that is for certain. The federal government sees no upside to enforcing the terms of the second amendment in respect to the states infringing our natural rights, sadly.

 

[Bob Denman]

We're all on the same side, and it's all good... :thumbup:

 

[alpacaguy]

Another view

I just ran across this thread and my initial inclination was to just stay out of it. However, after viewing the video clips and reading some of the posts, I feel
compelled to add another view to the discussion. First of all I am not a Benefactor NRA member like Bob Denman, but I am a Life NRA member and have been for years. Therefore, I am fully in favor of exercising your rights of open carry if you so desire. I open carry as well as conceal carry all the time. However, I'd like to present another side of this situation. I have volunteered with several law enforcement agencies in various capacities over the past few decades and I have seen both side of the discussion in action. For a law enforcement officer, his main concern when he puts on his uniform in the morning, is coming home to his family safe and sound at night. With that in mind, if a call comes in stating that there is a disturbance involving weapons, in particular guns, the officer(s) is/are walking into a potentially life threatening situation. No matter what actually happened, the officer only knows a gun is involved. I noticed that in the video no one was asked to surrender their firearm. For that, I believe the officers in question showed extreme restraint. In a "gun involved" situation the first thing that usually happens is that the one(s) with the guns are going to be disarmed until the situation can be evaluated as safe or not safe. Since we don't know how the original call to police was represented, I am surprised that the officers were so casual. Sure there was an officer with a semi-automatic rifle on scene but he was there as backup and never offered to get directly involved in the incident. If the officers had been on premises when the girls first walked into the store and actually saw what happened, possibly (probably, I would hope) nothing would have been done at all. If they were there to actually see that there were no verbal threats made and no one made any threatening actions, I believe the IDs would never have been taken since there was no reason to verify anybody's status. Since that was not the case, collecting the IDs was the very least the officers could have done. They could have arrested everybody involved on "suspicion of" whatever they came up with. Open carry is a right that should not be infringed upon, but at the same time there is a responsibility that goes with it. A responsibility to understand that law enforcement, most of them anyway, are just trying to get through the day without being hurt or hurting anybody else. There are now, and have always been, law enforcement officers that are going to be "Mr. Bigshot" and do basically whatever the heck they want to just because they can, but those are becoming fewer and fewer. For the most part, law enforcement officers are good, knowledgeable folks just doing a very dangerous, thankless job. If you are going to open carry, don't get hostile if asked for your ID. And for heavens sake never reach for your firearm unless requested to do so by the officer you are talking to. And then, do so EXACTLY as he requests. Don't give a scary situation the opportunity to become a deadly situation. Forcing your "right" is just not worth getting dead over.....

 

[Bob Denman]

:clap::2thumbs:

 

[wyliec]

Without exception they've tended to be reactive fearful sheep; upon seeing "a gun".

Flanker,

First off, let me say you are one of a group of posters that actually have posts that are easy to read and understand the first time through. A lot of times your posts are funny.

However, for your post that I have excised here, what makes you think that pretty much all non-gunners would act like fearful sheep in an escalated situation? Of course, I may have misinterpreted your post, you tell me.

Also, whether I misinterpreted your post or not, I believe someone who is a fearful sheep in most situations, whether guns are involved or not, would be more inclined to be proactive.

 

[Cavman]

Bob, after reading you post about shooting at the range, that reminded me of the first Glock Match I shot in.
There is Glock The Plates where you have 11 rounds to knock down six 9" steel plates from 33 feet away. There are four strings of fire for this one.

I watched this fella leave up to three plates in the four tries he had. I thought to myself, if you are going to shoot that bad and leave that many plates standing, maybe you shouldn't be wearing a jacket that says, "FBI Firearms Training" on the back of it? Because if you are an instructor, your students must really s**k!

 

[Bob Denman]

:shocked: That is truly frightening... :yikes: