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By Dean Weingarten

I have come to expect the New York Times to denigrate America’s gun culture and the Second Amendment at every opportunity. It’s interesting that they fail to note in their coverage of the Alamo protest that Texas is one of only six states that have banned the open carry of handguns. This small and shrinking minority of states (Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Mississippi recently changed their laws to recognize the constitutional right of open carry), which consists of California, Texas, Illinois, Florida, South Carolina, and New York includes the state where the Times is published . . .

There are strong legislative challenges to the bans on open carry in Texas, Florida, and South Carolina. I wouldn’t be surprised if five years from now, only California, Illinois, and New York still have such bans. Even Illinois is uncertain as the Supreme Court there has recognized the right to carry outside the home. It’s a sign of progress that the ultimate paper of liberal fascism felt compelled to cover a gathering of those who wish to restore the Second Amendment to the status given it before the Kansas Supreme Court created the “collective right theory” in 1905.

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95 COMMENTS

  2. Well, around here shooting on public land is only good if you are hunting. Target practice is discouraged at any place other than a range setting.

  3. I would subscribe to The Times just for their exclusive pics of Bloomberg’s head exploding after reading that article. . . .

    • It’s racism. Both states banned it during the late 19th century in an effort to bar freed slaves from bearing arms openly and requiring a may issue permit for concealing. Open carry ban was mostly enforced only for minorities until the latter half of the 20th century though. Mississippi, Arkansas and Oklahoma had them on the laws up until the last three years or so.

      South Carolina also banned it for the same reasons.

      • So did California. Damn it, Reagan, I have respect for you, but you are certainly not the friend of law abiding firearm owners.

        • Right. Calfornia’s history is odd here. When Texas outlawed all forms of carry and had no concealed permits at all, we had may issue, and allowed open carry.

          Reagan signed into law a ban on the carry of LOADED guns. In effect, only rural open carry of loaded guns was allowed, but unloaded carry elsewhere. Another effect was (still is) that you can conceal carry without a license while fishing, but it cannot be loaded (the loaded gun law doesn’t have the same exceptions!) Which just shows you how messed up it is.

          Brown signed a bill banning the open carry of unloaded guns, but it has some 150+ exceptions. All so complicated. Much easier to just allow it.

      • That’s not why open carry went away in Florida. That was a gift of our late AG Janet Reno who tried to use that as a poison pill to stop shall-issue concealed carry legislation in 1987. Didn’t work, but we Floridians took one for the team to disprove the Gunshine State myth in the ensuing decades.

        Time to set it right though, I agree.

    • Simple answer.
      In my part of the state. South Eastern Florida has become so populated by North Easterns (NYers). They would for the most part be scared to hell by it.
      But since it didnt pass in the last legislation session. They at least passed a law that if you weapon becomes accidently exposseed, Its no longer a misdamener(speil cheq) or menacing charge.

      • I’ve seen people protesting for open carry with guns on their hips or backs while holding fishing poles because apparently you can OC will hunting or fishing or on the way there. Mind you this was nowhere near Miami.

    • Then maybe TX and FL are not really the most gun friendly states. For some reason KY tends to get overlooked. I guess ya’ll didn’t see any of that footage from Knob Creek. People open carry in big box stores around here and they aren’t even walking with a cameraman. It’s. just. normal.

      If you want to see gun friendly the check out Kentucky. Heck we can even have a gun in a glove box in a school parking lot here and you don’t even need a permit for that.

      • Utah takes the cake hands down. Anyone can open carry an “unloaded” gun, but with a CHL, I can legally open and/or conceal carry in any state or local municipality. This includes public elementary schools, high schools, colleges, universities, hospitals, stadiums, etc. you name it.

  5. Big American Babies™ want to play with ALL their toys in public! Beany babies, their dicks and their TOY GUNS! They also want their mothers to breast feed them in public! Go, Go Big American Babies™!

      • No, leave his comments there. It can serve as a reminder to the undecided what Liberals think of us. It just proves that they are only concerned with attacks, lies, underhanded tricks, and feeling good about themselves. His comments paint the perfect picture of the enemy.

        [YUP. HE’S BANNED NOW, BUT THIS STAYS, FOR THE REASONS YOU STATED. –MATT]

      • Or at least correct the spelling of this guy’s name. Should be: Moron B. Eeghuzzar

        Then we can all get back to our gunporn.

    • Hey, call me all the names you want, just remember after you’re done name calling, I still have my ALL my “toys” whether you like it or not.

      And, evident by the failed attempts to take them via bans and restriction, there is nothing you can do about, except call me names…

      Nana nana, boo boo!

    • Generally; anti- gun individuals like Moran are liberal/progressive; which is a belief system for elitists to justify controlling everyone else and for over grown emotionally immature adults that don’t want to take responsibility for their life to be controlled by those same elitists.

      So we can generalize that the individuals not in a position of direct power over others would be one of those immature emotionally stunted adults that are frightened by the idea of taking responsibility for their lives. Many of the behaviors are very much what one would expect from small children; a belief in gun free zones; what could be more child like than believing a sign on the side of a building will keep out a mad man with a gun?

      Another behavior is calling another person that frighten them names and demeaning characterizations.

      Moran gives a perfect example of this type of behavior.

      Yep; every time I talk to an anti-gun/liberal/ progressive type; I feel like I’m trying to reason with a small child.

    • Mr eeghuzzar. I think the blog you are looking for is the first amendment one. We here are primarily concerned with the second one. Tata now.

    • On behalf of all of us work to support and defend the constitution, you are welcome. Why? For ensuring you still have the right to come in here to voice your opinion. Even if we don’t agree with it. But don’t be surprised if we respond with GFY.

    • Again with the penis. Can you guys not type a full paragraph without bringing up the penis? have you guys ever seen a vagina or does the thought cause you to recoil in horror? Penis here, penis there, penis everywhere. Is thisa the only thing you guys think about?

    • I hear this kind of statement 100 times more often than “Texas is gun-friendly”. I don’t know who you’re talking to, everybody knows that Texas traded OC for CC – it’s not news.

    • Not me. This Texan has been working for years to get campus carry and open carry for Texas. I am fully aware of how far behind other states we are on those.

      In Texas it’s hard, by design, to get bills passed, and the legislature meets for a few months every other year. Every session we do manage to pass better gun laws, so there’s always progress, but it’s slow.

      • On a positive note, it also keeps the legislature from passing any really bad stuff. We are less inclined to do that in texas, but maybe they should meet in DC in a similar way.

    • Being gun friendly doesn’t only involve open carry, which we can open carry long guns, like the San Antonio rally represented.

      Texas has very pro self defense laws, in some states you open carry, but God help you if you have to use it.

      I’ll admit Texas needs to get better about licensing and open carry, but our self defense laws are very gun friendly.

      • You are correct, however to those of us who have the ability to legally OC, it seems like a pretty big block missing from the puzzle.

        • The manor in which you can carry is a very small piece to the puzzle, in my opinion, it’s the difference between having your shirt untucked or not.

          It’s more import to me that I don’t end up in jail or sued all the way to the poor house if I have to pull my gun.

          I’m very pro open carry, though, I will never do it and I don’t think it’s the end all, be all gun issue people make it out to be.

  7. maryland and NJ should be red. Maryland you can’t really get a license without a G&S, which means kiss the gov ass, make a donation.

    • They should add a huge asterisk to NJ. Apparently NJ does not make a distinction between open and concealed carry, so technically open carry is allowed if you can get a permit. But you can’t get a permit to carry in this state so it’s a moot point.

  8. Open carry outside the largest urban centers in Ohio is hardly noticed unless you’re doing something to draw a lot of attention to yourself, it’s also legal statewide. Out here in the land of hills, farms and villages a ‘man with a gun’ call is likely to net a response of ‘and. . . ‘

    I prefer concealed carry but I frequently pack a full size 1911 with a relatively skimpy cover up and I know my gun has had to either have badly printed or been partially exposed an unimaginable number of times. the police have never come to ask me about it, and the only comments I’ve ever received have been good natured questions about what gun I carry.

    I spent yesterday in the capital and while I carried concealed I saw zero locations marked as GFZs. I’m not sure what the police or the locals would have made of an open pistol ( I don’t go there often) but it seems to me that if the businesses are that cool with concealed carry they aren’t apt to panic much over a visible holstered pistol.

    • In and around the Dayton area it’s hit and miss, two suburban PDs have gotten their share of shaming after poor response to open carry calls in the last few years, one resulting in a lawsuit for unlawful detainment.

    • You just assuaged my fears…

      I just took a job in Dayton, I’ll be moving down there this weekend. I’ve never lived anywhere but Michigan and I’ve been going nuts trying to gather as much info as I can regarding the differences in firearms laws. You just made it a little better.

      • I don’t know much about Dayton specifically but CC is legal (with permit) throughout the state and we have state wide preemption. The biggest problem we face in Ohio is that we need a law preventing employers from denying employees the right to carry on the job. It’s not a legal issue but you could be fired for violating company policies.

        Come on over to Ohio, open carry legal statewide and CC with license legal with preemption. I don’t even notice many places (other than schools, govt buildings etc) posted for no carry.

        Aside from the list of illegal places though, a sign in Ohio carries no force of law, all they can do is ask you to disarm or leave, and as long as you do you have broken no law. (Note, this does not apply to places on the states no carry list, prisons, jails, police stations, court houses etc.)

        • The other silliness in OH is no carry in your car without a permit. That’s a major pain in the hindquarters.

  9. That map of yours is going to get some fools busted. Try open carrying in MA, even with an unrestricted LTC-A, and you’ll get busted and cuffed in a matter of seconds. Then you’ll get your license yanked. It’s true that there is no MA statute that specifically prohibits open carry in public, however, there is a broad consensus in law enforcement and the courts that it’s just not the way we roll here in the Commonwealth.

    Open carry in NJ and MD? Seriously?

    • I thought I had seriously missed the bus on this one.. This graphic had me scratching my head.

      “Really? MA is open carry?… riiigggghhhtt.”

    • You can walk around the western half of the state all day with a pistol on your hip and no one even looks twice. Mass suffers from the same plague all the other North Eastern states do: a generally decent population ruled by one giant Liberal cesspool city.

      • Really?

        I’m actually genuinely shocked by this revelation…

        I travel out there a fair amount for work but have yet to see one “in the wild”.

    • Greg, I know couple of fools who flashed — one in Wachusett Mountain while hiking in the summer and the other, a lawyer, in front of a courthouse. The Wachusett hiker, who has an LTC-A, got a stern lecture from the po-po, but that’s it. The lawyer, also fully licensed, had his gun confiscated but later returned. No charges were filed in either case.

      The lawyer sued. Here’s an article on Attorney Greg Schubert’s case. http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2010/01/lawyer_greg_schubert_vows_to_a.html

      Depending on the city or town, an open carrier might be briefly detained for questioning on the one hand or arrested on some phony disturbing the peace charge on the other hand. In order for the disturbing the peace charge to stick, there would have to be an actual public disturbance. Frankly, I don’t see that being provable in most cases where the gun remains holstered.

      The upshot is that OC is legal in MA (the LTC-A is a permit to carry, not a permit to concealed carry), but anyone who does so is likely to have their balls busted or worse.

  10. Open carry is allowed in Florida as long as you are active in some sort of outdoor activity. Fishing/hunting/camping/hiking or travelling directly too or from that activity

    • There’s also a legal challenge soon to be before the FL Supremes too. In short: FL passed a law making accidental exposure of a legally concealed weapon a non crime. A newly minted CCL holder was arrested for not properly concealing this gun. Judge rules against CCL holder because he thought the law was a bad law, entering the opinion that as concealed carry was a privilige, draconian brandishing laws were valid. Florida Carry (who was defending the CCL holder), filed an appeal, arguing that since the FL Consititution guarrantees the RTKB, if concealled is the privilige, open has to be a constitutional right. The Florida Carry website has the full rundown.

  11. A babysitter in TX recently left a gun in the open and a child was shot. When I look at the comments on most sites you can see many members ragging on Texas.
    “Only in Texas”
    “Gotta love those gun nut Texans”
    Yet as we can see from the chart not only are Texans NOT running around like “the wild wild west” but aren’t even allowed to open carry. So I have to ask, why do liberals and those not in the know think Texas is the way they perceive it in their head? I honestly believe it has something to do with Yosemite Sam

    • A lot of leftists are bigots, at the least the ones I see commenting on websites. They are quick to stereotype and even hate entire states or regions. I was raised in Texas and will die here, and I think every other area of the country has good qualities and good people. I’m very grateful not to be living in a state that has less freedom, though.

    • The left regards white Southerners as a bunch of inbred mouth-breathing morons. The right looks at New York City and says “lets move to the South.”

    • What’s funny is I lived in western MA and my truck had Texas plates for a while. I don’t know how many people who came up to me and said they would love to move to Texas to get out of MA. I am sure if it were Boston the reaction would have been the opposite.

  12. Even though Texas is concealed carry, when working out on the open range or in the hill country many wranglers open carry their sidearm because of rattle snakes or larger predators such as coyotes and mountain lions. Most LEOS in Texas won’t stop a working wrangler on the range if they open carry. However, they will stop anyone that open carries in town.

  14. I’d consider NH a gold star open carry state since you don’t even need to be a resident or licensed to open carry. In fact open carry is the only legal means of carrying if you do not have a concealed carry license from the state (costs $10 and you get it at your town hall I believe; out of state permit is $100 and it comes in the mail after sending in a short application that contain explicit instructions on how to fill it out correctly).

  16. Generally, in CA, unless you’re on your own property or business good luck with any open carry activities of a handgun even in “rural areas”. Open carry of long guns/shotguns must be unloaded and if defined as an “assault weapon” by PC 30510 or 30515 must also be in a locked container being transported directly from point A to point B.

    See CA Firearms Laws Summary put out by the CA DOJ
    http://oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/agweb/pdfs/firearms/pdf/cfl2013.pdf? (Pg. 10-11, Pg. 7)

    Pen Code, § 26350
    http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=pen&group=26001-27000&file=26350

    Open carry in CA…HAH!

    • You are severely mistaken about the law.

      Open unloaded carry of either handguns or longguns is the same now (starting 2013).

      The transportation laws are another matter. In a vehicle, a longgun can be exposed, but unloaded, a handgun must be locked up (both must be locked in a school zone though). True about the AWB. But most people do not have RAWs.

      There is quite a bit of land where you can open carry loaded. All away from the cities. Hence the term “rural” Hence there was a court case where a man was pulled over. Had a load shotgun. Cops searched, found drugs. All charges dismissed as he was in an unincorporated area where the discharge of firearms was not specifically prohibited, so he could carry loaded, even in his car, and the search was illegal

      But MORE to the point, and something you blatantly ignored. California issues licenses to carry. In counties with fewer than 200,000, licenses to open carry can be granted (the sheriff may even grant a concealed carry license/open carry). However open carry licenses only apply within the county they are issued in. But, it must be remembered, that the less populated counties are also far more likely to issue such licenses and several counties, when they issue concealed carry, specifically allow open carry on the same. Though again, the open carry must be in that county (concealed carry anywhere)

  18. I can see why PA doesn’t get a “gold star.” OC is legal, though you need a PA license to carry firearms to do so “cities of the first class,” which in practice means only in Philly. Otherwise, you can OC as long as you can legally posess the gun. According to both statutory and case law, OC is not grounds to stop and ID without probable cause, and State law preempts local regulations.

    That said, if you actually open carry in many places (particuarly in Philly, other cities, or their suburbs), there is a decent chance that you will be hassled by the police.

  19. Idk about New Jersey, I’ve literally never seen an open carrier here except on duty police. If someone is carrying a gun here, they are either cops or robbers.

  20. Maryland should not be listed as an CCL/open carry friendly state, the only way to get CCL is be a victim of a crime and prove why you need a permit. Or a business owner that carries large sums of cash on hand, and you need to prove that too.

  22. Actually Texas is not much of a leader when it comes to 2A rights. Just looking at shall issue concealed carry laws, Texas was somewhat of a Johnny come lately. Texas did not become shall issue until 1995. 20 other states were shall issue before 1995. Vermont was the only Constitutional carry state at that time. Some of the states that beat Texas to shall issue might surprise some. Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Washington, Oregon

    • Jesus,

      that is just sad. They put 7 rounds in the kid because he was carrying a (admittedly very realistic looking) AK toy gun.

  26. While we enjoy the freedom of open carry in our state,It should be done with discretion ,conceal carry is a wiser choice as it keeps a secret,secret and it allows gun owners in most states the conceal carry class which covers dos and don’t s/ laws and regs and puts a gun owner on the alert of situational awareness rather than” I own a gun and look at me.”

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