Open Carry - a Progressive Primer

For progressives, open carry activism is disgusting; It's everything we don't like about gun ownership. This movement takes the right to bear arms and walks around shoving it people's faces, scaring them half to death, and setting police nerves on edge as regular citizens brandish everything from pistols to semi-automatic rifles in combat styles. With thirty states allowing open carry without a license, these activists often garner very little confidence in the judgment or control that supporters of gun rights insist is the standard among legal gun owners and seem to be nothing short of a powder keg just waiting for the right match to go off.

Maybe these guys are well disciplined and full trained with their firearms able to discern friend from foe quickly in the advent of a violent altercation and respond with necessary, accurate force to end the situation quickly and decisively saving lives.


...or maybe they think guns are really cool, play a lot of Call of Duty, love the feel of power they get when people catch their breath at seeing a combat firearm walking towards them and hope some day to get a chance to 'defend' their community despite having only ever shot at a range.


You be the judge.

What second amendment proponents will tell you is that a core pillar of their ideology is that the average American has the right to stay armed and potentially push back against their own government. Another part of that logic here is that if the population is armed, the police and even the military will think twice about being abusive or aggressive. Also, crime will go down because if the average joe thinks any given person might be armed, they'll think twice about trying to take illegal advantage of the average citizen.

Everyone wins!

But like our scenario dichotomy above, let's look at an alternative set of possibilities.

Crime in a Nutshell 

 

 A lion's share of the armed altercations occurring in the US are classified by the Bureau of Justice Statistics as 'crimes of passion'. This means they are the result of a sudden emotional outburst or loss of control.  It's fair to say that these crimes would not be prevented by the possibility of their target or a bystander being armed. They are, by definition, not rational acts.

Of the remaining violent crimes, gang violence which occupies the next biggest chunk actually actively presumes their targets ARE armed or could be armed. So it's pretty doubtful these folks are going to be affected as advertised.

So what we're talking about are those classic armed robberies, car jackings, and home invasions that make such sensational news and which stir the imagination of the typical gun owner. But as violent crimes go, these are a distinct minority.

Ideology v. Reality

So how do carry laws interface with these fact? They really don't. You have to strip away burglaries and home invasions because you don't need a carry permit to be armed in your home. Include the fact that business proprietors also don't need a carry permit to have a gun on their property and we're really looking at whether or not the average civilian inside another person's domain should be able to decide if a situation turns into a fire fight.

Are you okay with someone you don't know or didn't talk to in advance in your home or business making that choice for you?

Progressives should say no. To the progressive, having a firearm is the right of the private property owner. This is both a legal right because of the 2nd amendment and also a logical one.

There is a certain power associated with making the choice as to whether lethal force will be used in defense of property that should not be unilaterally circumvented by a visitor or patron. When an individual makes the choice to enter the private property of a business or home, they become a 'guest' and that power is no longer theirs to wield without consent.

Progressives see public space the same way. They define public space the same as private property but vested collectively into the care and protection of the community via the local government. In that space, this right to deploy lethal force cedes from a single individual to the police who, at least in theory, act in favor the general population. Just like a private residence, when you enter the public space you have no right to unilaterally circumvent the decision to deploy lethal force. That right resides with a community paid, community hired, community led via democratic process group we call 'the local police'.

Clearly something isn't working in recent years, as police militarization, violence and brutality have been on the rise, but the  answer to this cannot be to then blur the lines further by sending the population into public spaces openly and visibly armed. Not only will the civilian population ultimately lose an arms race against a government funded police force as has been aptly demonstrated again and again, but openly arming civilians among those whom the police are charged to protect further blurs this set of distinctions and erodes private property rights as well. It feeds into why police have, in recent years, respected private property less and less. If everyone is armed, then everyone is a threat. If everyone is a threat, then reasonable suspicion to enter your property is created by your mere presence in it.

To be clear...

While you blur the line in one direction by walking around with a gun in a public space advertising that you have the right to engage in unilateral, unelected, individually motivated lethal force, the police then begin to blur it the other way seeing minimal distinction between the public space and your private residence where that unilateral choice may be originating.

So the progressive position is pretty straight forward: Keep the lines clear. Keep your guns at home or in your place of business.  If you have reason to carry into or through public space, let's hear it, let's license it, then let's keep it discreet so it doesn't actually raise the level of apprehension and fear in our communities.

But what about police abuse?!? What about Furgeson! What about...

THIS!

A topic for a few days from now.

But there is a short answer.

Progressive minds believe that the answer is not to escalate the potential for firearm violence or the fear of it already saturating police departments and fueling their aggression. The answer is in police reform, restructure, limitation, transparency, and a host of other efforts to change how we police our public areas. Adding more weapons into public areas is fueling the problem and is both counterproductive and dangerous.

Also, If the time comes to actually push back against police using weapons, then those involved are already going to end up breaking a lot of laws. At that time, the question of open or conceal carry will be utterly irrelevant.

So while I support the 2nd amendment right to keep and bear arms, I consider that right to be vested purely in the owner or custodian of the property. In public areas, that custodian is the police and the answer to the problem of police aggression is to focus on them, not the short sighted and misguided idea of openly gearing up in hopes of fighting them down or scaring them back.