In light of yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling upholding the 2nd Amendment right of U.S. citizens to own handguns, I’d like to direct your attention to a site that tracks open carry laws in each state – OpenCarry.org
I’m also doing this, in part, because it seems many people are not aware of the laws their state may have in place regarding this issue. For example: Dean was surprised when I told him Michigan was an open carry state.
For those that do not know, “open carry” means you are allowed to carry a firearm on your person in public as long as it’s within full view.
OpenCarry.org is a useful starting place to learn more about gun laws in your own particular state. In fact, I learned something new just a few minutes ago. Dean warned me that even if Michigan were an open carry state, there might be local ordinances that restrict it. I followed a link from OpenCarry.org to a forum that informed me that no local ordinance concerning firearm possession is enforceable due to Michigan’s preemption law (MCL 123.1102). Local law cannot restrict my ability to open carry in a way that isn’t specifically spelled out by state law. Period.
Michigan’s open carry laws seem quite liberal. And better still, in many areas where open carry is prohibited, you may open carry if you have a CPL (Concealed Pistol License).
I’m a firm believer in open carry laws. There’s a saying, “An armed society is a polite society.” Anti-open carry advocates would say that it’s best to conceal carry and let a perpatrator assume you’re armed.
Well, I’d rather open carry and remove all doubt.
{ 44 comments }
Your "an armed society is a polite society" is a quote from Robert A. Heinlein. Â And while I loved Stranger in a Strange land, and his other science fiction works, he was also a believer in the Social Credit System. Â
But what you’re presumption assumes is that everyone is a responsible, rational individual. Â People can barely drive their vehicles, and understand traffic regulations. Â I wouldn’t trust most people to know the circumstances they can legally use their ‘open carry’ firearms, let alone make moral judgements in split second circumstances. Â
Lastly, to take a shot at your ‘an armed society is a polite society’ quote; Â You live in an ‘armed’ society, but you’re not exactly ‘polite’ to most people. Â Most notably are your highschool mentality posturing towards Mr. W on Dean’s ex wife’s site. Â That was pretty immature and impolite by anyone’s standards.
In many (not all) states driving is taught in public school. Sex ed is (I think) taught in all states. My high school child was certified in CPR in class. Maybe it’s time to teach gun safety in school rather than "shooting from the hip" about responsibility and safety for firearms (and BTW, I don’t have a gun).
Kevin,
I left you a note in an earlier post about Gun Rights Upheld By One Vote by Scott Kirwin. Thank you so much for your kindness.
John Dakota,
Mr. W is not exactly what people here in Dean’s World want to talk about. I just found out about a week ago from Dean who he was besides a guy that writes articles on Rosemary’s site. I also think since they are divorced now it’s best not to bring Rosemary up here in this blog in anyway. She is doing quite well with her own blog and does a terrific job. I would read it when Dean and her were seperated because she would post pictures of the kids. I did not care for Mr. W’s style but who the heck gives a darn what my opinion of that all is. Try to keep to the article. Kevin D has been posting for a couple of years and we, Dean’s regular readers like him.
Okay, that is my two cents. I sure will not bring up the past regarding Rosemary’s blog and who writes for it. As I said she has a good blog and huncreds of people enjoy her style.
Back to subject. I think the "open carry" is a very useful law and I will look up what Texas allows and as DEan noted to Kevin, the different counties. I am in San Antonio and my county is, Bexar.
I guess what comes to mind for me regarding the open carry is thinking about the college in Virginia that one deranged man went in and killed many students including a teacher. If just one student has a gun in their back pack or purse it could have saved lives.
Then, I think about the mall shootings with just one guy doing the very same thing. I have often wondered about many public places like even a local library. I do not want to carry one but I will sure take Kevin’s advice about another kind of gun.
There are some pretty bad dudes out there that do carry a gun that shouldn’t and there are laws about mentally disturbed people not being able to get a gun but of course the above that I mentioned that there are holes in the system.
I think the Â
HAHAHAHA! I have no idea what I was going to say. I just wrote, "I think the". Oh Lordy, it is early and I’m not all wide awake yet. Then again I make mistakes a lot as many of the regulars know. It doesn’t bother me like it use to cause one man I like that has come here for years, Arnold Harris told me not to worry because people knew what I was saying or would watch my back.Â
Sorry folks :-(
It has been noted somewhere (too lazy to find the link again) that CCW holders are less likely than police (per incident) to hit an inappropriate target.
There are a lot of advantages to not being visibly armed, like having the time required to evaluate the situation and choose the appropriate course of action. Having the option to not act is worth a lot, too.
Gargh, if we could PLEASE not allow family drama and arguments over personal crap to spill over into site-to-site flame wars, I’d be MIGHTY happy about it.
Anyway, on the Heinlein quote: yeah that’s a line from a Heinlein book, and there were lots of ideas in lots of Heinlein books. I mention that only because John says that Heinlein was "also a believer in" some other stuff from Heinlein books. I’ve been a Heinlein fan myself for a long time, and I’ve talked to people who knew him personally, like Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven. What people like this will tell you, and what those who’ve read most of his books (as I have) find pretty intuitively obvious, is that Heinlein didn’t necessarily agree with or believe in any particular idea he put in a book, and in fact actively denied believing some of it. Now, you can get into whatever twisty psychological analyses you want to over that sort of thing, but I prefer to take an author of fiction’s word when he says he doesn’t believe everything he puts in his characters’ mouths.
For the record, Heinlein was a former socialist turned moderate Democrat, but he did support 2nd amendment rights.
The "an armed society is a polite society" line is from the Notebooks of Lazarus Long, part of the very long "Time Enough For Love" book. It’s a funny line. It’s not clear to me how accurate it is; there are some armed societies where people are extremely violent and rude by our standards. On the flip side, showing people respect and adhering to a rigid code are the norm even in such societies, arguably moreso than our own.
Regardless, I’m fascinated to learn Michigan is an open carry state. I’d probably want to talk to some people at the local gun club to make sure I’ve got it right though. I’m basically fine with open carry, most states which allow it have very low rates of violent crime. [shrug]
By the way, to argue with Dishman, one of the advantages of openly carrying is that it simply ends the need to evaluate much of anything. An awful lot, almost certainly a majority, of situations simply won’t happen when people see there’s someone carrying a firearm present. While movie scenarios where a hotshot or drug-addled lunatic decides to go psycho and take on a visibly armed person are easy to imagine, in reality these are quite rare. Although they do happen, most cops will tell you they go their entire careers without ever having to fire their weapons in the line of duty and quite a few will admit to never even having had to draw their weapon in the line of duty. Undercover cops and agents, on the other hand, wind up doing it a lot. Now, there’s more than one reason for that, I don’t want to say every situation makes open carry preferable, I’m just illustrating the point.
Dean,
I didn’t mean to bring that drama up to rub salt in the wound. It was just the most obvious example of how an ‘armed society’ isn’t necessairly a ‘polite society’ that kevin could easily relate too. Sorry you were cannon fodder there.Â
If you want to carry guns, and your 2nd amendment protects it, fine, do so. Say it makes you feel safe that you can protect yourself, and your family against would be criminals, or the occasional cougar (not the old sexy lady type though =P). That said, don’t blow smoke in my face claiming that because you can pack heat on your hip everyone is going to be polite to everyone else. Like we saw with the lame puffer fish explosion Kevin put up on your ex’s site, the causality in that relation doesn’t hold at all.Â
Politeness lessons from JohnDakota.
Next up: diet tips from Rosie O’Donnell.
And finally…
Pointless ramblings by the mouthbreather, Martin L. Shoemaker
My point is demonstrated. Thank you.
Don’t you kids make me come down there!
A discussion of the idea that an armed society is a "polite" one follows:
If you look at this anthropologically, the statement “an armed society is a polite society” is almost self-evidently correct, especially if you understand that "polite" is itself a largely cultural thing. What one culture considers polite isn’t what all cultures consider polite. A culture which is not very civil at all may nevertheless have very strong rules about what is considered rude behavior–arguably, stronger ones than more civil societies.
If you look, for example, at inner city street gangs, where people being armed is the norm, you see a hell of a lot of violence, and a hell of a lot of behavior that civil Middle American society would consider ghastly. Yet, study it at all, and you discover that such gang cultures actually have extremely rigid, often unspoken but very well understood, rules of "polite" behavior. "Dis" the wrong person, say the wrong thing, and a knife or gun in your face is the likely response. Or at least a fist, for less serious matters.
Thus people in such "primitive" cultures actually tend to evolve rather elaborate systems to avoid giving any hint of disrespect, for making quick amends if there is a perception of disrespect, and so on. It’s a strong warrior-code style ethos: primitive, barbaric, but complex and quite "polite" in its own way, even if quite dangerous.
"You touched my woman! [blam! blam! blam!]" is arguably simply a response to impolite behavior toward your lady, a necessary correction to someone lacking good manners and an illustration for others of the consequences of impolite behavior.
Thus, the statement that "an armed society is a polite society" is true on multiple levels, and carries multiple shades of meaning. When you say that such a society is a polite one, you don’t necessarily mean civil, civilized, or kind.
(I should also note that this description does not fit all armed societies. Gun ownership is very near to 100% among the Swiss, and most people would admit that your average Swiss national is almost jellyfish-civil and reserved. The point is, "polite" in this context doesn’t -necessarily- indicate what we tend to think of as moral, decent behavior, one way or the other.)
Martin: "My point is demonstrated. Thank you."
If you were actually literate you’d have seen I wasn’t instructing people on how to be polite, but rather was saying the idea of guns in a society doesn’t make people polite. That simple difference seems to be lost on the likes of you.
Dean,
What you just described is respect, not being polite. They’re different concepts. By your own very admission ‘gang culture’is primitive and barbaric, where as politeness is identified in advanced culture lacking roughness or crudities.
Really, JohnDakota, my point only needed one demonstration. But if you want to keep demonstrating it, be my guest.
John and Martin: You’re going to make me shoot you, aren’t you?
Dean,
I’m sorry, normally I’d let garbage like this go, but I don’t deal well with people calling me a hypocrite. Particularly when they see hypocricy because they are illiterate.
Martin,
You were trying to show I’m a hypocrite because I’m impolite while at the same time allegedly telling people how to be polite. But like I said, I’ve never told people how to be polite as I really don’t care that much. If you could only identify the difference between demonstrating a lack of causality in an argument, and instructing people on how to conduct themselves you’d be much better off. I’m sorry that’s such a hard concept to grasp.
PREDICTION: Martin replies with a standard comment along the lines of “the demonstration continues”
Dean, your point is well taken.
CCW doesn’t have much of a deterrent effect unless the area is known to have a high percentage. Having someone else openly carrying doesn’t bother me. For myself, I’d rather have CCW.
And the demonstrations continue…
Hmm, to correct myself above, it appears that the Heinlein quote in question is from "Beyond This Horizon," one of his lesser works, and not what I said it was from.
Back on the subject of armed carriage vs. concealed carriage:
Worst: neither is permitted.
Good: only open carriage is permitted.
Better: only concealed carriage is permitted.
Best: the individual has the option.
One of the ideas behind concealed carriage is that the criminals have to guess, and where the local culture is such that a sufficiently high percentage of non-criminals will be carrying, a deterrent effect is obtained.
Personally, I don’t care to have very many things in my pockets, and since I’m a great big fat guy it’s kind of a pain for me to conceal. So typically, my carry weapon stays in the car, unless I have reason to stray from my relatively safe part of North Texas. I’d be happier if I could carry it on my belt with impunity.
(Of course, only one of the four options above is consistent with the Bill of Rights, but that’s another discussion.)
hahah.. oh Martin.. my ability to read you like a book is amazing! It’s aways fun to have predictable people with no intellectual investment like you around. Â
Keep on demonstrating!
LOUD NOISES!!!!
Yeah, that’s a pretty good summary of your position.
If we were to actually consider who’s contributed more to this discussion I think you’d come out on the short end of the stick.Â
I actually discussed the value of the argument put forth.Â
You, on the other hand, have provided a sarcastic, illiterate, misinterpretation of what I’ve said, supplemented with repeating "keep demonstrating" over and over.Â
So if we’re going to argue who’s contributed more, it’s not an argument I’d start if I were in your position. Particularly if I were a 44 year old man who has nothing more significant to say than "keep demonstrating."
And yes, the demonstrations continue.
Martin, I suggest you get aquainted with a thesaurus. They’re amazing tools, particularly if your vocabularly is horribly limited like yours appears to be.
I’ll help you out with ‘demonstrate’
Synonyms (that means a word that has the same, or very similiar use/definition):Â establish, prove, show, illustrate, explain
That one’s free buddy.
That’s a pretty good summary: you have established/proven/shown/illustrated a nearly complete inability to participate in threads here without being far more impolite than Kevin. Once in a while, you manage to avoid rudeness, but that’s a small minority of threads where you participate.
And in fact, you just demonstrated my point again just now. And I have no doubt you’ll do so yet another time shortly.
You think I care if I’m impolite to you or others here? See that’s precisely where you’re wrong. I couldn’t care less about being polite. If I offend you, but get you to understand something better (or vice versa) all the better!
 I believe one of the great advantages of the internet is that you can have an unbridled discussion without worrying much about the social implications of ‘offending’ others. The discussions go a lot faster, and progress much further without all the pussyfooting.Â
Seriously.. if at 44 years of age you need people to coddle you on the internet so you can feel good about yourself, then go do some martial arts and get some self esteem. Uh Oh!!! There I go again with being impolite!
And there’s the demonstration, as I predicted.
Martin, would the line "Don’t feed the troll" be applicable here?
Dishman,
Trolls bring absolutely nothing to the discussion. I may offend people, but I at least bring some sort of insight into the discussion, or at the very least a principled position. Martin on the other hand has not brought anything, so if anyone’s the troll, it’s him. I’m just insensitive to his sensibilities.
John & Martin:
Please stop this back and forth. It has nothing to do with the topic of this thread and is taking up waaaaaay too much space.
If this doesn’t stop I will lock comments or start deleting posts. Neither are things I want to do.
I saw 30 comments on this thread and I was looking forward to a good discussion, and instead I find BS.
I’m not saying either of you are right or wrong. I’m saying stop.
Dishman,
You’re probably right. I just keep hoping JohnDakota’s not a troll (his latest demonstration notwithstanding), but capable of actually comprehending the point and learning from it.
Martin,
I don’t care about your lesson about being polite. You’ve made your point that I’m impolite, I’ve never said you’re wrong. Infact, if youd’ actually read what I’ve written youd see I’ve repeatedly admitted I’m impolite. But the fact remains that I just frankly don’t care.Â
So thanks ‘dad’, but keep your advice about politeness to yourself.
Kevin,
I’m sorry about the state of this thread. I actually wanted a good discussion particularly about guns, and how people’s behaviour change because of them. I just really dont suffer illiterate people very well, particularly when they call me a hypocrite. Especially when i’ts their illiteratacy that has them seeing hypocricy.
John,
Ummm… you could have stopped after the first two sentences.
You should have stopped with the first two sentences.
Should those you’ve directed that "illiterate" comment be allowed to fire something back at you? Should you then be allowed to fire back at them? When does it end?
Let’s just get this thing back on the rails and everyone keep their guns in their open carry holsters.
Kevin,
Whereas I really don’t suffer rude people very well, especially when they can’t see how their rudeness undercuts their own arguments and their credibility and actually precludes reasoned discussion. Somehow when JohnDakota gets offended, it’s a call for all-out war. But when JohnDakota is doing the offending, it’s a call for reasoned discussion.
Maybe, somehow, he’ll get the point.
Kevin,
I’m addressing you just because Martin thought it was useful to talk to you while insulting me, which is fine. Â If he’s that much of a child/coward, so be it.
Martin is illiterate. Â It’s not an insult, it’s a statement of fact. Â If he’s offended by it, he should take more time to actually read to understand what people are saying, as opposed to reading to find things to chastise. Â
Pointing out that an armed society is not necessairly a polite society is NOT a commentary on how people should be polite to eachother. This is something I tried to make apparent earlier. So if he has a problem with how impolite I am, just say so, don’t call me a hypocrite, because I’m obviously going to point out how I’ve not said anything hypocritical. Â
Maybe, somehow, he’ll get the point.
I guess I was wrong.
You weren’t wrong.. Â I understood your point very well, it has not eluded me. Â The point you keep missing is that……
I Â Â Â Â Â DONT Â Â Â Â Â CARE.
See.. Â I put my response on it’s own line. Â Should be easy to pick up the point there. Â
Seriously.. I don’t know how to discuss things in text with people who can’t read. He clearly can pick up concept, but fully understanding a very basic point like “I don’t care” apparently is too difficult.
Anyway, can you just forget about it?  You’re illiterate, and in internet discussions I can be impolite.  End of story.
And still the point eludes you. It’s all there, in black and white, but it eludes you.
LOCKED!!!
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