Long Gun Open Carry Event Today

The event will be held at the Bayfair Mall, in San Leandro, from 12 noon to 1 PM today.  Any and all California legal long guns are allowed.  SFGate has an article about the event here:

"The point is to be provocative enough to spur action by the courts or legislators to repeal the new law and restore the right to pack unloaded pistols in the open."

I am sure that they will be provocative, but what they provoke is likely to be a new law banning open carry of long guns.  Any new law could very well be poorly crafted and a huge burden on lawful gun owners, but it seems the open carry advocates are not going to stand down.

Oh, well.

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Here is a comment I posted on the SFGate site:

"The people holding the event are not gun nuts, they are rights nuts.

Let me explain.

These people believe, as I do, that the 2nd Amendment protects the right of the individual to be armed for self defense, both in the home, and in public.  So far, the Supreme Court has validated the "in the home" part of that view, but has not yet affirmed the "in public" part.

Meanwhile, about 40 states in the United States allow law abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons in public legally, after satisfying objective criteria.  However California is not one of these states.  While California does have a concealed weapon law, licenses to carry are very rarely issued in urban counties where the need to be armed is greatest.  In Santa Clara county, only 55 licenses to carry are currently issued to civilians.

The Open Carry movement uses open carry events to protest the current state of the California laws governing law carry of arms in public - laws that almost totally prevent a citizen from carrying weapons openly or concealed, laws which therefore deny thhe exercise of 2nd Amendment rights.

The Open Carry advocates do not want to carry weapons in a way that alarms the public, but the public has not afforded the citizen any other way to carry, and the public prevents effective self-defense by tolerating restrictive laws.  Many comments to this article have mentioned that unloaded guns are useless for self defense, and have wondered why these Open Carry advocates do not conceal their weapons.  The reason is that Open Carry advocates believe in following the law, and not open carry of unloaded long guns is all that is allowed.

This event is a protest, intended to illustrate the stupidity of the current California laws concerning bearing arms in public.  One solution to this situation would be to reform California laws by adopting a shall-issue license to carry system.  Other states do it without many problems, California could as well.  Once this state was a social trend setter, but now it has fallen behind the rest of the nation.

Time for us to catch up."