Open Carry

Fourth Circuit Open - Open carry does not justify search via NC Gun Blog via Instapundit

I guess I have been doing a great deal of thinking about where search and seizure fits into out society. Yes, I do understand that police have a hard job and it is exceedingly difficult to keep the honest citizens safe and the bad guys in jail. On the other hand, I fear they have been given too much power over the individual in the form of a large number of laws where almost any action that a common citizen can take is an invitation to detention and being thrown into the legal maul.

Now obviously the individual in the above case was no boy scout.  He was hanging with his homies, if not doing bad things, they were thinking about it. Along comes the po-po and they bust him for a gun that he shouldn't have had. All perfectly reasonable and what most of us would want to happen. Now flip it a bit and say the guy arrested wasn't that one but some guy named Reginald that was walking down the other side of the street. He is returning from his classes at a state college, and has a gun that he openly carries because those very same homies are a threat to him. Should he be stopped and searched too? Most of us would say no. But, now we are asking police officers to start making value decision because they have the power to no only go after Reginald, the homies, but also Reginald's sister and mother who just happened to step outside for some air to talk to Reginald's pastor who is walking with him.

I don't know the answer to the above situation, but I am fairly sure that adding to the laws is not the answer. I am thinking that the state needs to look at rescinding some laws and simplifying the code, and open carry is a good counter-balance. Such a move has little support, so we are left with the mishmash of laws and court rulings on their limits, and an increasing descent into a Sylvester Stallone nightmare.

I do like something I saw in the comments at NC Gun Blog:

In Connecticut, straight from a cop: yep, open carry is legal, but if you open carry, you will be arrested and charged with breach of the peace and the firearm confiscated.

Then you’ll spend the next year or so getting the charge overturned and your firearm returned. In other words, the open carry statute is honored “more in the breach than the observance.”

The following comment noted this:

Then in Conneticut, there is no law, and the cops are just gangs in different colors. Simple.