There is no way that open carry will ever be separated from the Wild West, its just not going to happen. Worse yet, to some degree it is part of our factual history - cant change that.
You are aware that the Wild West had per capita 20 times fewer robberies, 40 times fewer burglaries and thefts, and 5 times fewer homicides per year than current. That's also part of our factual history, can't change that either, but it is successfully ignored. Of course most everyone had a firearm, and carried it openly Mark Twain wound up getting a Colt 1851 Navy when he got to Nevada because he felt out of place not having a weapon. I think that given the crime rates in 1900 and 2010 going back to the Wild West may not be such a bad thing.
As far as the vast majority of the population is concerned 2 types of people (will) open carry:
1)Outlaw wannabe's, Wild West Sheriff wannabe's, and far Right gun nuts who think its cool.
2)Police with appropriate uniform.
How do you know? Is this personal experience or media hype. Or have you taken a study of people and heard their opinions? Chances are probably high it's media hype, which is not necessarily representative of the average US citizen (if there is such a beast).
Why continue to push guns (literally) into the face of people who simply do not want to see them, or know that they are around guns?
It will only serve to irritate the currently quiet anti's who have been keeping a "out-of-sight-out-of-mind" mentality about guns.
Waking them into activism would be downright stupid.
Firstly pushing a gun literally into someone's face would be a firearms offense that no gun owner would do voluntarily without great risk of losing their firearms ownership rights (privileges...?). If it's on your hip then unless it's a 4 year old child, or you're taller than any NBA star then it's not in anyone's face it might be possible to buy a face holster for storage of your firearm although I can't see it as being very practical.
Secondly it's irritated the quiet anti's so much that Starbucks just posted a 769% increase in quarterly profits, are these "quiet anti's" living under rocks with no friends, no tv, no internet? Or are gun rights supporters more ubiquitous than we think and spend a lot of their disposable income on boutique coffee? That can't be right though, because surely they'd be spending their disposable income on firearms and ammunition if you believe the ABCNNBC media channels.
If legal firearm ownership is ever "out of mind" of the voting public then the 2nd amendment will be dead. However at the moment we do have a reasonably strong knowledge that gun ownership is legal, and you can go to a store and buy a gun.
However many people do not think that it is legal to carry a firearm. As proven many times by neighbors phoning the cops when someone's out mowing their lawn with their gun. Without public support we'll lose the right to carry firearms, if no one knows you can carry them we lose support; it's hard to support something you don't know about, if some people who don't believe that we should own and carry firearms gets upset, how upset can they get, so upset they vote for a strong gun control candidate, well they'll do that anyway so there's nothing lost.
Believe it or not, like it or not, open carry is not even acceptable to all gun-loving folk.
That is a REAL problem, carrying a gun in a IWB holster behind your shirt or jacket is no different than carrying a gun in a belt or thigh rig. You are carrying a tool, there is no more risk to you or anyone in carrying it IWB, thigh rig or any other way. The issue is those gun owners have been convinced that it is not socially acceptable to have a visibly carried gun, because people have become accustomed to others not having visibly carried guns (except the police). The only way to socialize that firearms may be carried, is for people to see the firearm. You can't sidle up to someone and furtively say "hey... buddy... wanna see my concealed carry piece?" well you can, if you're George Michael and you're in an LA restroom, but that does not help to further the cause and leads to charges that may prevent legal firearm ownership.
When the 2nd was written only criminals concealed their weapons. Today it seems that we believe that only criminals show their weapons. That's an interesting dichotomy I think.
Among the people I have spoken with about it, several view it it as socially impolite, aggressive, silly, unnecessary, brash, and tactically foolish.
Yes the tactically foolish is trotted out frequently on these kinds of discussion, because you lose the element of surprise, which is interesting since if someone attempts to commit a crime against you they have the drop on you anyway otherwise you wouldn't need the firearm in the first place. There's a phrase that's very pertinent, "Surprise is an offensive tactic". However in the main from my personal experience I can draw from a belt or thigh holster faster than my IWB since there's less to get tangled up in. So what I lose in 0.5s surprise I make up for in 0.5s deployment time for a zero loss of overall "tactical response time".
And for the record..
Do I think we should have the right to open carry? Yes.
Do I think we should actually do it? No.
Then what is the point of having the right to open carry? If you can do it, but don't think you should, then it's about as much use as a concealed carry badge.