Open Carry owner robbed of his own gun

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rogerstg said:
But consider that millions of police officers have open carried over the decades. How many times do they get robbed of their firearm while carrying?
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According to the FBI, from 1994 to 2003, 52 police officers were killed with their own firearm... so at least 52 time in a decade period. Probably more.

And that's with weapon retention training and (one would hope) retention holsters, both of which are uncommon to completely absent among the open carry public.
 
This guy wasn't an "open-carrier".

He was a guy that happened to be "open-carrying" a firearm. He certainly wasn't one of us.

By the way, in 2011, a uniformed police officer in Tennessee was using the urinal in a restaurant when a man seized upon him and attempted to take his sidearm. With his gun hand, the officer held the weapon in its holster. With his other hand, he drew his knife and cut his attacker off of his gun.
 
There's serious opinions on both sides of the "OC question" and something to be said about each side's point of view. Just guessing here but I'd bet that most who do carry a weapon - concealed or not... have never really needed one in that once in a lifetime terrible moment. As a result we get a lot of opinions that might not be based on real world hard experience. I'm hoping that almost everyone will live their lives and never find out about that moment. Here's a further prayer that our world remains the mostly peaceful place it is (no matter how many horrible true stories we hear about).

Now for something to consider if you carry a weapon and are prepared to defend your life or your family.... There are a small number of bad actors that never carry a gun because they're planning on taking yours..... Some of the trainers that worked for me could successfully take almost any uniform officer's sidearm in a face to face or "from the rear" situation - even with the officer in a training situation knowing that was the tactic they'd have to defend against. Weapons were easily taken even from good quality security holsters (at least they were state of the art for the early nineties - I don't know anything about holster improvements since then....).

This is just opinion on my part - but I'll pass on ever carrying openly if I have a choice - unless it's out in the field where there are few, if any, people around, period. Giving any potential opponent the opportunity to choose the place, time, and manner of attack to take a sidearm doesn't strike me as any kind of good tactics. In training we always emphasized to our officers that roughly one third of all officer killings were done with their own gun and I imagine that figure is pretty much the situation still today. In one horrific incident down here in the Miami area one unarmed man killed three cops in a single incident - and, of course, he used one of the officer's weapons to do the deed. I was once involved in a struggle with a large, crazy guy where three offficers (including their sergeant -me) were trying to take him to the funny farm... No blows were struck -he was just a big young guy who was resisting every effort to place him in cuffs and this was before tasers, etc. One of my officers successfully did a smooth hip toss to take him down and all of us were then rolling around on the ground. Unfortunately, his revolver was neatly stripped from its holster during the hip throw so we were in the bad position of having a loose handgun laying on the young man's chest as we struggled to subdue him. Hope I'm never that scared again... we won or I wouldn't be writing this - but open carry is a serious hazard to the one with the weapon - and always will be. One of the basic tenets every rookie cop learns early on is just how hazardous his/her own weapon is to the officer (or anyone else carrying a sidearm).

I'll get down off of my soapbox now....
 
Open carry would have prevented . . . .


Oh, wait. :p

On a more serious note, while I'm sorry that the young man lost a brand new firearm, it certainly does not appear that he exercised the best judgment. Open carry issue aside, he was out walking at 2 a.m. and apparently let a stranger get pretty close.
 
MedWheeler said:
This guy wasn't an "open-carrier".

He was a guy that happened to be "open-carrying" a firearm. He certainly wasn't one of us.
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There is no distinction. Open carry is open carry. You cannot separate the smart open carriers aka "you" or "us" from the ones with no situational awareness. He made a tactically unsound decision and paid for it. The bright side to this, is he lived.
 
Wishoot said:
Not sure how you can draw a fair comparison between a cop and Joe Blow OC'ing.
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You can't. Cops intentionally put themselves within arms reach of dangerous, violent criminals all the time. Cops run down, corner, and capture dangerous, violent criminals, and force those criminals into a situation where attacking the cop is their only way not to go to jail/prison. Joe Blow doesn't have to deal with that.

ClickClickD'oh said:
According to the FBI, from 1994 to 2003, 52 police officers were killed with their own firearm... so at least 52 time in a decade period. Probably more.

And that's with weapon retention training and (one would hope) retention holsters, both of which are uncommon to completely absent among the open carry public.
Click to expand...

I always open carry with a retention holster and recommend others do the same.

I also wouldn't try to arrest anybody to conduct any traffic stops or try to arbitrate a couple's domestic dispute.
 
lemaymiami said:
There's serious opinions on both sides of the "OC question" and something to be said about each side's point of view. Just guessing here but I'd bet that most who do carry a weapon - concealed or not... have never really needed one in that once in a lifetime terrible moment. As a result we get a lot of opinions that might not be based on real world hard experience. I'm hoping that almost everyone will live their lives and never find out about that moment. Here's a further prayer that our world remains the mostly peaceful place it is (no matter how many horrible true stories we hear about).

Now for something to consider if you carry a weapon and are prepared to defend your life or your family.... There are a small number of bad actors that never carry a gun because they're planning on taking yours..... Some of the trainers that worked for me could successfully take almost any uniform officer's sidearm in a face to face or "from the rear" situation - even with the officer in a training situation knowing that was the tactic they'd have to defend against. Weapons were easily taken even from good quality security holsters (at least they were state of the art for the early nineties - I don't know anything about holster improvements since then....).

This is just opinion on my part - but I'll pass on ever carrying openly if I have a choice - unless it's out in the field where there are few, if any, people around, period. Giving any potential opponent the opportunity to choose the place, time, and manner of attack to take a sidearm doesn't strike me as any kind of good tactics. In training we always emphasized to our officers that roughly one third of all officer killings were done with their own gun and I imagine that figure is pretty much the situation still today. In one horrific incident down here in the Miami area one unarmed man killed three cops in a single incident - and, of course, he used one of the officer's weapons to do the deed. I was once involved in a struggle with a large, crazy guy where three offficers (including their sergeant -me) were trying to take him to the funny farm... No blows were struck -he was just a big young guy who was resisting every effort to place him in cuffs and this was before tasers, etc. One of my officers successfully did a smooth hip toss to take him down and all of us were then rolling around on the ground. Unfortunately, his revolver was neatly stripped from its holster during the hip throw so we were in the bad position of having a loose handgun laying on the young man's chest as we struggled to subdue him. Hope I'm never that scared again... we won or I wouldn't be writing this - but open carry is a serious hazard to the one with the weapon - and always will be. One of the basic tenets every rookie cop learns early on is just how hazardous his/her own weapon is to the officer (or anyone else carrying a sidearm).

I'll get down off of my soapbox now....
Click to expand...

I think that if your sidearm could flop out of the holster from rolling around, holster technology has indeed come a long ways since then
 
Posted by Warp: You can't [draw a fair comparison between a cop and Joe Blow OC'ing]. Cops intentionally put themselves within arms reach of dangerous, violent criminals all the time. Cops run down, corner, and capture dangerous, violent criminals, and force those criminals into a situation where attacking the cop is their only way not to go to jail/prison. Joe Blow doesn't have to deal with that.
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Very true.

And while it is off topic for this thread, it is also important to keep that distinction in mind when discussing tactics and training. Violent criminal actors rarely attack uniformed officers by surprise at close range.

It can and does happen, but rarely.
 
lemaymiami said:
There's serious opinions on both sides of the "OC question" and something to be said about each side's point of view. Just guessing here but I'd bet that most who do carry a weapon - concealed or not... have never really needed one in that once in a lifetime terrible moment. As a result we get a lot of opinions that might not be based on real world hard experience.
Click to expand...

Very true also. What so many OC opponents don't understand is, one can OC for reasons other than just SD while walking in a dark alley on the bad side of town @ 2 a.m. or struttin' around in Starbucks dressed in tactikool wear trying to impress gun shy soccer moms. OC has wider parameters than that.
 
A lot of comments and an article about the 2am.

While I do, in fact, work a 9-5 job and wouldn't be outside at 2am unless my home was burning down. There are however, millions of people who work odd hours and night jobs. So it really doesnt matter if it happened at 2am or 2pm IMO.
 
First of all, I see nothing funny about this circumstance. Having had the bad guy get the drop on me before, it is a situation in which one is rarely able to predict, thus prevent. And given the fact that he had just bought it, and that it wasn't loaded, makes it even less so humorous to me.

OTOH, I was in a convenience store a few years back when a thug, without any warning, reached straight at me and grabbed hold of my revolver. If not for the fact that I was wearing a retention holster, things may very well have gone very bad for me. But because I was able to break his hold by coming down on his wrist with my elbow, his attempt back fired on him.

Bad guys can get the drop on anyone, I don't care how aware one is, whether carrying OC or CC, it can happen. As a matter of fact, an Az. DPS officer who was shot just shot two days ago while conducting a routine traffic stop. 3 women and 2 men got the drop on him, and it ended up in a shoot out with back officers as well. 3 of the suspects got away, one is in custody with a gun shot would to the chest.

I just don't understand how anyone can derive any level of humor when someone else's life is in peril.

GS
 
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Warp you're quite right. On that date, the particular officer involved was, indeed, carrying his sidearm in the very old fashioned original issue holster (would have looked right at home in the 1950's). Even so, the point I was trying to make was that even folks who should know what they're doing might just find any openly carried weapon a severe liability... The day that incident occurred I was carrying the best security holster money could buy - but that was a personal choice. We weren't to the point in my agency when we were issued high quality gear. We did get there, but not until years later.

Kleanbore... violent actors deliberately and in cold blooded fashion attack officers all too frequently for my liking. Look no further than the the sniper being hunted down up north as I write this. In my own experience I worked with a very skilled guy (one of the best officer survival instructors we had...). He got into officer survival teaching after nearly losing his life one night to an attack that left him out cold while his attacker removed his sidearm and prepared to execute him... Here's how it happened - He was the first to respond to an alarm at a large discount store at 10pm one night. Being physically strong with lots of confidence he wasn't waiting for anyone. As he approached the darkened front of the store he found two young men walking away. Not seeing any break he still stopped them to ask what they were doing there. Being over-confident he engaged them in conversation to see what they were up to (they'd actually just exited the store after a "stay behind" burglary and only broken out one bottom pane of a window as they left so only the alarm gave any indication of what was actually going on...). One of the young men moved away distracting the officer just long enough for the other one to cold cock with his fist to the side of the head, knocking him out right there. The only thing that saved him that night was an elderly couple walking their dog. The two young men fled on foot taking the officer's weapon with them. For years later we heard rumors that the gun involved was being rented out occasionally to anyone needing a gun for a night...

For everyone... don't kid yourself about what you might end up facing some day. Cops aren't the only ones who walk into situations (knowingly or not) where the folks you encounter aren't exactly civilized... If you choose to carry a weapon and conduct yourself as a legally armed citizen, there might really be consequences that range all the way from the best outcome to the worst. Me, I learned the hard way to expect the worst that my fellow man might bring my way... but that's just me.

I haven't carried a sidearm even once (open or concealed) since the day I retired from police work 19 years ago now. I've had a concealed carry permit that came with my retirement (and renewed it every five years since then) but never carried even once. That was my personal choice -others can do as they like. Yes, I do keep a weapon nearby - but as for carrying that's been my choice.
 
The linked article tells us nothing.

Some of the articles I read said the victim was walking down the sidewalk showing his gun to and discussing it with his friend.

Other articles like the linked one make no mention of this occurring.

These details are important because they help show two different mind sets, intentions of the victim and circumstances.

Surely the media would not deliberately leave out facts to slant the incident a certain way.

Oh don't call me Shirley
 
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I don't believe it for a minute...

Certainly not as presented. Regardless of the limited information, I get the distinct impression that I, as a news consumer, am being "handled" by the story. That being the case, I assume that it is at best collaterally dishonest through withheld information if not a deliberate lie through manipulated "facts".

Have, do and will continue to O/C.
 
ApacheCoTodd said:
Certainly not as presented. Regardless of the limited information, I get the distinct impression that I, as a news consumer, am being "handled" by the story. That being the case, I assume that it is at best collaterally dishonest through withheld information if not a deliberate lie through manipulated "facts".
Click to expand...

I get that impression from the majority of mainstream media reports, no matter who they come from.

Fortunately I only have to deal with that when somebody posts or links something from the news to a message forum.
 
If this turns into, or wanders much further down the path, of OC vs CC then this thread is done. One is not better than the other and both have something to offer. Anything further on that route will be deleted and the thread closed. Clear?
 
This is about the same kind of conversation we get into about using MSR's for hunting.

One side presents a distorted view about what might happen, and character slander is common.

The other side presents facts and is laughed off by their opponents as being exactly what they said they were.

We had the same national conversation about race 35 years ago and it's still a point of conflict.

Let's look at it from just one view - if open carry was tactically unsound and endangered the carrier, then uniformed officers wouldn't be doing it.

If concealed carry was tactically unsound and endangered the carrier, then plain clothes officers, detectives, and agents wouldn't be doing it.

What's the difference? One works in the public eye to act in defense of the people as a community resource to keep the peace. Another works in plain sight but not in the public eye to act in defense of the people as a community resource to keep the peace.

Plenty of people open carry in communities that have long accepted the practice and see no issues with it. Plenty of people conceal carry in communities that outlawed open carry because they the authorities were reacting to incidents and attempting to limit their citizens rights. Open carry became anathema because of it.


Those who now speak out against open carry are largely doing so from a perspective they live in a higher social order - not a defensive or tactical one. It's class warfare, just the same as the war over MSR's in hunting. I see the same ideas and innuendo crop up constantly in both, only subhumans who have no class would do it.

That is even more frequently spoken aloud when groups of males gather at ranges where everyone is open carrying. The hypocrisy is astounding.

The elephant in the room about Open Carry is socio economic class, and the jockeying to allow it or not based on that. Not tactics. Both have advantages and disadvantages, but only one is acceptable to society members who think they are superior in their outlook to the others.

Exactly why the discussion isn't High Road - the opponents aren't taking it, and those they despise aren't standing for it.

All we can do is agree to disagree. We have far more important things to discuss, like, zombies, the end of the world as we know it, and whether the AR poops where it eats.
 
I OC and the situational awareness at ALL TIMES is the most important thing to remember. Yes the person made several glaring (to me anyway) mistakes or lapses in good judgment. BUT hopefully he learned something from this incident. We all can armchair quarterback the story and say we could do it differently. Personally I hope to never be in those shoes one day but if so my training MAY help me prevail. As with any endeavor you have to work/play smart to win.;)
 
351 WINCHESTER said:
The only time I oc is while hunting/fishing. OC in public is just asking for trouble.
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I disagree.

Also, I am going to quote what the moderator just posted today. If you read the thread you will see it.

Robert said:
If this turns into, or wanders much further down the path, of OC vs CC then this thread is done. One is not better than the other and both have something to offer. Anything further on that route will be deleted and the thread closed. Clear?
Click to expand...
 
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