Open vs. Concealed carry stats?

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fireman5069

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Not sure if this is the area to post this, but... Has there been any stats compiled that shows whether or not crime rates differ in states that allow open carry vs. concealed? This is my philosophy. If I carry openly I would think there is no dought in a BG's mind of my resolve to protect myself and my family vs. concealed where the BG is flipping a coin on whether I'm carrying or not. I think the rate of gun incidents would go down as a result of open carry. Conceal it and I think you invite someone to "call your bluff" and make you actually have to produce it in defense. I live in a CC state and would like to see us go to an option of choice. Any opinions?
 
Any oppinions???
We all have one.

I would like open carry & would. I believe like you that open is a deterrent if seen.

The other side is if they have made up their mind to do their mischief then it is an invitation to shoot me first.

I still like the idea of open.

My oppinion & we all have one.
 
OK. I shouldn't have asked for opinions I guess. How about stats for a few states that have different carry laws?
 
Basically you have one side that believes guns should be concealed and be the "ace in the hole" in case something bad happens, and that an openly carried weapon might make you a target for either theft, or for the first bullet in a hostile incident. The other side believes that openly carried weapons are accessed quicker if the need arises, provide a deterrent value to any bad guys, most of who are cowards looking for an easy buck, and also help desensitize the public to firearms being carried by law abiding citizens.

Both sides have valid points and it really comes down to your own tactical mindset.

As far as stats go, I don't think enough people OC even in states that allow it to have a serious impact on crime rates.
 
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Those stats would likely be inconclusive since the crime rate in any area depends on a lot more things than just open vs. concealed carry. You'd have to find two areas that were nearly identical in every way except the carry laws, and I doubt you could find such a comparison.

In some situations open carry could definitely be a deterrent, but in others concealed carry would be preferable. Opinions are going to be all over the map.
 
Those stats would likely be inconclusive since the crime rate in any area depends on a lot more things than just open vs. concealed carry.
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Ding ding ding!

There are so many variables that a simple comparison of statistics wouldn't be terribly revealing.
 
OK. I shouldn't have asked for opinions I guess. How about stats for a few states that have different carry laws?
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No studies have been done comparing crime of open carry states with concealed carry states. Such studies would undoubtedly be very problematic. Why? Most (all?) of the states allowing open carry also allow concealed carry. So if there is a difference in crime rates, determining if it is because of open carry cannot be separated from concealed carry.

Note that for such carry methods to actually reduce overall crime rates, it is going to require many times as many people carrying than already do.

Since so few do open carry, the notion that seeing the gun will deter crime to the point of changing the crime rate simply won't work. Why? Because the criminals will simply choose an easier mark than the open carry person. Say 5% of the people in a given state open carry. That means the other 95% are viable targets.

Look at it another way. Do alarm systems and barred windows reduce crime rates? Nope.

Something else to keep in mind that any changes in crime rate, even when correlated with open carry, are hard to attribute to open carry versus other factors.

Since so few open carry, there isn't going to be a change in overall crime rates at the societal level, but may be a factor in limiting crimes at the individual level for those who carry.
 
I think for the individual that open carries, he may very well be looked over as a mark, hence that crime was not commited. He is not a statistic that day. Now that we have CC in my state, maybe we can get an option of carries next. General Tso- Why are LEO harrasing citizens in a state that it's LEGAL to openly carry? That's like harrasing someone in a fast car before they're speeding. I know with open carry one has to be more aware of their surroundings and have the training needed for proper weapon retention, so I can see why it could cause some issues with the average Joe that wants to just carry a gun. Common sense has to be the rule.
 
They use the "inducing panic" scheme. Ultimately, you'll be ok. They just make it a major hassle.
 
I wonder how much harassment is true harassment and how much of it is just a LEO asking an open carrier what he's up to, etc. Who here remembers the "telephone game" from when you a kid. You tell someone something, they tell someone else, and so forth and by the end, the statement doesn't resemble the first statement at all. Picture an open carrier just doing some shopping. A soccer mom calls the police complaining of a "man with a gun scaring her children", the dispatcher tells the officer about the man with a gun, the officer responds to the scene. At this point the officer has no idea what happened, but he does see the open carrier with his holstered pistol. He approaches and questions the guy to find out the situation, and then finds out that he's just another law abiding citizen. Yet from the open carrier's point of view, he just got approached out of the blue by a cop and asked why he's carrying a gun. "Harassment".
 
I can see that. I probably too would continue to CC even if I could openly to reduce the amount of hassle. We were talking about this at work and I figured I would check to see what the concensus was. We also discussed whether bank employees should be armed. I thought it was a great idea.
 
I don't have a CCW yet, but here is my opinion on the issue.

I think both should be legal, it should be up to the individual to choose. I prefer to not draw attention to myself so I would CC. I wouldn't mind about printing though, I wear slightly large for me shirts untucked anyway, I don't mind having a bulky Glock printing slightly or barely exposing itself a little bit. Most people don't even pay attention to catch it and they might just think I have a cell phone attached to my hip.

Either way I think the world would be much safer if everyone was carrying no matter what. "An armed society is a polite society." -Heinlein.

Sorry I don't have any statistics for you, but crime rates really just depend on the area and the people in that area. In bad areas of CA, even if law abiding citizens carried, I doubt crime would drop much at all.
 
They use the "inducing panic" scheme. Ultimately, you'll be ok. They just make it a major hassle.
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It used to be that way in WA. Want to know how we changed it? By carrying openly!

No drama anymore, even in a lib-city like Seattle.
 
It used to be that way in WA. Want to know how we changed it? By carrying openly!

No drama anymore, even in a lib-city like Seattle.
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So I live in the Ypsilanti-Ann Arbor MI area. A few years ago when I got into guns, an Army buddy and I got our CPLs and we also started open carrying. We met another guy in downtown Ypsilanti who also did a lot of open carrying and apparently had been hassled by police once or twice. I didn't think much of it at the time. But flash forward about a year, when I was going through a police academy in Washtenaw County. While speaking about firearms laws, our main legal instructor started talking about Open Carry. He actually mentioned the same guy I met a year back and how he had made somewhat of a name for himself amongst the local police departments. This had actually prompted a bulletin and some re-training on Michigan open carry law for local officers, in addition to it being a teaching point at our academy.

It may be just a drop in the bucket, but there are at least 26 young police officers or soon-to-be officers in South Eastern Michigan (myself among them, though I already supported OC) who have been taught in no uncertain terms right from the Academy that Open Carry is indeed legal in the state of Michigan.
 
There are always going to be bad cops who fail to heed what is promulgated in training and attempt to enforce their own opinions on people. That is never going to go away. What we have done in WA state is made it so that is pretty much all that is left - a very small minority of rogue cops doing their own thing.

Now that the police forces in WA have widely been trained on the legality of open carry - and state preemption - we are working through the city and county governments to get those that have gun possession bans to obey the state law and drop them. Especially with the fall of the Seattle gun ban in court we are having major successes all over the state in getting the city and county ordinances revised to match state law.

You also have to remember - on the internet you are going to hear about 99% of the drama and about 1% of the no issue days of open carrying. I open carry every day, so in the last year I could easily post 250 threads of open carried at x, y and z with no issues.... but that would get boring very quickly!

In addition, you have to put the drama in perspective. You hear about maybe 10 or so cases of open carry issues on the gun forums each month? You've got to spread that out over the 40+ states that allow open carry and the thousands of people across the US that do open carry. The actual percentage of issues is pretty low.
 
I open carry most of the time. It's no big deal around here. BUT.........we do have a local character that OC's "with attitude." I see him in area businesses carrying up to 3 guns at a time. He walks around like he's not only expecting trouble, but is looking forward to it. He has a CCW. He has tried to engage me in conversation a few times but I have always been "in a hurry". He's a loud, obnoxious jerk as well as a walking argument for mental stability testing before firearms purchases. Something I'm against of course. But this guy is scary.
 
You know.... someone should start a forum for criminals to hang out in. It could be a take-off of this one called thelowroad :). Then we could lurk in their forum and see what the criminals say about us! They could have a legal section, and a strategies and tactics section, maybe a fashion section to discuss which pantyhose is most comfortable over the face... :evil:
 
You also have to remember - on the internet you are going to hear about 99% of the drama and about 1% of the no issue days of open carrying. I open carry every day, so in the last year I could easily post 250 threads of open carried at x, y and z with no issues.... but that would get boring very quickly!
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Very true. We see this everywhere people form opinions. Even people who have bad experiences at a restaurant or a car mechanic are vastly more likely to spread the word about it than someone who had a good experience. Negativity is juicy. The media plays a big role in this. Newspapers and networks just do not see any marketing value in reporting good news stories, especially if the good news is commonplace and boring. Nobody writes articles about cops who get up, do their jobs, and go home. No news network airs a piece about departments who just follow the rules. They find the one guy out of a hundred doing the wrong thing and make stories about him because that is gossip. That's what people listen to.

When's the last time someone started a thread that said "I saw a cop at the gas station today while I was carrying and he ignored me"? There's nothing to discuss there. There's no story. No drama. Nothing to get excited about. So we pick the handful of negative experiences and blow them up into an epidemic in our minds because that kind of thing is exciting. That kind of thing is something to talk about. But don't make the mistake thinking it's common.

Ask yourself this: When's the last time you got pulled over for speeding? Did you tell anyone about it? Now when's the last time you just passed a cop car on the highway and he ignored you? Did you tell anyone about that?
 
I literally just finished writing my state house/senate members In Florida to reconsider the prohibition of open carry. Not specifically because I want to OC on a day to day basis, it would just be nice if you could carry openly from A to B with any type of firearm without being in legal limbo, especially in a state where CC is so common. I just also dont want to be in violation of the law on basically a technicality if I am carrying concealed and the weapon becomes visible.
 
General Tso said:
In Ohio we can open carry, but you will be harassed by the cops, so I do not.
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General Tso said:
They use the "inducing panic" scheme. Ultimately, you'll be ok. They just make it a major hassle.
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That really depends upon where you are open carrying. In most parts of the state, it is rarely an issue. I've known people open carrying in Cleveland, Toledo, Dayton, Cincinnati without incident. I open carry in Columbus and suburbs regularly without incident, including standing in front of the Columbus Dispatch passing out literature saying they were idiots. I open carried in Barnes & Noble and the grocery store today, as a matter of fact.

The State Attorney General has issued an opinion that open carrying is legal in Ohio and it does not meet the elements of the crime for "inducing panic".

It is still possible to run into an individual LEO who is acting like a "Richard", but I think your blanket assertion that everyone in Ohio will be hassled by the cops is demonstrably exaggerated.
 
The State Attorney General has issued an opinion that open carrying is legal in Ohio and it does not meet the elements of the crime for "inducing panic".
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I guess that it is good that the AG did this, but there should never have been any reason for such a statement to be made.
 
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