The author is a moron, and an anti-gunner who thinks having a permit that he never uses gives him crediblity. He's wrong.
They’ve simply decided that eliminating open carry in their store, referred to by gun advocates as “constitutional carry,” is the right thing to do, particularly for the customers who don’t openly carry guns.
"Constitutional carry" does not refer to open carry. "Constitutional carry" is lawful permitless carry.
After the bans, one gun rights group naturally responded to the request by Walmart for customers to refrain from displaying weapons in their stores by encouraging its members to open carry.
What gun rights group did this? I don't believe it.
For much of our history, some Americans have believed that the right to keep and bear arms is what ensures their freedom. As the old maxim goes, God made Man, but Sam Colt made him equal; private firearms ownership is said to have democratized (to some people) law enforcement in early America and supposedly allowed those who could obtain and effectively use guns to live without fear of being victimized by others who could obtain and effectively use guns. Many of the people who engage in open carry today do so because they believe they’re protecting themselves and everyone else by being armed; their ability to open carry, they believe, provides both protection to others and deterrence to a few — a tradition that they believe goes back to colonial times and a public service for which all of the rest of us should be thankful.
BS. Open carry advocates -- in general -- don't equate
open carry with their ability to defend themselves and/or others. They consider having a gun to be the crucial factor in having the ability to defend. They advocate open carry because for many people, in certain climates and with certain wardrobes, open carry is simply easier and more comfortable.
I needed my gun for a little more than a year, and I carried it everywhere, everyday. But then I stopped. Once the last of the trials connected to my client’s murder was over, I kept finding more and more times when I couldn’t justify having the gun on me, let alone force everyone else around me to have to think about it. And, like the agent said, once I didn’t need it all the time, I knew I probably didn’t need it at all. I haven’t carried it since.
How do you know when you might need it and when you won't need it? I can't recall a single mass or school shooting event in the United States in which the shooter(s) called each victim beforehand and alerted them that he (or she) was going to shoot up [insert name of venue] at xx:yy o'clock on [insert date], so be prepared.
