The thing I never understood about open carry can be summarized in a question: If guns aren't intimidating, how are they supposed to deter a criminal?
This question comes to mind as I read this excessively-titled Salon piece on open carry laws. It's got some surprises (For instance, it's legal to open carry a handgun in Connecticut but not in Texas), and a nice discussion about psychological research into what happens when people are around guns. Hint: The effects are not happy ones.
That said, the topic of open carry brings to light the inherent contradiction in the incorporation of firearms into one's life. For millions of Americans, firearms are a totally normal and fun part of their life and lifestyle. Guns are tools or toys that need to be handled properly. Yet, they are inherently and extremely dangerous objects. After all, they were invented precisely to make violence easy. They're used to put bullets into 100,000 Americans every year, and so when the millions of Americans for whom firearms play no role in their life or lifestyle encounter a gun, they only see the danger.
For the most part, these two parts of American culture don't mix. But open carry brings them together in a very frank way.
The Salon piece points out interesting new facts about the effects of guns on people who aren't carrying, and who aren't criminals. It highlights psychological research that shows that people's instincts kick in when they see dangerous threats, such as any gun in the vicinity.
Even when you’re not holding a gun, you can be psychologically affected by seeing one. Since 1967, researchers have been observing the “weapons effect,” a phenomenon in which the mere presence of a weapon can stimulate aggressive behavior. Of course, a person doesn’t respond to a gun the way a cartoon bull reacts to the matador’s cape; we aren’t spontaneously enraged every time we notice a firearm. But empirical research has repeatedly shown that when people are already aggravated, seeing a gun will motivate them to behave more aggressively.
That is, firearms not only make violence more easy to perpetrate, their mere presence leads to more situations where violence might ensue. People react to these threats.
Proponents of open carry are hoping to overcome these instinctive human reactions by desensitizing people to seeing strange civilians carrying instruments of violence around with them. Quoth an activist:
Our philosophy... is, if we can get people used to seeing AK-47s and AR-15s and deer rifles and shotguns and .22s and things of that nature, when we finally get open carry of pistols passed it won’t be such a big deal.
"Things of that nature." He's talking about objects invented to make violence very easy, very quick, and very permanent, yet expecting normal people to just keep acting normally around these objects. At the same time, they expect "bad guys" to be intimidated at the mere sight of these objects, even though career criminals already have abnormally low levels of fear. That is the contradiction that doesn't make sense.
The article itself doesn't mention deterrence, but a quick search online turns up all sorts of examples of people making the case that open carry deters crime: "Just the mere sight of a gun on a guy’s belt is a deterrent,” said Bob Godell, owner of The Gun Doctor in Longview." One author calls deterrence a "mission critical aspect" to open carry. (Note for those not in on the lingo, this means that without deterrence, open carry is a pointless failure.)
If you don't conceal your weapon, you give up the element of surprise in the event you are attacked and need to defend yourself. However, by carrying your firearm openly, you may deter a crime from happening in the first place, which would then lead to a better outcome.
The thing is, they're right to some extent. Some criminals
have been deterred by the sight of someone armed. At the same time, they're not right to the extent they might like. Other robbers have been
emboldened by the prospect of stealing a wallet AND a gun.
But the problem of course is that out of all of the people someone lugging their gun around is bound to encounter in a given day, nearly zero will be criminals out to get them. This is the classic failure in risk assessment when people buy firearms for personal protection--- by making themselves a bit safer against the once in less-than-a-lifetime chance of being attacked by a stranger, they make them and everyone around them less safe at all other places and all other times.
And then, the contradiction comes back: At the same time that criminals are supposed to be frightened by the sight of a gun, the rest of us aren't, because guns aren't dangerous.
Normal people are aware of the risk that every gun poses, and are therefore apt to find firearms a threat no matter when. Even when the carriers aren't prone to purposefully shoot someone, being around a gun increases one's risk of being shot far more than one's risk of being shot when no gun is present. No matter who pulls its trigger, the gun doesn't care where the bullet goes. The trigger is pulled and its mechanism springs into action. Just take a look at the never-ending stream of Gun fails documented by David Waldman--- people being unwittingly shot from guns that happened to be in the vicinity. Guns do go off on their own, and people drop them, or play with them, or they sit down wrong and the holster squeezes the trigger, etc (all of these happen nearly every week). And of course, this being America, you can never be sure when you go somewhere that someone won't try to shoot up the place. Not to mention the fact that most murders and attempted murders involve people who are seeking self-help justice. We're supposed to accept this barbarity as a normal cost of other people's lifestyles draped in extremist readings of an obsolete constitutional amendment. (Yes, obsolete, but that isn't my idea; even Justice Scalia pointed out in the Heller decision that the amendment's stated purpose is no longer true.)
I suppose one might say that a good person has nothing to fear from a good guy with an openly carried gun, and that this is just overblowing things. (The ruder sorts might say that these people are cowards). But as the research shows, in the real world this fear is completely normal, because human beings can't read strangers' minds. Human beings instinctively see dangerous items as threats--- guns, snakes, drones flying at head height with lawnmower blades spinning beneath them, and so forth. If someone is familiar with the particular dangerous item, or the person in control of it, they can let their guard back down. Open carry activists hope this familiarization strategy will work in a broader sense. But it doesn't.
When you see an unfamiliar person with a dangerous object, they're a threat. Period. Even when people see police officers' service weapons, they have the same physical reactions, and it's only the reassurance of the familiar badge that gives people confidence that the firearm isn't a real threat. But when normal people see a stranger going around with a strange gun, our minds react: DANGER. And we often get aggressive in response to the threat. That's the reality on the ground.
So when you read about incidents like this one where "activists" are "expressing their rights" by carrying (surprisingly expensive) instruments of violence as if they were something to be proud to own. And some other people say they were frightened. And the carriers insist that they're totally not out to intimidate anyone, I ask myself:
If guns aren't intimidating, how are they supposed to deter a criminal?