"Why do you open-carry all the time?"

10 April 2013   "Why do you open-carry all the time?"  This is a question I get asked now and again.  The reason it popped in my head today was because a close friend of mine who is a waitress at a local restaurant and studying to be a constitutional lawyer brought something to my attention the other night.  I was sitting with my five year old daughter at the counter eating our dinner when she sat next to me and told me that a gentleman had approached her and asked if I was a police officer.  She said I wasn't.  This gentleman, an older man and a Vietnam Vet, pointed out that I was carrying a gun and asked her why.  My close friend, in her charming and blunt "shoot-from-the-hip" fashion and in her sweet, Southern Belle voice, just replied "He's exercising his Constitutional Right to carry."

In Tennessee I have a Handgun Carry Permit, which allows me to carry open or concealed.  I sometimes carry concealed but more often I am carrying right out in the open.  The reason I do this is simple:  Americans today have been "pussified."  So many Americans are so afraid of guns that if you even bring the topic up, they look at you in disbelief, usually rendered speechless.  People have been so brain-washed by politicians and the media that when they see firearms in public they get scared shitless.  My purpose is simple, and I feel more people who carry should do the same:  Open carry if it is legal in your state to do so, because the more folks who start seeing firearms being carried by law-abiding citizens everyday, and not committing crimes, will start changing the minds of those who don't understand the 2nd Amendment and firearms in general.  The more they get used to seeing their friends and neighbors carrying firearms, the more they will be comfortable around them.  Maybe I am a one man crusader in this, and if I am, so be it.  I want to congratulate all of you who have the balls to open carry, and I want to commend my close friend who stood up for me at the restaurant that night, because she "gets it."  We need more people on our side, the side of the Constitution, just like her.