The PA mom who legally open carried to her son’s soccer game has had her permit restored. This is a good thing, because unlike “open carry events”, this woman wasn’t looking to cause trouble, she just wanted to go her child’s game and relax – it shouldn’t have mattered even for a moment if she was packing, no matter what some allegedly pro-gun people said at the time.
I thought long and hard about this issue – I’m a big fan of open carry in theory, but a lot of the time lately I feel like Open Carry is being abused as a way to get attention and is actually hurting our cause rather than helping it. However, on this issue I felt like this was exactly how I’d want to see open carry done – casually, without drawing attention to one’s person while so doing.
I’m very pleased to see that rule of law has been upheld in this issue.
In the past week, I’ve spotted folks open-carrying (carrying openly?) in a Best Buy and a Wendy’s. I’d be foolish to expand their incident-free patronage to be a sign of franchise-wide comfort levels with the practice, but at the very least view it as a positive sign of acceptance in the area (central and southern Indiana). I don’t carry openly myself, but am always happy to see folks exercising the right.