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Somehow, I don't think the legalization of OC of handguns will make OCT leave their black rifles at home. They come across as an in your face group that will keep looking for ways to get in front of a camera and on the news.

How many more terrified teenage employees of fast food restaurants are going to be on the news because OCT didn't even bother to tell police they were going to show up someplace to demonstrate? Why not? Wanted to make a bigger splash? That happened last week a few miles from my house. The poor kids running a fast food restaurant were scared to death. If I was one of their parents, I know how I would feel about OC after that. Real bad guys hold these places up. It's not a nice part of town. The employee's calls to 911 brought a large number of police cars that could have been left on patrol if the police already known about the demonstration. And MDA was there to bring what sounded like the most common sense statements of the day to the camera...just pass a law that does not allow people like this to carry these guns.

It does not inspire trust or acceptance in people to bring an AR (the public does not see a modern sporting rifle) into a Walmart, a fast food restaurant, or any other place in an urban setting just because you can and you want more rights to carry other guns too. Sorry, but that is not the impression I want of gun owners in the general public's mind. It will lead nowhere we want to go.

If gun owners are perceiving the tactics of the OC demonstrations unfavorably, imagine how the gun-ignorant in our state are. Recently a friend who is neutral on guns told me she would vote in a heartbeat for a politician who will outlaw these "hillbillies" (her words) from carrying an AR publicly. I for one am sick of seeing them on the news myself. If a law is passed that stops OC of long guns, it will be on the heads of those who used this freedom so rudely it forced lawmakers to put a stop to it. If your teammate keeps running up the score for the other side, do you still see him as a person you want on your team? Is it betraying your team to ask him to please just stop doing it? Then failing that, to flat out demand he knock it off and sit on the bench? The idea we must all remain silent for fear the public will see us as divided just makes the public believe we are all approving of this behavior. We can agree with open carry and disagree with tactics that give a terrible impression of us all.