Something about this argument that very few people will do it so let's risk everything for it, seems like it is not very well thought out. There is one issue that is brought up each and every time and the OC crowd refuses to acknowledge the issue and address it. Slapping the issue off as if it is not a real concern is not the same as addressing the issue. If OC leaders cannot manage to sell CHL holders on OC, there is no way they are going to sell the other 98% of the population. Yep... OC is not going to happen in Texas.
OK, I'll address it. The petition for open carry of handguns in Texas, opened to drum up support for a bill for the 2009 session, now has 70,000 signatures. That is roughly one-sixth the number of CHL holders as of the most recent numbers I can find (402,000 in 2009), who in turn represent about 2% of the total Texas population. So, overall, the number of people who both knew about the petition and cared enough to sign it represents about three tenths of a percent of the population of Texas.
That may not sound like much of a "fan base" for open carry, I grant. However, how many people in Texas, say, have a PhD? If it follows the national average, about one half of one percent. What say we enact legislation prohibiting the open display of intelligence by the owner of an advanced degree? This is post-9/11 after all; wouldn't want any of those "fringe" nuclear physicists or inorganic chemists getting any bright ideas. Or Chas, how about your profession? There are about 93,000 members of the Texas Bar; the difference between the number of petition signers and the number of lawyers, as a percentage of total population, is a rounding error. What if the majority got tired of all the cheesy personal injury, SS advocacy and bad drug ads and enacted legislation banning legal ads from all media, to keep all that unpleasant business out of sight?
"Minority rights"; compared to the full population of the State of Texas, the 400k people who have a CHL, the population of Lubbock, TX while Tech's in session, are a distant minority. Yet you assert your "right" to carry concealed. What you really have is State permission to exercise a fundamental tenet of your Constitutional right; the right to "bear" (equivalently defined as to carry and make use of) arms. Texans as a State got this permission by suffering the horror of the Luby's massacre, and the resulting concerted effort of a very small minority to convince the majority that concealed carry's benefits outweighed its risks. Individually, you got that permission by proving to the State that you could safely handle a firearm in a highly-controlled situation, and that you have attended a State-sponsored education course on conflict resolution and State firearms law. Oh yeah, and you paid $140 for the first 4 years, $70 for every 4 years thereafter to gain and retain this permission to exercise your right. If the State required continuing education and a $70 fee in order to vote, or to be a journalist, or to argue your legal case before a jury, you'd be screaming to anyone who'll listen about infringement of rights. Yet because it's guns, you say pay the money, hide your gun and be thankful. In Texas, no less; stereotypically regarded as the most gun-friendly state in the Union. The state that, historically, is REALLY the most unrestrictive is up in New England; Vermont, which is and always has been so unrestrictive about modes of carry that it doesn't even offer a concealed carry license for reciprocity with other states.
Saying you want OC to protect you in case you accidentally display your firearm is like a person saying public intoxication should be legal in case they accidentally get drunk. Actually, it is even sillier than that, since accidental display is not illegal. One person out of several hundred thousand does not a precedent make. Your odds of dying in a traffic accident are far higher.
It's one reason out of very many that OC proponents state. It is by no means the main reason. It is A reason that CHL holders SHOULD support OC; it benefits you as well, by allowing you the choice between OC or CC as you deem prudent. However, the main reasons I support OC in Texas are far broader:
* OC places fewer restrictions on clothing. A person CCing has to mix comfort with concealment; an IWB holster, with an undershirt inside to prevent chafing and an overshirt outside to conceal. Not conducive in the slightest to being outside for any length of time during a typical Texas summer.
* OC allows fewer restrictions on the type of weapon. Again, you have to mix comfort with concealment, and depending on your clothing and body type it can be hard to conceal the weapon you are most comfortable with. You are more often restricted to a smaller-framed, lighter pistol, that either kicks so hard at the range you avoid practicing with it, or has suboptimal terminal ballistics like a .32 or .380. Tell the truth; if you could properly conceal that full-size 1911, or Beretta, or whatever, you'd take it over a Bersa Thunder or Kel-Tec mousegun anyday.
* OC is, unequivocally, faster to draw from than CC. Period. CCers can argue all they want how pretty darn close they can get, but an unobstructed pistol at 3:00 OWB is always the benchmark. If it were faster to draw from concealment, you'd never see a gun because police officers would conceal all the time for performance reasons.
* OC is a visual deterrent. In addition to it being faster, police officers carry at 3:00 because that gun is, at all times, a signal that the officer can handle any situation. To those who state that OC would just get you shot first, I have two rebuttals: first, how was your daydream? When carrying, openly OR concealed, you should be in Col. Cooper's Condition Yellow at all times. A person who was shot before they had a chance to draw got blindsided. Second, you can only get shot when the bad guy has a gun. An assailant with a baseball bat or a knife is going to take one look at you and find someone else to work over. Moreover, bad guys know Sun Tzu just as well as we do; you never commit to a fair fight. Guns are force equalizers; if you as a bad guy know I have a gun, even if you have a gun, you're going to want to point it at someone else.
