California Unloaded Open Carry – February 7, 2010
With regards to my current interest in unloaded open carry, the last few weeks have been interesting. I have been contacted by numerous television stations and newspapers for interviews regarding unloaded open carry and the attempts by the Brady Campaign to strong arm businesses into banning law-abiding citizens from exercising their legal right to openly carry an unloaded firearm in their establishments. Thus far, Starbucks has stood strong, vowing to abide by federal, state, and local laws. California Pizza Kitchen and Peet’s Coffee have bowed to the pressure from the Brady Campaign and have banned legal UOCers from exercising their rights in the stores.
I am a firm believer in property rights. I understand that it is fully legal for stores to create policies to control who enters their stores. But I would also like to point out that there is a limit to the extent that this can be done. I would argue that companies are not legally allowed to ban people of a certain race or sexual orientation from entering their establishments. Also, if a company were to bar people with tattoos, piercings, or certain hair stylings, I believe that businesses would be treading on thin ice. As in the case that people with exposed firearms on their persons might possibly make other customers uncomfortable, the same could be said in all of these other scenarios as well. The question then comes down to exactly where the line gets drawn between looking out for the comfort level of certain patrons versus the rights of others, who are not breaking the law in any manner whatsoever, to enter a business.
A couple other things have developed as well. On January 14, Lt. Ray Lunny of the San Mateo Sheriff’s Office issued a press release with regards to unloaded open carry (http://www.co.sanmateo.ca.us/Attachments/sheriffs/pdfs/Press%20Releases/20100114_opencarry.pdf). At the bottom of that memo, Lunny included a “Caution” section. That Caution section reads:
CAUTION
Open carry advocates create a potentially very dangerous situation. When police are called to a “man with a gun” call they typically are responding to a situation about which they have few details other than that one or more people are present at a location and are armed. Officers may have no idea that these people are simply “exercising their rights.” Consequently, the law enforcement response is one of “hypervigilant urgency” in order to protect the public from an armed threat. Should the gun carrying person fail to comply with a law enforcement instruction or move in a way that could be construed as threatening, the police are forced to respond in kind for their own protection. It’s well and good in hindsight to say the gun carrier was simply “exercising their rights” but the result could be deadly. Simply put, it is not recommended to openly carry firearms.
First of all, I do not necessarily believe that it is appropriate for law enforcement agencies to make recommendations to the public on what citizens should and should not do. The Legislature and other elected bodies are charged with making the laws. Law enforcement has a duty to enforce the laws. When law enforcement feels that they can start deciding which rights that citizens are and are not allowed to maintain, that is a dangerous situation. It is a slippery slope that cannot lead to a positive end result.
Secondly, a close reading of the Lunny’s Caution section shows that his agency is advising officers to respond to law-abiding open carriers with “hypervigilant urgency”. This is fancy code for telling officers to draw their weapons on unloaded open carriers, without any regards for how the person is acting. If the open carrier were acting in any sort of combative or threatening manner or brandishing their firearm (which is illegal), then such “hyperigilant” responses by law enforcement would be appropriate. But the mere presence of a gun on a person who is acting calmly and not doing anything illegal does not warrant having officers draw their weapons on that person. Doing so significantly increases the chances of the officer accidentally discharging his or her weapon, causing grave bodily harm to the open carrier. By stating that “Should the gun carrying person fail to comply with a law enforcement instruction or move in a way that could be construed as threatening, the police are forced to respond in kind for their protection”, Lunny is basically authorizing officers to shoot any open carrier who does not hear or who misinterprets any instruction by an officer. And the part about open carriers making any move that could be construed as threatening seems to grant officers permission wide discretion in determining whether to shoot an open carrier.
All of this is going way too far on the part of law enforcement, which is attempting to hide behind notions of “officer safety”. Claims of officer safety should not give law enforcement the right to willfully violate the civil rights of law-abiding citizens who are doing absolutely nothing wrong. To think that an officer in the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office feels that it is okay to shoot law-abiding citizens is outrageous.
Lest people start to believe that I am misinterpreting Lt. Lunny’s press release and that this is just an isolated incident, I would like to remind everyone that I was told that Union City Police Department is advising all of its officers to approach all unloaded open carriers with their guns drawn and to prone to open carriers out, regardless of how the individual is behaving. This is not common sense. But it goes even further than that.
On February 7, I became aware of a Detective in East Palo Alto who made some posts on Facebook regarding unloaded open carry (http://kevinthomason.blogspot.com/2010/02/local-cop-advocates-shooting-law.html). This cop gloated about harassing a law-abiding open carrier last week by proning him out and giving him a “reminder” of things. He then shockingly made an off-hand remark about how, once they have open carriers proned out, if the officers were to shoot an open carrier, they would get rewarded with a 2-week vacation from their department. And to add insult to injury, he claimed that others should laugh at open carriers because “they can only dream to have a ccw.”
In the past, I have always been supportive of law enforcement. Until I began open carrying, my interactions with law enforcement were quite limited and generally positive for the most part. Whenever a news story would arise about officers going too far or about a rogue officer doing something inappropriate, I would always chalk it up to that being an isolated case and be comfortable in the feeling that the vast majority of law enforcement officers were good people who were on my side and were out there to protect me. But now that I see officers behaving in such ways with regards to unloaded open carry, which is completely legal in California, perhaps it’s time for me to start re-evaluating exactly who law enforcement is really out there looking after. Unfortunately, I am starting to get that feeling that they are not looking out for law-abiding citizens such as me. Perhaps they are only looking out for themselves. And that is very disappointing.
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