Open Carry on the Move in Five States

Activists are looking at five states for legalizing open carry this next coming legislative session. I may not agree with the wisdom of open carrying in all situations, but it ought to be an option for people, and certainly not illegal. It may surprise some, but I have OC’d on a few occasions while hiking, and also at the NRA convention one year.

I’ve generally been pretty hostile to its use as an activism method, in the belief that it had the potential to cause a serious backlash, but to date we’ve demonstrated the Brady’s can’t raise money on the issue, and even in California, they couldn’t pass an outright ban. I’m not going to become an advocate, but I will at least accept that, based on current evidence, it’s not creating any kind of backlash, or giving our enemies anything they can really use against us.

Voting While Armed

A few days ago, we saw the beginning of a controversy brewing in Pennsylvania when it comes to the election – and not just the voter fraud accusations already flying. Rep. Bryan Cutler posted a link to the debate in his area when Lancaster County commissioners considered a ban on firearms in polling places. According to local news, is was either a directive or “suggestion” from the state on how towns can ban guns:

Stehman said she made the recommendation to the commissioners at the direction of the Pennsylvania Department of State.

The good news for the folks in Lancaster County is that a) you have a gun owning lawmaker who is looking into why the Department of State is trying to push an illegal resolution in all of the counties, and b) the commissioners recognized that the ban would be a legal and logistical nightmare and opted to follow the law.

But it’s a fair question to ask why someone at the Department of State would ask all 67 counties to break state law and pass these bans on possession?

[The directive/”suggestion” from the Department of State] then lists several sections of the Pennsylvania Elections Code that could be cited to justify such resolutions.

But [Commissioner Craig] Lehman said state and federal law are pretty clear that counties can’t legislate gun possession.

“I would hope the Department of State would have provided the legal justification for its direction, but it clearly doesn’t address the Uniform Firearms Act at all,” he said.

Once contacted by Rep. Cutler, the Department of State appears to have discovered the Uniform Firearms Act and fully agreed that local bans on lawful carry in polling places is completely illegal – even though they tried to push all the counties to pass those illegal bans.

NRA isn’t taking any chances and warned its members here to contact their local county offices to demand they say no to gun bans. I’d still like to know who exactly was responsible for the directive/”suggestion” because it seems like a very targeted group to keep away from the polls in a year that will no likely help the currently administration & House leaders.

UPDATE: Good news via Rep. Cutler:

Victory in the gun in polling places debate. Dept of State sent a clarifying memo verifying that counties are preempted from regulating guns. … However, note if polling places are in a area that is already regulated such as a courthouse or school that regulation must be followed.

I’m still not happy that the Department of State felt it could send an instruction packet on how to ban guns to the counties. I’d call for a little accountability since they spent serious time (looking through all of the state laws – except the one that actually matters) and some money on this fiasco. But, at least it is resolved. I vote at a school, but I think I’ll be standing at the polls at a different location, so this does impact my right to carry. Especially since Sebastian will be in another area working for a different candidate.

Gaming Scenarios

Caleb asks some questions, knowing many of us carry. I’ll do my best to answer.

You’re eating at a restaurant with your family and a group of shooters burst in to the restaurant and light it up, Mumbai-style.

No choice. You have to return fire even if you think you’ll die. At worst you’ll delay the shooters long enough for your family and others to get away to safety. At best you save yourself.

You see a 3rd party being violently attacked and in clear threat of death or grievous bodily harm.

I believe you have a civic obligation to intervene. If you really believe in a universal citizen militia, I don’t see how you can believe otherwise. The entire idea of such a thing is that every citizen has an obligation to others, and towards the common peace.

You see a young mother having her child forcibly ripped away from her by an obvious bad man.

Same as above. But, the problem is:

Assume for the sake of argument that in all the above situations the bad guys are clear, the good guys are obvious, you’re carrying your regular carry gun, and lethal force is clearly justified.

Almost nothing in the real world is ever that simple. When it comes to assisting third parties, you need to be supremely cautious. There are plenty of instances when it wouldn’t be so cut and dry. I’m going to get away from that situation, or just be a good witness for police. The real world is seldom so forgiving as the situations Caleb is gaming here.

Just Like Floppy Disk Drives …

floppy holsters suck. I can’t tell you how many holsters I went through before figuring out you get what you pay for. I only have two I use regularly, a leather pocket holster for a Kel-Tec P3AT, and a kydex Comp-Tac Infidel for a Glock 19.

I also own, and for two years carried a Sidearmor IWB holster. Both the Comp-Tac and Sidearmor are good holsters, and each have advantages and disadvantages. It really depends on the trade-offs you want to make. The Comp-Tac’s clip makes it easy to take off the gun in the holster at the end of the day, which is a much safer way to handle. My Glock only leaves the holster if it’s being shot, cleaned, or going into the safe for a while. Other than that, I leave it loaded, in the holster. The disadvantage of Comp-Tac’s easy to remove clip is it’s also easy for the gun to work its way of the belt and dump onto the floor. I had this happen to me once, fortunately in a situation where it wasn’t a problem. With the Comp-Tac clip, I’ve found it’s very important to wear the correct size and girth of belt. If you pay attention to how well a belt secures and carries the gun, you shouldn’t have a problem. With the Comp-Tac, you need to select a belt around the holster, not the other way around.

The Sidearmor holster has more belt attachment options, for making the holster work with a wider variety of belts. Once worn, it provides a very stable fit, even on some thinner belts that could never hold Comp-Tac’s infidel line well. The downside is their belt attachment options make it impossible to take the gun off in the holster without removing your belt. Even the J-hook option is difficult to remove without at least undoing the belt and loosening. The attachment pieces will also break about once a year and will need to be replaced, in my experience. Overall it’s a solid platform, it just depends on what’s important to you.

Ultimately I’ve opted to favor ease of gun removal, lest Bitter think I’m getting frisky if I come in from a night out and start undoing my belt, when all I was doing was trying to remove the Glock.

Duty to Retreat

The York Daily Record correctly points out that this case has nothing to do with castle doctrine. The guy basically fired a shot into the air, blocked the thief from leaving with another vehicle, and held him at gun point until police arrived. He has not been (and should not be) charged.

This falls pretty squarely under prosecutorial discretion, probably significantly bolstered by the fact that the prosecution is well aware they will have a hard time finding a jury that’s going to convict this guy. In many ways, the civil immunity is the real change Castle Doctrine brings, despite the fact that it also revises the self-defense law. It’s highly unlikely that anywhere in Pennsylvania you’ll be convicted of shooting someone who has broken into your home, no matter what the law may technically say. Dave Hardy recently told of a similar situation in Arizona:

Here in AZ, with real juries, the results are quite different. A prosecutor once told me that he’d urged the County Attorney to stop prosecuting homeowners who shot burglars in the back. They’d just lost three of those cases in a row. Whatever the statute law might be, jurors saw one fewer burglar as a good thing and would not convict a fellow homeowner for having done a good thing.

Trial by jury is one of the most important legal institutions we inherited from English Law. It doesn’t really matter what the Arizona Revised Statutes or the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes say, if you can’t find a jury that will convict under those circumstances, the practice is, for all practical purposes, legal. Trial by jury is one of the great checks the people have on their government. Self-defense law is probably one of the areas the people differ most greatly from the officials who serve them. Castle Doctrine doesn’t do much more than bring statutory law into line with what most people think it already is, or should be. It’s not surprising, then, that the law has broad, bi-partisan support. Yet the politicians still don’t really want to vote on it, as the current debacle in the Pennsylvania Senate is showing us.

More in the Scott Case

From Confederate Yankee. Here’s an interesting observation from his account of the inquest:

One of the fundamental questions in this case is whether any Costco employee actually asked Scott to leave the store and if so, his response to that request. It is reasonable to believe that if anyone representing Costco had asked Scott to leave at any time, the police would have noted it and the prosecutor would have been sure to secure such testimony, but thus far, this does not seem to be the case. Considering the very negative thrust of the other evidence presented to Scott’s detriment, if such evidence, of an angry, armed man refusing a lawful order to leave the premises existed, surely it would have been made public at the inquest, but it has not.

I should note that there’s a difference between “legally justified” and “the guy got what was coming to him.” This is looking like the former case. This shooting didn’t need to happen, and I think mistakes were made on all sides that night. There are also, certainly, very legitimate criticisms of this inquest process. But if you put me on a jury, and every witness says he made a move for a gun, and they find the gun, even in its holster, near the guy, my vote is that the cops walk. I don’t expect them to note the difference between a gun in its holster, and a gun out of its holster. The question, legally, is what the cops reasonably believed was going to happen, not what actually happened.

Scott Case Looking More Like a Justified Shooting

Unless you believe there are multiple individuals who are all involved in a conspiracy to cover up the improper death of a person, Erik Scott isn’t turning out to be any kind of poster child. Generally speaking, if you buy the notion that most people will do the right thing most of the time (which is really what allowing carry is based on), that rules out broad conspiracies. Based on the Las Vegas Sun story on the inquest:

Dr. Alane Olson, a medical examiner in the Clark County Coroner’s Office, testified that Scott had a number of drugs in his system when he died. The levels of morphine and xanax found by a toxicology screen conducted after his death were very high and potentially lethal, she said. The levels also indicated that he had likely built up a tolerance to the drugs over time, she said.

This includes testimony from multiple doctors who said he had an issue, with even his most sympathetic doctor agreeing he was trying to wean him off narcotics. While this doesn’t have a whole lot of bearing on how things actually went down, and while there’s still conflicting statements from witnesses, but they all seem to agree on this:

Every one testified they saw Erik move his right hand towards his waist. It gets unclear as a few recall him pulling his gun out; pictures show the gun never left its holster.

There more here. I’m not sure it really matters if he drew or not. All witnesses seem to agree he made a move for his waist, and he was known to be armed. So far there have been more than twenty witnesses. I think we should be careful about drawing conclusions, and playing armchair jury. I certainly don’t absolve myself of jumping to conclusions here, in suggesting it looks liked it could be a civil rights lawsuit. So far, this is looks like a justifiable shooting on the part of the officers.

Pepper Jewelry

Breda is skeptical of this piece of jewelry that claims to deliver a dose of pepper spray to an attacker. I share her skepticism of the basic design and delivery method, but the idea of making pepper spray easier to carry I think has a lot of merit. With this ring, in addition to the accidental discharge issue, I’d be skeptical that it could deliver enough spray. Looking at some other descriptions of it, it has a range of a whopping twelve inches. You’d probably be better off following through on that short distance with a fist, to be honest.

My preferred option for spray these days is the Kimber Pepper Blaster, which is actually a gel, rather than a spray. It has a much better range, fits nicely in a pocket or purse, draws more naturally, and is a much more powerful formulation than typical sprays. The big downside is you get two shots. For something with a bit more, Fox Labs makes good sprays in a more traditional canister.

I still think it’s a good idea to carry OC. There’s a whole lot of force between harsh language and hot lead that pepper spray helps fill. One can imagine situations where someone is in desperate need of being in pain, but gunfire would not be legally justified. For instance, someone stealing the radio in your car: if you shoot him, you’re going to jail. But most state allow the use of force (but not deadly force) to protect property. Pepper spray is force, legally, and not all that high a level of force, so there is a greater number of useful circumstances where it can be employed.

Looks Like a Civil Rights Suit

I haven’t commented on the story on the concealed carry holder who was gunned down by Las Vegas police, until all the details came out, but it’s looking like the police definitely have some problems with their story. To be sure, when the guy was confronted by a store employee about the gun, he should have responded by saying “Oh, I didn’t realized guns weren’t allowed in here,” and taken his business elsewhere. But being shot is typically not the penalty for trespassing. Facts and statements made about the incident conflict, and on the surface it appears to me he was likely given conflicting commands by the officers, and was attempting to disarm himself. Normally, this would be something that should be sorted out by a jury in a criminal trial. At least that’s how it would be handled if it were a civilian shooting. But will it go that far? At the least, there will probably be a civil rights lawsuit.