The lefty blogs are beside themselves (indeed, Gawker John Cook seems like he is about to lose bladder control) over the fact that about a dozen open carry advocates attended the protest outside Barack Obama's speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Phoenix, AZ today. Much to the dismay of the commenters at many of those sites, openly carrying firearms is completely legal in Arizona.

It also appears that protestors on both sides may have been armed.

As much as I support the open carry movement in theory, I have a very hard time seeing open carry at a political event full of people as anything other than a very bad idea. It is needlessly provocative (and I suspect in many instances, purposefully so), and potentially dangerous.

While the protestors themselves may not have any intent to use the firearms they are carrying, open carry in dense, emotional crowds opens up a whole host of possible scenarios that could end in disaster. I'd be rather surprised if any were using holsters with any sort of locking retention devices.

The man who got the greatest amount of attention was carrying a Carbon-15 rifle with a 30-round magazine and an EOTech sight slung over his back; not the best way to retain and control your weapon in a crowd.

The people on both sides were of course well within their legal rights to carry at this event.

Whether or not openly carrying firearms to a political protest is intelligent is another matter entirely.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 09:27 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 260 words, total size 2 kb.