Shotguns and Story Time: Not a Good Combination

I have written about the political risks of an aggressive "open carry" movement before--and I have upset a few readers. I have to return to this unpleasant subject unfortunately, as much as it is disagreeable, for one very simple reason. Recent efforts of some open carry advocates are in danger of wiping out the enormous progress that we have made concerning gun rights over the last few decades. First of all, let me emphasize that I am not hostile to open carry. There are places that it makes perfect sense and it does not provoke fear from anyone. You go hunting--open carry is the norm. A friend tells me that when he was growing up in the Central Valley of California in the 1960s, he and his friends would go hunting, and on their way home, they would stop in a restaurant for a meal. They had holstered handguns, but it was obvious that they had been out hunting from how they were dressed--and no one had a problem with it. An acquaintance who lives on the East Coast tells me that this is still the situation--if he is returning from a hunting trip, no one seems terribly disturbed to see that he has a holstered handgun when he stops to gas up his truck. Context is everything!