If you’ve been ‘open breathing’ during the last several months, you’ve no doubt run into people who have given you a smile, or a thumbs-up, or even spoken encouragement or thanks for doing what they’re afraid to do.
In a recent conversation with a friend, we agreed that where any abrogation of basic rights is concerned, there are lots of people out there who would like to exercise those rights, but who are shamed out of it through peer pressure. If you want people to take back their rights, it’s important to let them see that it’s possible, through what we might call peer leakage.
As the eminent political strategist Tyler Durden once said: ‘What we have to do is remind these guys what kind of power they still have.’
As a result, I’ve decided that from now on I’m going to switch from concealed carry to open carry. Yes, I’ve read the articles about why concealed carry is better. I’m familiar with the arguments, having made many of them myself over the years.
But I really want to live in a society where being armed isn’t even noticed by the vast majority of people, because it’s expected, and even welcomed, rather than feared. (Nothing says ‘We’re all in this together’ like accepting the responsibility to protect not just yourself, but the people around you.)
During that conversation I realized after that the only way to make this happen is to give people (including our own governor) a chance to get used to the idea that seeing a gun on someone’s hip is simply no big deal.
And as a bonus, open carry holsters are so much more comfortable, and your choice of carry guns is so much more varied when you don’t have to worry about not spooking the Karens.
So that’s what I’ll be doing in 2021: Open breathing and open carrying.
