This is one of the inherent dangers of one of the practices used in the "open carry" movement. They, like the BLM protesters, set themselves up for unsavory characters to use lawful and positive events for negative (and possibly dangerous) purposes.
Yes, recognition of the 2A and the lawful carrying of firearms is important but the way you accomplish that is through education and familiarization, not "in your face" acts of agitation.
Firearms are tools and like hammers and screwdrivers different weapon types have different uses. Handguns, for example, are lightweight, short range weapons. Such a weapon is practical for daily carry due to its weight and size. It is also adequate to serve a defensive purpose in most close quarters situations such as those most likely to be encountered in most localities across the country. A rifle is larger and heavier. It's much less convenient to carry around. While some carbines (rifles with a shortened barrel) are perfectly serviceable in close quarters they really are designed to be used at longer ranges. From a practical standpoint it's just a pain in the ass to sit down for a burger while finding a good place to stash your rifle. For that reason we generally don't see rifles in more urban areas unless the need for additional range outweighs the inconvenience factor of lugging the thing around.
When people see someone with a pistol on their hip that's a fairly common sight. Cops are seen this way all the time and people have a pretty decent understanding of what a pistol is and does. Seeing it on someone not in uniform might cause concern but it probably won't induce panic. Rifles, on the other hand, have taken on a whole mystique due to Hollywood and hyperventilating politicians. People see rifles as some kind of superweapon and they often have no concept of their actual capabilities or utility. For that reason open carry of a rifle often generates a heightened level of concern or outright panic in people. Furthermore, there is a lot of likely intentional misinformation regarding rifles out there. This is something I picked up from a "diary" on another site today:
I'd post a link to the diary but I believe that linking to another forum is prohibited. I will, however, give credit to "meteorblades"
Anyway, while the author of the diary uses a lot of "insider" jargon he's still wrong. Here's a video of what a 62gr .223 round being fired into ballistic gel at close range
You can see the cavitation he talks about but it's not close to bowling ball size. The projectile is also not designed to tumble. That would be stupid for a projectile that's designed to be effective out to 500 yards.
In light of what happened in all these recent shootings we are sure to see more "open carry" groups doing their thing and more "gun control" groups doing their thing. If we want to avoid another Dallas we need everyone to be smart about what they choose to do and how they do it. Being smart means both being informed and acting responsibly. We DO NOT need a massive open carry parade. We DO NOT need a social media barrage telling everyone how dangerous BLM protests are. We don't need presidents, senators and governors telling us how messed up we are as a country and how only they can save us from ourselves. What we need is people coming together to express their concerns in a RESPECTFUL manner and we need to LISTEN and UNDERSTAND both sides. We need to be considerate of the concerns each side has and strive to find ways to accommodate and/or assuage those concerns.
What happened in Dallas is, obviously, totally unacceptable and we can't rely on elected officials to fix the reasons it happened. That needs to come from us.
