The traitor responsible for the continued violations of the constitution of the U.S. and of Texas law is none other than a sworn defender of the same, Olmos police chief Rene Valenciano.  He is an awful person who cares not the least about lying and abandoning his oath.

So the claims on their web site are all lies.  He and his traitor officers have no intention of obeying Texas law, in which open carry is legal.  This also raises yet another question: where the hell is the Texas attorney general?  A police chief is violating Texas law and infringing on constitutionally protected rights.  Where is the Texas attorney general on this?  Missing in action?

Police chief Rene Valenciano’s email address is: policechief@olmospark.org.  Feel free to tell him he’s a traitor.  The city manager is Celia DeLeon, and her email address is: citymanager@olmospark.org.  Is she a coward?  Just why hasn’t she shut down Valenciano’s traitorous henchmen yet?  Is she waiting for a massive lawsuit that bankrupts the city?

By the way, police chief.  That fat boy officer in the video, yea, him.  Tell him to go on a diet, put on a backpack, and hit the trails.

And as for my readers in Texas (I know I have a lot of them), you know what to do next.

Opinion.

I am asking everyone to consider the folly of passing State Law S-139 (Open Carry).

As a gun owner, concealed carry weapons permit holder and a member at a local shooting range. I applaud our state’s concealed carry permitting program and my fellow South Carolinians who have taken advantage of it. It is comforting to know that so many of our residents are responsible and committed gun owners.

The proposed changes to S 139 (with or without a permit) do nothing to ensure gun rights. In fact, they would do more to erode the rights of the majority of our population who do not choose to arm themselves every time they leave home. Instead, they would become vulnerable to a minority of individuals who, for reasons of their own, feel they must display their power on their hip.

Perhaps the armed stranger has had hours of classroom and range time … perhaps not. How would we know?

I have written before that “I don’t want an amateur with a gun anywhere near me. I certainly don’t want to be one.” By passing constitutional carry/open carry, we are not serving our citizens. In fact, it is just the opposite. We allow a portion of our population to endanger themselves and their neighbors.

If we have learned anything from the opioid epidemic, it is that a large number of people simply cannot be trusted to behave. We fail this population and their victims by promoting open carry and the display of firearms with or without a permit.

We have an opportunity in South Carolina to set the bar for gun rights, gun safety and responsible stewardship of the Second Amendment. With or without a permit, constitutional/open carry accomplishes none of this.

Bill Ware, Spartanburg

Well Bill, I think you have psychological problems.

First, as to your remark “Perhaps the armed stranger has had hours of classroom and range time … perhaps not. How would we know?,” you’ve neglected to address the very issue that defeats your argument.  Concealed carry, which you allege to support.

You also don’t know whether a person is carrying concealed, you see?  You’ve stated that the only problem as you see it is that when someone hides a weapon, you don’t have to think about the fact that someone could intend to bring your harm, but when they openly carry, you must think about that fact.

This is entirely a mental problem with you, you see?  This has nothing whatsoever to do with the question can someone be safe with a firearm, can someone bring you harm, can someone be trusted.  It has only to do with your mental state.  I refuse to be part of your twisted mental world where hiding problems makes them go away.  I hope South Carolina residents see this the way I do.

Second, as to your statement that “a large number of people simply cannot be trusted to behave,” you don’t know that.  You just made it up.  You’re in the same category of the chicken little naysayers in Texas, Oklahoma and elsewhere who said “There will be blood running in the streets” if this law passes.

And none of that happened.  In fact, I live in an open carry state, and there isn’t blood running in the streets.  So you see, you made a problem out of something that isn’t.  You fabricated a falsehood.

Finally, since the RKBA is a God-given right, I’m not beholden to your views of making the world a better place for you and other collectivists.  That’s not the purpose of the second amendment.  The second amendment is a right, not a license for you to try to control other people.

You have things exactly backwards.

Nevada Carry.

Three incidents confirmed incidents of open carriers robbed or attacked, only one fatality, and one thwarted attack. One of those victims was killed when he chased the now-armed robber down. Two of the open carry incidents can only be dubiously considered to be true cases of open carry. Six of the incidents, the majority, were confirmed to be concealed carry.

What did these events have in common? Most of these events took place during the hours of darkness. What appears to be common thread with those who were disarmed is carelessness, including:

• Repeated failures of situational awareness by letting the bad guys get too close.
• Failure to use a retention holster (including off-body carry).
• No will to fight back.
• No skills at retaining control of the weapon.
• Using the gun as a talisman rather than a serious tool.

The majority of these incidents show, or at least hint at, major failures in judgment and basic self-defense techniques. Human failure, not systemic failure. Three equivocal documented events in recent news don’t amount to a denunciation of open carry as dangerous. It’s like saying concealed carry, with its higher rate of incidents, should be discounted as well.

The assumption that an openly carried weapon constitutes an invitation for victimization is false in light of the isolated incidents. A few events do not constitute an abundance of evidence. Rather, abundant evidence is available that open carry is indeed a deterrent to crime while concealed carry lacks that deterrent factor.

With six incidents of weapon theft during concealed carry in this informative article.  Frankly, there aren’t enough incidents to convince me that any of this is statistically significant, even though I think this is a good analysis (concerning the primary point of situational awareness).

Bob Owens (when he was alive) used to pan open carry on the basis that it was an invitation to weapon theft.  I disagreed, and still disagree with his successors at Bearing Arms who also take his position.

And I will open carry whenever I think it’s appropriate and I wish to remain comfortable by avoiding the necessity for concealed carry.

But then, that’s being redundant.  This one comes to you via reader Ned.

I don’t know which Shelby County this is (there are two of them).  But whichever Sheriff is to blame, his boys need retraining.

This isn’t a “Terry Stop.”  No one to whom he is talking is suspected of a crime.  The gun owner isn’t breaking any laws.

And I’ve pointed out before that if a cop issues a command to touch your firearm, that’s no different than him touching your firearm.  Both actions are idiotic.  Nothing anyone could do (except the cops unholstering their weapons and pointing them at someone, which they do with regularity) could possibly make the situation more unsafe than for someone to have to touch their weapon.

Negligent discharges could occur, misinterpretation of intent could occur, and unfamiliarity with the weapon design (if the cops are handling the weapon) could cause a discharge and injure or kill someone.

And by the way, that command issued at the end of the video, “Sir, come back here,” was an unlawful command.  I suggest come retraining in the case of Nathaniel Black before the Fourth Circuit.

The good.

TALLAHASSEE – Floridians would be able to carry guns openly in public without a license under a bill filed Tuesday by state Rep. Anthony Sabatini.

It’s good to see this come up again.  Cheers to the brave Congressman who submitted this bill.  And for the bad news?  This has a snowball’s chance in hell of passing.  Florida is a misplaced Yankee state.  And for the really bad?

PALM BEACH, Fla. — Right now there’s a push to add restrictions to a current law that allows gun owners to open carry in Florida under certain circumstances. This comes after a recent demonstration of gun advocates openly carrying their rifles and guns on the Royal Park Bridge leading into Palm Beach.

Michael Taylor was one of those gun owners.

“We’ve demonized firearms to a point where we need to un-demonize it,” he Taylor with Florida Carry said.

Taylor who said he started to exercise his open carry right while fishing after he was almost robbed under a bridge one early morning.

“Ever since that day I’ve been open carrying,” Taylor said.

In March, he and a group of other gun owners demonstrated their rights by fishing on the Royal Park Bridge also holding American flags and flags in support of President Donald Trump. Citizens who saw shotguns and AR 15s called 911.

Training and Community Relations Coordinator Michael Ogrodnick at the Palm Beach Police Department said it is the duty of officers to respond and find out what the intent of the gun owners is. He said all of the officers are trained and know the law. The issue he believes is that the statute as written allows for gun owners to open carry while or on the way to or from hunting, fishing, or camping regardless of what’s around those areas.

“We believe the spirit of the law was for someone who was hunting, fishing, camping, in a rural area, a fishing hole, out on a lake, not in a Downtown commercial area in West Palm Beach walking over to the barrier island of Palm Beach,” said Ogrodnick.

Palm Beach Police Chief Nicholas Caristo has written a letter to Senator Bobby Powell asking that the introduce an amendment to the wording of the current law.

“The chief has requested that the legislation just be amended to read that within the 1500 feet, Birdseye view of a school, house of worship, guarded beach, or government building, people exercising their second amendment right not open carry within that distance of those buildings,” said Ogrodnick.

I bolded it.  He’s lying.  There is no such duty, and he knows it, but 99.999% of the idiot voters and politicians will believe him.

Leave it to LEOs to muck up the situation rather than making it better.  That’s their specialty.  It must be in their procedures somewhere.  Or perhaps just in their DNA.

By the way, speaking of misplaced Yankee states, with all the crap going on in South Carolina, I’m beginning to wonder if it isn’t a misplaced Yankee state too.  Say, what’s going on at the S.C. open carry front?  Nothing?  Like I had suspected?  All of it just for show, opposed at every step by the cops and politicians?

I have several observations.

First, the “commander” is an asshole.

Second, they don’t know the law the way they should.

Third, and I’ll say this for the hundredth time, muzzle flagging people like cops do is dangerous to life.

Fourth, listen again to the “commander’s” words.  Any time someone says that they support the second amendment, but … you know they’re lying.

Fifth, it’s good to see folks in Florida challenging the cops.  These 2A audits are becoming a thing.  I like that.  A man has no business telling me how I should carry my weapons.

Arkansas CopWatch gets stopped for open carry.  I thought this was a settled issue in Arkansas?  Anyway, it’s good to see folks conducting 2A audits, and more specifically, open carry audits.

It’s an odd case, but interesting.

Dawsonville attorney John Monroe—a founder, board member and corporate officer of GeorgiaCarry who represents Evans—said he is confident that a careful review of the garden’s lease with the city will make it clear that the garden is prohibited by state law from banning guns on its premises.

“We never argued it as a Second-Amendment issue,” said Monroe, who said he helped to write the 2014 amendment that forms the basis for the high court’s reversal. “It was really about an interpretation of state law. … The idea was, if you are going to lease public property, you should not have the same right that private property owners have to exclude firearms.”

Monroe said the 2014 amendment is in keeping with a separate state law barring cities and counties from introducing or enforcing their own gun regulations.

GeorgiaCarry sued the botanical garden five years ago after one of its members twice visited the venue in 2014 while openly carrying a gun in a holster on his waistband. On his second visit, police escorted member Phillip Evans from the premises. GeorgiaCarry subsequently filed suit challenging the garden’s gun ban. A Fulton County judge dismissed the case, but the high court reversed, claiming the dismissal was improper.

I’d never thought about this before, but it makes perfect sense.  Someone who leases property doesn’t own the property, and therefore doesn’t have the right to forbid perfectly constitutional and legal activities on that property.  Only the owner does.

Frank Clarke.

“It’s sad to see a highly-respected American corporation cravenly bending the knee to the forces of darkness. It shows a lack of courage. It shows a lack of foresight. It shows a lack of knowledge or, worse, a rejection of knowledge.

Only two states, Texas and Florida, keep statistics on “does this arrestee have a weapons permit?”. The data from these two states is startling. Lawful gun-carriers are arrested (not convicted, just arrested) at rates between 1/7th and 1/13th the rate for the general population, depending on the year chosen. What that means is that the people who go to the trouble of getting a carry permit are among the safest, most law-abiding people in the country. As a class, they are more law-abiding than the police, and your policy is to insult them and treat them as if they were criminals-in-waiting. Was that your intent or did you simply not think this all the way through?

Recall, as well, that on August 8th, an ordinary citizen — not law enforcement — stopped a potential mass shooting at a Wal-Mart in Springfield MO. Are you publicly asserting that you don’t want any of your customers intervening to stop such incidents in your stores? That would be a surprise, and not a pleasant one, either.

Principles are funny things. They sometimes cause us to say things or do things that others — often ‘others who lack much in the way of principles’ — interpret negatively. That is, alas, what Publix’s latest announcement looks like. It looks like Publix flinched in order to avoid ‘bad PR’ from people whose thinking doesn’t extend beyond “guns bad”. Those same people see the world as full of evildoers who wish nothing so much as to harm others. In such a world, people with guns are a positive danger.

You might suspect that I hold a different view, and you would be correct. I believe our world, despite the occasional ‘bad apple’, is full of loving people who care about their neighbors and want them to live happy, safe, and prosperous lives.

How do you see the world?”

You’ve seen the lists, whether open or concealed carry.  What gripes me is when gun writers participate in the self-immolation and embarrassment of carrying a gun.  Witness Karen Townsend.

As I wrote earlier this week, this is a solution looking for a problem. Open carry isn’t common, even in gun-friendly Texas. Just as I said about being a Kroger customer, I’m a Walgreens customer and I have never seen anyone take advantage of open carry laws in the store I patronize in Houston.

None of the retailers are saying exactly how they will enforce their decision. In Texas, a retail store must post signs in English and in Spanish that state that store’s gun policy. Store management can ask a customer to leave or call law enforcement over violations to the posted policy.

So according to Karen, if more people did choose to open carry, she wouldn’t have a case to say this is a solution in search of a problem.  In other words, it actually would be a problem demanding a solution.

Folks, the right reaction isn’t to say that open carry isn’t really practiced that much.  That’s saying that there isn’t much exercise of our rights, which is a sad admission of failure on the part of the gun community.  Don’t defend gun ownership that way.  Don’t respond to the controllers by saying that the practice isn’t really that common anyway.

I’ve observed elsewhere that “All of these things are signs and symptoms of the fact that gun owners have been taught by society to respond like dogs or other pets by “operant conditioning.”  The first time you ever openly carried caused you some degree of self consciousness, didn’t it?  Just go ahead and admit it.  It’s useful to demonstrate my point.

Gun owners, and in particular open carriers, are treated like second class citizens, inferior men, uncouth savages, like those who have no etiquette, when exactly the opposite would have been true two hundred years ago.  That’s one reason I openly carry when I can.  In some small way I want to change all of this.  I open carry “For the peace, good and dignity of the country and the welfare of its people.”  So should you.”

Don’t allow them to shame you.