I was taught that open carry was a shoot me first thing. One doesn’t want the criminally armed to be alerted to their demise but then one can probably draw faster open carrying.
but you lose the tactical element of surprise. personally I tend to be the gray man.
You were taught wrong. Please find a story where a private citizen was “shot first” during a criminal act due to OC. I have yet to read that.
This. While I prefer concealed carry and I will agree that if done wrong open carry is an invitation to loosing your gun to theft (THAT has happened) the shoot me first thing is a myth. And that also applies to clothing etc.
Open carriers have been robbed of their gun.
We just discussed a story in here in the last few weeks of a carrier who had his firearm stolen off of him (by definition, he was carrying openly), and then perhaps foolishly followed after the thief which led to the carrier’s death.
Multiple open carriers have had their firearm stolen, and throughout modern history police officers have been targeted and attacked for their openly carried firearms…and those firearms are in level 3+ (generally, modern day) active retention holsters attached to a person with hand to hand training in defending against a gun grab, who surely has other weapons on them as well.
So, open carry absolutely, definitively, makes you a target for a potential attack.
It’s a matter of personal choice and how you balance the deterrent effect on the less ambitious/more easily thrwarted attackers, vs the “they aren’t scared of you lol” serious meanies that might come for you by surprise when you least expect it.
Open carry is so rare in this country there isn’t a tremendously huge sample size to draw from. The places you actually see private citizens openly carrying tend to be very low crime, low population density rural areas where there likely isn’t an attack or a gun grab attempt and that likely is because there isn’t a violent criminal there to begin with, not because they were deterred
/my personal thoughts
I don’t know that I agree with the statement “rare in this country”. I see it all the time in my state and others I travel to, I’ve even carried open myself while hiking, hunting or out of sheer laziness when popping out of the car into a store for a quick pick-up of an item and I don’t feel like putting on my jacket for the short walk. It’s also becoming more popular with the addition of more constitutional carry states. It’s so prevalent that I now include a segment about open carry in my CC classes. Basically the pro/cons and the do/don’ts. Let folks make up their own minds with eyes wide open.
I see maybe four open carriers a year out of, IDK, hundreds of thousands/millions of people. Not counting gun stores, gun shows, cops, hunters in middle of nowhere
Unless I go to a gun store or a gun range or something, I probably see no more than a half dozen people at most in a whole year open carrying. And I live in a state with more licensed carriers by %.
Not worried about hunting and backwoods middle of nowhere where there aren’t any real potential criminals to get close and snatch anyway, talking sample size for the whole deterrence vs targeted thought process.
I think it speaks volumes that until now, you didn’t have a segment about it at all.
Taken as a % of the people in the country, the ones open carrying any given day…teeny tiny
Folks should have a right to open carry, some folks have some serious skills, some not so much. Have to know your limitations. From what I’ve seen many are not paying attention. Watched some videos where their firearms were yanked. Some by young folks. Makes me laugh, can’t help it…
Yep, just watched one of those videos myself and I’m with you, I laughed my ass off. 
But you can find videos to prove just about any point anyone would ever want to make, and I suspect that in real life it happens a hell of a lot less than we think and in the end as you said, “Folks should have a right to open carry if they want or need to.”
NGL, I sometimes facepalm when I see open carry (in public) with an open-top holster
recently I was eating at a restaurant, an a guy sitting at a different table was open carrying in a open holster. well with all of the fidgeting around with the girl he was trying to impress. his Glock came out of his holster and fell into the seat, with him being none the wiser.
well with me being a responsible gun owner I did what anyone else would do. I made it a point to let him know and how to correct it. his reaction or lack of caused me to get quite loud about the issue.
But, it’s Walt!
When I carry owb it’s a corrections style holster with several layers of security plus my vigilance
Even with owb carry you have to be more vigilant when you carry in this manner. It can be stressful to say the least. Safariland has the definitions of retention level so there is no confusion
Yes, at least, IMO, a level 3.