I'll take a swing at what I bolded in your comment: It invites criminal activity because the criminal sees the concealed carrier as an unarmed, "soft" target.
This is true only so long as carrying a concealed gun is very rare. As John Lott points out, however, when concealed carry laws allow carrying to be relatively common, violent criminals have to assume that any adult might be armed. 1% of adults carrying guns is not very many. But for a criminal to make a living by mugging people, he has to mug a lot of people. If he has a real chance that 1 person in 100 is going to be able to shoot him his chosen activities just got a lot more dangerous. Would you voluntarily engage in something that had a really good chance of someone shooting in the next 6 months?
What happens when the odds move to 1 in 20 (5%) carrying a gun?
I know you didn't use the term "invite. But those who did show a hostility to CC that is hard for me understand.
No, CC does not "invite" criminal activity. For someone to use that terminology is offensive as it plays into the "blame the victim" mentality that we now recognize as so offensive when it comes to sexual assault or any other crime. A woman doesn't "invite" a sexual assault by wearing a short skirt. A homosexual man doesn't "invite" bashing by not hiding his orientation in the closet. A disabled person doesn't "invite" assault by using a wheelchair.
Going unarmed doesn't "invite criminal activity", it simply doesn't deter it like OC does.
The same holds true, unfortunately, for the open carrier who has poor situational awareness. I have watched a couple of people (different occasions) who were both open carrying and burying their noses in their cell phones. Very bad practice.
And one that presents an actual high-value target. I doubt we can legitimately outlaw bad SA while OCing. It is just as illegitimate to presume to ban CC.
From what I have read of the circumstances surrounding State vs Reid and the mindset of most citizens of that era, concealing a weapon was normally the action of someone who was up to no good. The riverboat gamblers come immediately to mind. The honest citizen of that time who carried a sidearm, carried it openly.
Confirmation bias is interesting. We here all recognize the inaccuracy in the usual, anti-gun narrative about the Wild West. We know that the Old West was generally far less violent than any modern city in this nation, that most gun deaths were drunken young men engaged in voluntary duels, and so on.
So what about the notion that those who carried concealed were up to no good?
This little article gives an interesting history on Cane Guns.
For the sixty or so years of the Victorian era (1837-1901), every gentleman with clean fingernails went about town with a walking cane. These canes were simple accessories (though they could often be quite ornate in appearance) and didn’t have a specific purpose other than as a fashion accessory, a symbol of taste, wealth and class.
However, the piece of mind that comes with traveling with a nice, sturdy stick in your hands was certainly an aspect of these early canes function/popularity as this period also saw one of the most notorious rises in street crime ever seen in the modern Western world. And with the canes marking these gentlemen as targets for ruffians as much as defending against them, you could see why it soon became fashionable to have not only a cane, but also one that held a means of protection. This led to cane swords, but these were largely outpaced by the rise of small, concealable pistols, used both by citizens as well as by the criminal elements.
...
[T]he most commonly encountered cane gun that ever saw mass production was made by American gun great, Remington Arms. The company’s master mechanic John F. Thomas patented (#19,328) a percussion fired single-shot cane rifle in 1858 and within a year, Remington was selling their guns to an eager public.
I note that the
1822 Bliss case out of Kentucky found in favor of the right to carry concealed weapons. It was used in the defense of Mattews Ward in 1852 who drew a concealed firearm to shoot a man over a trivial disagreement.
The 1846 Nunn decision by the Georgia Supreme Court overturned a ban on carrying concealed firearms saying:
The right of the whole people, old and young, men, women and boys, and not militia only, to keep and bear arms of every description, and not such merely as are used by the militia, shall not be infringed, curtailed, or broken in upon, in the smallest degree; and all this for the important end to be attained: the rearing up and qualifying a well-regulated militia, so vitally necessary to the security of a free State. Our opinion is, that any law, State or Federal, is repugnant to the Constitution, and void, which contravenes this right, originally belonging to our forefathers, trampled under foot by Charles I. and his two wicked sons and successors, re-established by the revolution of 1688, conveyed to this land of liberty by the colonists, and finally incorporated conspicuously in our own Magna Carta!
[emphasis added]
In Heller, the U.S. Supreme Court said Nunn, "Perfectly captured the in which the operative clause of the Second Amendment furthered the purpose announced in the prefatory clause."
It appears to me that several of the early cases that held against concealed carry, also held against the individual right in favor of some sort of collective right.
I have also been long impressed by
Clayton Cramer's "Racist Roots of Gun Control" essay detailing the way gun laws have been used to oppress unpopular minorities.
Bottom line, it simply isn't rational that a right to bear arms is nearly absolute....unless a couple of mm of fabric obscure the firearm from view.
Charles
