Robb Allen links to an anecdote about how open carry may well have prevented a crime. Robb’s comment section has a few other “OC success” stories.
But you see, this is the problem with open carry:
Officer 1: They were definately going to hit the place. However since no crime was actually committed, the best we can do is look for them and see if we hit anything when we pull them over. You guys did great.
No crime committed. Thus, there will be no crime report, no papers to file, no statistics to pile up.
The naysayers and anti-gunners will say there’s no proof that guns stop crimes. To some extent, they are right because we can only get crime data when crimes are committed, reported, and statistics are then compiled from those reports.
There are no reams of reports when a crime is stopped before it ever has a chance to start. When there are less reports and “crime goes down”, it’s difficult to directly attribute that to more private citizens being armed and ready to defend themselves.
So alas… one problem with open carry is it just can’t generate statistics. All we can have is a growing pile of anecdotes, and the pile is growing.
But that’s fine. Less crime also creates fewer statistics. I’m fine with that problem.
Stuff From Hsoi 
I’d be more interested in knowing the ratio of “Criminal Event Deterred” to “Shoot Me First” OC situations. (Of course, there will never be reliable statistics for this.
Personally, even if OC were allowed, I don’t think I would. Between the “Shoot Me First”, someone else pulling my gun, and giving up the element of surprise I don’t believe I’d ever come close to deterring enough criminal events to make that a good trade.
I want The Bad Guy to think “Uh Oh. I picked the Wrong Guy.” I think that will, in general, work to my advantage more often than “I’ll shoot the guy with the Glock on his hip, then everyone else will know that I’m f’ing serious.”
One of my employer’s vendors pulled his piece this past week. While at a stop light, someone opened the door to his delivery truck, hopped in and said “Take me to [blah blah blah] street.” The driver, a Vietnam vet, showed a lot of restraint and told the guy to get out while pulling his legally carried piece. In OK he could have shot him dead and been perfectly within the bounds of the Self Defense Act in doing so.
Yeah, that’s one of the things people bring up is the “shoot me first”.
Could that happen? I figure it could, but I’m not aware of any situations to date.
One counter-argument is this very sort of story: you stopped it before it started. If you are concealed, you’re now going to be behind the curve whereas this way you were ahead of it (sorta).
I also hear a lot of people saying they don’t want to give up the tactical advantage. Well, advantage is contextual. There’s a Chris Bird book I have where he relays stories of OC’ing actually being the tactical advantage, that if the person wasn’t OC’ing there would have been a worse problem. We can even look at that very same with the police: uniformed cops are open carry, undercover are concealed, and each context wouldn’t be served by carrying the other way. So I tend to view open carry vs. concealed carry, in terms of “tactical advantage” as contextual.
I’ve come to a point where I think open carry should be legal. I certainly would like to have the option to open carry. I may not open carry with regularity, especially here in Austin, but being able to not worry about it and have options — because contexts may dictate — would be welcome.
I live and work in Michigan. Here, OC is legal without a permit, although, you need a license/permit to OC in your car. I’ve had my Michigan CPL since 2003, I’ve been OCing since about 2007-08. I’ve never been hassled by police. Most conversations with non-LEO types have been friendly in nature, only a small number have been of the “you can’t do that” type conversation, during which, I tried to set them straight. (Pun intended.)
I have read of 2 rather notable “got shot/robbed because I OCed” type events. Both, in my opinion are dubious. The first one allegedly happened January 17, 2009, in Indiana. The problem is, it never appeared in any news source. If this had happened to someone who espoused OC, I’d have trouble doubting it. However, this person did not espouse OC, and the only reason he DID OC was because of his job, as a uniformed security officer. (The alleged victim reported what happened to him after he recovered, in the USA Carry.org forums.)
The 2nd story, that did make the paper, was of and Open carrier who was robbed of his pistol in Wisconsin. The reason I (and others) call this one dubious, the people fighting for concealed carry laws in Wisconsin, used this story to point out WHY concealed carry should be legalized in that state. So far as I know, no arrests have been made in either case. The weapons have not been found, and as I said, for the first one, there’s not even a news story you can find on the internet, about it.
So, yeah, I have problems believing that OCers make targets of themselves. If they do, and they are attacked, they’ve got no one to blame but themselves. When I’m out and about, OCing, my head is on a swivel. I’m constantly looking to see what’s going on around me. It’s called situational awareness.
That is certainly another part of it: awareness. Having the gun and knowing how to use it is just the start. After that, people need to build upon that foundation with greater awareness and learning how to handle things so you don’t get into trouble in the first place. I’ve found things like Insights Training Center’s “Street & Vehicle Tactics” course to be good here, and things like SouthNarc’s “Managing Unknown Contacts” to also be good (similar, but different approaches, yet complementary). Force-on-Force training is good here too. When you do things like this, you make yourself appear less of a target — criminals don’t want a righteous fight, they want easy prey. You won’t look like easy prey, you won’t send off signals of being easy prey.
But granted, nothing is absolute and as more and more people OC, chances are we’re going to see a story where they were explicitly targetted. But that’s life, we can’t have 100%. But I’m also guessing if something like that happens, either there was failure on their part somewhere prior to the event OR the event was just massive and there’s nothing they could have done anyways. But again, all conjecture on my part.
My take on OC is that I want to see it decriminalized, legalized, however one wishes to phrase it. The bad guys aren’t going to walk around with quality leather holsters and nice guns on their hip — they walk around with thier Glocks stuffed in their sweatpants waistband as it is now, no law is going to stop them. I may not generally OC myself because I understand that sometimes the sheepdog needs to not show their teeth and blend in, especially in less permissive/tolerant environments. But having the choice, and ensuring that law-abiding people aren’t turned into criminals for doing things as fundamental as self-protection, I think that’s a good thing.