steveincowtown wrote:WildBill wrote:The Annoyed Man wrote:OC is not legal, and so local ranges tend not to support it. But I'll bet you that if OC passes, within a year or two local shooting ranges will probably change their rules to accommodate it.
In my experience the people who want to open carry at the range are "jerks" and they are one of the main reasons why open carry is not legal. The term "jerk" is a euphemism which I use because I can't post my real description on this forum.
A good deal of folks in the general population think that about CHLers as well. Such a shame.
OC doesn't have a chance right now because of a gentleman named Joe, not because folks want to OC at a range.
Wildbill, I always enjoy your comments and insight, but I must say I think you might be way off here.
Steve, let me tell a story which will illustrate the point I think Bill was trying to make about "jerks".....
Many years ago, I used to roadrace motorcycles at Willow Springs Raceway, and Riverside Raceway, in a club called the "ARRA" (American Road Racing Association). ARRA was a southern California club, and Willow Springs was our home track. It is one of the great racetracks in the western U.S. In addition to being a club member and one of the riders, I was on the staff of ARRA as the head of the club's Tech Inspection unit.
There was another sanctioning body called WERA which was national and held racing events all over the country, with an emphasis on endurance racing (ARRA was mostly "sprint" racing.....10 lap events on a 2.5 mile road course). WERA had an annual 24 hour endurance race at Willow Springs. The year was probably 1987 or '88, and WERA contracted with ARRA that year to staff that year's 24 hour race, which meant that our corner workers worked the corners, our scoring people managed the scoring, and I and my tech crew ran the Tech Inspection station.
ARRA had its own rule book, and WERA had theirs. This race was to be run according to
their rules, so we were all given a printed copy, and I ran my tech inspections according to
their tech inspection rules.....which differed from our own in some small particulars, but were
mostly the same as ours. Where they differed, I enforced the WERA rule because it was a WERA sanctioned event. When a bike passed Tech, we'd put a small dayglo green sticker on the windshield, with a registration number stamped on the sticker. The bike and rider was logged on a clipboard, and then that rider was good to go to enter the track either for practice or a race. If the bike failed Tech, it got a dayglo orange sticker on the windshield, and the bike was logged with the reason for failing. Then the rider or crew-chief could go back to his pits, address the issue, and bring the bike back to Tech to be rechecked. If it passed, we'd put a green sticker over the orange one, log that it passed, and he was good to go. The vast majority of racers (in either club, really) were grateful if we spotted something that would fail them, because that thing, whatever it was, might cause a catastrophic event if left unaddressed, leading to possible injury or death, let alone the destruction of an expensive motorcycle.
There was a guy.....I'll call him "John".....who was a nationally known WERA and AMA racer AND publisher/editor of a nationally read motorcycle enthusiast magazine at the time....doesn't matter which one.....and he was also on WERA's board of directors at the time. When he brought his
very expensively and heavily modified open-class superbike to Tech Inspection prior to the beginning of practice sessions, I failed him. The reason I failed him is because, instead of safety-wiring his exhaust manifold bolts as clearly stated by the rules, he had simply applied a dab of RTV silicone on them to hold them in place. (During a 24 hour endurance race, the engine block on an air-cooled superbike motor will often glow a dull red at night, and at the exhaust ports and manifolds it might be a bright yellow.....in other words, they are HOT, and that RTV silicone is just going to burn up, thereby exposing the exhaust manifold bolts to the risk of vibrating loose and backing out.)
Instead of just taking his bike back to the pits and fixing the problem, which would have taken him about an hour, he berated me and argued about why I should make an exception to the rules for him...stuff like "I'm a professional!" and "I
wrote the bleeping rules!" My answer was calm but unyielding. "If I make an exception for you, then I have to make an exception for everybody. Then it's not a rule anymore. Your rule book doesn't give me permission to do that, and it isn't just
your safety that is at issue here. There are
other riders on the track who might be catastrophically impacted by your mechanical failure." In the end, he went back to his pits and fixed the problem and was able to get enough practice in and to place highly at the race's conclusion; but when the next issue of his magazine that came out, the feature article about the race included several paragraphs naming me and my staff by name and calling attention to our ancestry and the marital status of our parents. Believe me, phone calls were made and words were exchanged, and I demanded a printed retraction and apology while bandying about the words "attorney", "court", "slander", "libel", and "expensive". He saw the writing on the wall and printed the retraction and apology in the next issue.
"John" was a jerk. None of what he did or didn't do was
illegal, but he violated the organization's rules......rules which, ironically, he had had a part in creating. When he got caught in the violation, instead of acquiescing and submitting to the rules, he crapped all over everybody standing between him and his getting what he wanted. Like a 5 year old.
In short, this mid-30s (at the time) grown up man was behaving like a little boy and having a massive temper tantrum.
So it doesn't really matter what is
legal or
not legal at the range if the
owner's rules say "no OC", and the difference between a mature adult and a jerk is that when the adult is caught in violation and asked to cover up, he or she says, "right....sorry about that, I didn't realize I was in violation", and he covers up. The jerk turns it into an argument about his rights on someone else's property.
I think that is the kind of "jerk" that Bill was talking about.....no so much that someone who OCs is automatically a jerk (I don't think they are). Rather, if they are OCing while
knowingly in violation of the range rules, then they
are being a jerk.......and anybody who goes to a range and who ignores the posted rules upon arrival really doesn't have an excuse for not knowing if OC is verboten or not. Every range I've ever been to has their rules prominently displayed
somewhere so that you
have to see them before you can shoot there. Mature adults
read the rules. If those rules say "no open carry" and you open carry
anyway, well.......
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
― G. Michael Hopf, "Those Who Remain"
#TINVOWOOT
