I won't pretend to know exactly what's in the mind of the Urban Liberal Castrati who spend their days commenting on LJS articles, and I may be overestimating their thought processes;
Well, you said they had assumed
validly, so that wording made me think you thought there was something valid in what they said.
however, I assumed, from some of the comments, that they assumed it was an unsound defensive practice. The logic might be that if a guy is going into a small crowded cafe...
Apparently they've never been to Round The Bend which, while often crowded, is neither small nor a cafe...
...holding a baby (in a way that doesn't allow him to even see someone approaching him from his strong / carry side),
...and apparently they think that when someone takes a picture of you, that matches what you look like at all times.
...and he thinks that there's a risk that someone else might come into that cafe and do something psychopathic that requires lethal force, then mightn't it be advantageous to have the gun be accessible but discreetly hidden?
Probably not when you have an entire group of people looking out for each other. Tend to be able to cover a whole lot more range that way.
In addition, while I don't open carry, I will say that if I have one arm already tied up (holding a baby for example) it would certainly be lots easier and faster to draw if my gun was carried openly instead of concealed. Concealed may be accessible, but it is still harder (and thus, slower) to get to than when carried openly, particularly when you only have one hand to work with.
(Again, I might be overthinking what's in the mind of LJS types.)
I was mostly just wondering why
you thought it was valid, actually. You did say:
Even some of the Urban Liberal Castrati commenting at the bottom of the LJS page wondered, validly, how smart it is to have your sidearm exposed while holding a baby.
Given that it was one picture of a brief moment in time, I already knew that what
I'd read on the LJS page seemed to be complete nonsense.
What I most don't understand is why you thought it was an: "
purposefully-in-your-face-to-make-a-fashion/political-statement OC"
...after all, they didn't go someplace to make a scene, they had a small group meet at an eating place to simply have dinner together and meet to talk. Yes, it got noticed, and yet the article itself even said: "
It was the baby, not the gun, that got the attention of her fellow diners. After all, her baby was the only one in the restaurant. The gun was just one of many."
(I will say I'm betting that was poetic license, because any time I've been to Round The Bend, there have been LOTS of kids and babies there.)
Anyway---they didn't make a huge scene, yell, scream, go someplace where it would be a potential issue, argue with people, bait police officers, etc....they carried legally and openly and had dinner in public.
Since I don't happen to think that carrying legally openly in public is automatically "in-your-face," I'm disagree with your wording there.