The "Open Carry" strategy is, IMO, flawed on two levels:
1st, it lets the bad guys know who is armed and who to target first in the commission of a crime.
2nd, it will work the opposite of what is intended by alarming even more people who are already too fearful of people with visible guns, which they equate to thugs, psychotics or media's boogy-man; "gun nuts". We have an example of that in "The Cloward–Piven strategy" which, according to wikipedia,
is a political strategy outlined in 1966 by American sociologists and political activists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven that called for overloading the U.S. public welfare system in order to precipitate a crisis that would lead to a replacement of the welfare system with a national system of "a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty".
By displaying guns in public the effect is the exact opposite of what is desired. We are seeing the Cloward-Plven strategy being employed right now as we see that the number of workers "participating" have dropped to 63% of the total work force available, with the number of "disabled" climbing to over 10,000,000 workers and family members.
That means that 37% are not "participating", i.e., holding a job, and Obama has released all detained illegal aliens and still fails to protect our borders. The reason is obvious -- crash the economy to justify installing a Socialist State with command and control from the top -- by "executive orders". IF I were an anti-gun fanatic I'd push pro-2A people to display guns in public and push them into peoples faces as often as possible, especially "assault" rifles, so that they could be vilified by an all too willing media which is also pushing against the 2A and the Constitution in general.
Two years ago I gave a speech on the steps of our capital in which I stated that I never thought that in my entire life time I would feel the need to rise in defense of the 2nd Amendment, or the Constitution. I mentioned the time I took a bus 3 miles to down town Denver, walked into the Dave Cook sporting goods store, plunked down $150 and took the bus back home carrying two M1 Garands, which had just been surplussed (circa 1957). Nobody cared that a 16 year old kid who looked 13 or 14 was carrying around two high powered military rifles on public transporation. I also said that many pickup trucks had gun racks in them and there were rifles hanging on many of those gun racks. There were so many people, perhaps a majority, carrying small pistols in their pockets and purses that none thought anything about it. You expected that anyone you happened to meet would probably be armed.
That was then. This is now. People have been conditioned by the Marxist media to be fearful of firearms of any kind, and to believe that they are not needed because the "State" will protect them, even though the Supreme Court has ruled more than once that it is NOT the purpose of the police to defend any particular person, even if they know that that individual has or is being threatened with death. The fact that the states with the most strict gun regulation are also those with the greatest gun violence because thugs and psychotics know that they face an unarmed victim does not register with those fearful citizens because the media does NOT report the uses of firearms to protect citizens unless they can bend that story to their own agenda. Therefore, IMO, folks who brandish weapons openly in public places "because they can" are doing more damage to the 2A than good.
On September 9th the court in York will hold a sentencing hearing for a murderer I helped convict in 1987 and again in 1997. In the second trial he was evaluated by two psychiatrists as permanently psychotic and a danger to the community and should never be released. The jury agreed and found him guilty of 1st degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison with no parole. He was 14 when he committed the murder of his younger sister, whom he sexually assaulted after he shot her, and he was 24 when he was given the life sentence at the second trial. I recently read that at the time of the murder he had six other assault cases pending in court. Five liberal groups have been campaigning for several years to get the sentences of murderers who committed their crimes as juveniles, and were sentenced to life in prison, pardoned or commuted. That's the main reason why I obtained a CHP. It would be life threatening to me and my wife if such unnecessary parades of firearms resulted in a flood of businesses putting up no-gun signs to the point that carrying a concealed weapon would be problematic if not impractical. Or worse, instead of relaxing unconstitutional restrictions on possession and carrying of firearms, such activities creates justifications for adding to restrictions.
