Walmart Asks Customers to Refrain From Open Carry

This correspondent walks into a Walmart about once a week to monitor local ammunition prices. Long experience has demonstrated that no gun signs are seldom noticed. Some effort is expended, attempting to do better at noticing them. At the entrance of Walmart, a sign mentioning a firearm was noticed, in relatively small letters, among other information, toward the top right corner of the entryway. The notice said:

Kindly refrain from openly carrying a firearm.

This correspondent is armed nearly all the time. Whether a firearm is carried openly or concealed or firearms are carried both ways, depends on what is deemed most advantageous for the particular time and place. Open carry is especially effective as a political statement. Open carry is not as necessary or useful in Arizona since the state restored Constitutional Carry in 2010.

This correspondent carried openly in the local Walmart in May of 2021 and met another customer there who was carrying concealed. At the time, Walmart did not ask this customer to leave the store.

Astute readers will notice the current Walmart signage is a polite request, not a demand or a command. The request only required a minor shifting of clothing to accomplish.  A polite society is a positive value. Acceding to a polite request does not mean it must be followed if it becomes burdensome or dangerous to do so.

There are only four states where open carry is generally banned by law. They are California, Florida, Illinois, and New York. One of those states is not like the others. Florida has permitless carry, but bans most open carry of firearms.

This year there will be another attempt to have the Florida legislature repeal the general ban on open carry in what has been called the “gunshine” state. Previous attempts have failed, primarily due to divisions in the Republican party. With the vast majority of states having open carry, it is hard to see the arguments in Florida against open carry as legitimate or reasonable.  Governor DeSantis says he supports open carry. Florida Carry is pushing to repeal the open carry ban. From wusf.org:

“Florida Carry is gonna continue this fight,” said Friday. “We are going to get the right to open carry because currently, there is no right to carry a shotgun or rifle in the state of Florida outside of your home if you are not hunting. That is an unconstitutional deprivation of that right.”

Eric Friday makes a legitimate point. Carrying long guns concealed is much more difficult than carrying a pistol concealed. Carrying long guns concealed generally makes them much slower to bring into action.  Bans on the carry of long guns are not supported in the legal history of the United States.

Open carry is a method of carry which has been honored in the United States of America for centuries. It is only in recent years when it has been banned in a few places. Even in the 1950’s in New York City it was not illegal to openly carry long guns.

Open carry is a valid and reasonable method of carrying arms, validated by a long historical pedigree. A case may have to go all the way to the Supreme Court to restore the Second Amendment rights to open carry across the nation.

About Dean Weingarten:

Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.