Open and concealed carry
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Southern Lines
Lloyd “Cape” Caperton
Recently Alabama passed a law as to where citizens of the state no longer have to have a permit to carry a concealed pistol.
There was already an open carry law that allowed a person to carry a gun in a holster in the open, but if you were operating a motor vehicle, even on a motorcycle, a concealed carry permit was required.
In other words, if you were on a horse or walking down the road with a pistol in a holster it was legal, but if you got into a motor vehicle, it then became illegal unless you had a concealed carry permit, which didn’t make much sense.
Having an Alabama Concealed Carry Permit used to give someone an exemption from having to do a federal background check when buying a gun. This exemption was cut out by the feds because they said that the sheriffs in some counties were issuing concealed carry permits to convicted felons, no doubt felons that had supported them or contributed money to their election campaigns, or maybe they just wanted the $25.
I gathered that this was mostly going on in the Democratic urban areas, such as Jefferson County. As a federal licensed gun dealer, if I allowed felons to purchase guns, I would be in the penitentiary, but I guess there are different rules for different people.
I have some records from my family on my mother’s side going back almost 200 years. I remember some letters I once read, written by my great-grandfather and another man who were writing to each other about a stranger who had recently moved into the community.
It became known to them that the stranger was carrying a concealed weapon, a pistol. It was mentioned between them that most honest men carried their pistols out in the open and since the stranger was carrying a concealed weapon, he might be up to something nefarious, or have something to hide, that he possibly might be an outlaw of some sort, or equally bad, some sort of government agent sent into the community to inform on or spy on someone.
In either case, the stranger was being watched. This being said, I have always preferred to open carry my pistol when I wear one.
Most today carry automatic pistols. I prefer to carry an old style single action, 6-shot revolver, with the cylinder under the firing pin left empty; if you are good, you don’t need 15 rounds to take care of most problems. Also the steel-jacketed auto rounds are worse about ricocheting than the lead revolver rounds.
My step-grandfather, Lewis Hendrix, used to squirrel hunt with a long barrel High Standard .22 revolver; he liked to shoot them in the head while they were running through the trees, that is until his sight got bad.
He used to laugh at me as a teenager, using a 410 shotgun to squirrel hunt; he said that was for people that couldn’t shoot. I never got as good with a pistol as him, but I got pretty good.
Until next time, take care! Dixie forever!