No way around it.It’s either the safest restaurant in town or the most dangerous. It all depends on how you view the Second Amendment.Sea Bears Ogden Fish House, a downtown restaurant on Washington Boulevard, is quickly becoming known for three things: the food, the servers clad in Scottish kilts and the sidearms those servers openly carry while they work.Tony and Monika Siebers, of North Salt Lake, are owners of Sea Bears. They’re also staunch supporters of the right to bear arms. As such, servers at the restaurant – which, thus far, have primarily been immediate family members – are invited to open-carry the firearm of their choice.“We support the Second Amendment,” Tony said.The 46-year-old says they’ve been open-carrying at the restaurant for almost a year now. He calls it a safety issue.“It’s a downtown business dealing with money, we’re closing down at night, my wife has to get to her car out back,” Tony said. “So we just said, ‘Let’s get our concealed-carry permits.'”After going through a concealed-carry class and firearms training, and while waiting to receive their conceal permits, Monika decided to start open-carrying at the restaurant.Tony admits that, in the beginning, he feared how customers might react.“I was nervous – well, not nervous, but I worried – when my wife first started doing open-carry,” he said. “I thought, ‘Will people be offended and not want to come in?'”Monika, 45, acknowledges the risk.“Obviously, you’re taking a pretty bold stance,” she said. “The last thing we want to come across as is arrogant or flippant. And we don’t want to scare people.”When Monika first started wearing her Smith & Wesson M&P; Shield 9mm on her hip, the Siebers got a lot of feedback.“Almost all positive,” Tony said. “Once in a while, somebody is uncomfortable with it, but not very often. I can count two people who had a negative reaction.”
A few weeks ago we reported on a bold (but constitutionally sound) Open Carry bill making its way through a few rounds of preliminary approvals.A powerful anti-gun Miami Republican has used his power as the chairman of a powerful Senate committee to singlehandedly crush the possibility of handgun open carry in Florida.Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Miguel Diaz de la Portilla said Tuesday evening a proposal allowing 1.5 million people with concealed weapons permits in Florida to openly carry handguns is officially dead for the 2016 session.“Open carry is not going to happen; it’s done,” the Miami Republican senator told reporters.Diaz de la Portilla had expressed growing reluctance for weeks about holding a hearing on SB 300, saying last week it was “on life support.”It’s among three gun bills he’s killing this session by not granting them hearings in his committee, a powerful prerogative that committee chairman have.Last month, Diaz de la Portilla said he wouldn’t hear a similarly controversial bill that would allow concealed-weapons permit-holders to carry concealed on public college and university campuses. Also Tuesday, he said he won’t hear a bill that would allow concealed weapons to be carried in Florida airport terminals. (It passed its first committee earlier in the day but it won’t be heard in the House, so it was essentially dead anyway.)“On all of these gun bills, I don’t believe any of them are necessary,” Diaz de la Portilla said. “They could result in unintended consequences. I think we need to prioritize in our committee, as far as what we hear. We can’t hear every bill that’s referred to us.”
A Florida gun rights group is taking the city of Tampa to court following a June incident in which a member was barred from area parks after openly carrying a handgun while fishing.At the core of the suit is the Tampa Police Department’s handling of George Freeman who was lawfully armed while fishing at the Ballast Point on Tampa Bay last month. According to Florida Carry, of which Freeman is a member, local police first attempted to disarm the angler then detained him for an hour and searched his wallet and cell phone before releasing him with a trespass warning for all area parks.“The fact that a person is peacefully exercising their right to bear arms is not cause for police officers to attack, detain, search, and trespass a citizen who is a law-abiding gun owner,” Florida Carry said in a statement emailed to Guns.com last week.Florida is one of just five states that ban the practice of open carry. However, it is legal if done while target shooting, hunting or fishing and gun rights advocates have long exercised that right.On June 18, Tampa Police spokeswoman Andrea Davis told Guns.com that Freeman had been warned in error and they intended to both spread the word to their officers on open carry exemptions while fishing and issue Freeman an apology. Likewise, as noted by an update to the case file issued the same day, the city rescinded the trespass warning.Florida Carry argues that more needed to be done and filed a 41-page lawsuit on Freeman’s behalf against the Tampa Police Chief Eric Ward and Tampa Mayor Robert Buckhorn in their official capacities.In the suit, represented by attorney Eric Friday, the gun rights group contends that the city made a number of civil rights violations to include running the serial numbers on Freeman’s guns without cause and violating his constitutional right to bear arms.In the end, they are seeking damages, attorney’s fees and a number of court-ordered injunctions on running serial numbers without cause and harassing anglers who are openly carrying firearms.
Following the lead of other national chains like Starbucks and Chipotle, Target is “politely asking” gun owners not to carry guns in their stores.
In Kansas City, Missouri it’s not lawful to open-carry according to a 9-0 decision by local officials.The mayor felt the open carry of guns is bad for business and can be intimidating for customers.Scott Taylor, one of the city’s councilman, said “We’re proud to live in the Midwest, but I’m not sure we want to be the Wild West”.The mayor then went on to echo Councilman Taylor and said that the Wild West had gun regulations. He said that guns were required to be turned into the sheriff when visitors came to town.
Open carry activists have been in the headlines since a group of gun-wielding 2nd Amendment supporters dined at a Chipotle in Dallas, allegedly making some customers and employees in the restaurant uncomfortable.“We had all different types of long-guns, some people had shot guns. I personally carry an AK-47,” Alex Clark, an Open Carry Texas member who attended the lunch, told a CBS. “There were a few AR-15′s there. The rifles were loaded. There’s no reason to carry an unloaded weapon — it wouldn’t do any good.”After hyperbolic reports of the pro-gun demonstration made the Internet rounds, Chipotle released a statement asking customers not to open carry in its restaurants in the future.
We ask that members take a step back and make an objective assessment of what we are trying to accomplish and help us to get open carry passed for everyone. We must be willing and able to recognize what works and what doesn’t, but we need your help to make these efforts a success. It will be very difficult to spin holstered, black powder revolvers into a negative story. This is the goal we are currently striving for, open carry of handguns. We know everyone is working hard for this cause. It is simply time to focus on what has been proven to work. The conversation has shifted from open carry of handguns to rifles in businesses, negating our efforts and distracting us from our mission.
[W]hile unlicensed open carry of long guns is also typically legal in most places, it is a rare sight to see someone sidle up next to you in line for lunch with a 7.62 rifle slung across his chest, much less a whole gaggle of folks descending on the same public venue with similar arms.Let’s not mince words, not only is it rare, it’s downright weird and certainly not a practical way to go normally about your business while being prepared to defend yourself. To those who are not acquainted with the dubious practice of using public displays of firearms as a means to draw attention to oneself or one’s cause, it can be downright scary. It makes folks who might normally be perfectly open-minded about firearms feel uncomfortable and question the motives of pro-gun advocates.
