I think there is a difference based on how and when you exercise that legal option. The policies that we have seen tend to come right after mass gatherings by OC advocates designed to draw public attention. Think about Starbucks. We open carried there all the time. We even had coffee on Sunday mornings with five or six people showing up. Never an issue. When did Starbucks come out with their new policy? When some people decided to have a giant rally, carrying long guns and waving signs. Freaked out someone at Starbucks and they changed their policy. Likewise in CA. There were people going about their daily business openly carrying an unloaded firearm. It was not a problem until a large group decided to make a public showing of it. Tully's responded as did the state legislature. Now Target. Many of us have shopped at Target while OC and never had an issue. A large group of people decide to parade through a Target with AR and SKS slung over their shoulders, Target issues a public statement asking people not to carry in their stores.
What we are really talking about here is not whether you have the right, and not even whether you should exercise that right, but what tactics will result in positive gains for gun owners. Going about your daily business, normalizing carry in the eyes of the public, was working. We have been doing it for ten years or so. Lawsuits have been won against law enforcement agencies, agencies all over the country have changed their training policies to ensure that their officers are properly aware of the laws, and the public, when they even noticed, has become inured to the sight of someone with a pistol on their belt.
Gathering large crowds of gun owners carrying rifles has had the exact opposite effect. It has nothing to do with rights and everything to do with tactics. If we want to win we choose which battles will have positive effects and which will have negative effects. In six months a small group has chosen a tactic that has undone much of the gains that we have made in the past ten years in the eyes of the public. Can you honestly say that the cause of advancing our rights has benefited from their actions? Because in the end it isn't about whether one person gets to carry a rifle through a store once, it's about normalizing behavior that should be accepted, the right to self defense with minimal restrictions by the state.