Organizing an OC event in Indy! Stand up for your Rights!

[kingnereli]

Yesterday afternoon, I was in a training session Downtown. I kept "peeking" at my lap top anxiously waiting for the next pictures of the walk. I was trying to figure out where you were so I could get a glimpse of the event. Sure enough, I was able to view the walk from a 9 story vantage point. It was great.
A few (10-12) of my fellow trainees also watched the parade. It was interesting to listen to the comments. Of course, many were appalled that people with weapons were blatently walking down the streets of Indy. My favorite comment was "where are the Police?" and sure enough as the words came out, there was the police presence in plain view. Oh, the confused faces when they saw the police WITH YOU!
After you passed by, we sat down to continue our training. The dialogue was about the open carry. I listened at first, and let the negatives spout out their dismay, BUT I was surprised and pleased at how many SUPPORTED you and the cause. After 20 minutes of good discussion about open carry and Indiana gun laws, we got back to training.
You will never know how many people you impacted with your walk. There were more, like us, who were watching at a distance. You got people talking.


WELL DONE!!!

That's awesome. Thank you for the encouragement.

 

[Zoub]

2. To Savage's credit, there are many here who thought he would never be able to organize an event that would not end in arrest, embarrassment, or another AWB.

While maybe a bit overstated..........bringing about the next AWB............you have to +1 this observation.

I personally think all the axe grinding and wanna be photography critics posts should be pulled, it distracts from the end result.

 

[Zoub]

So, what you're saying is that I'm not allowed to ask a question about one of the photos without being a "traitor to the cause"? Funny, because I had two other people in the thread that managed to give a perfectly reasonable explanation without getting bent out of shape. If you didn't want comments about the walk (especially from people who weren't there), then why bother having it at all? Why bother taking pictures and posting them on the internet? Why bother notifying the news media?

No but you should be aware of the conflict of interest here, as a moderator to challenge anything in this fashion brings more heat than usual. You have a protected status. At work it might fall under something along the lines of hostile workplace. You can push but it is hard for others to push back against you.

Once you become a mod you enforce the rules of the site but remaining neutral is an ethical decision. Even if you were right in your observation, and you were not, your opinion is not really germane to the purpose of this thread. These guys got a win here and they deserve recognition for that from all of us.

That is my opinion of what you did here.

I am not a personal fan of SE but I like what they did as a group and I am willing to say that where others can see it.

 

[Griffeycom]

You guys made the night shift chat last night, I was riding with the SLED IMPD unit last night and during a DUI investigation I heard another officer talking about the Open Carry march. I didn't hear what he said about it, was more interested in watching the DUI suspect go through tests, but some of the officers did hear about it.

 

[Jack Ryan]

Hello all!

I am glad your walk went so well, and I was both hopeful and concerned today about it. Amidst the brass, I was thinking about you guys.

And, frankly, it looks like things went very well if not super duper!

The press did not show: great! No one reacted in horror or fear: great! No one did or said anything stupid: great! Those of you who took the time, planning, and bravery to go and exercise your rights in a potentially hostile situation: congratulations to you and your success is yours to own. Wear it with pride.

I am curious, as a part of the AAR, what you would do differently next time? I assume there will be a next time of course.

As for the hurt feelings, I hope we can stay with the successes of the day and leave out the fractures for now. Let's let The Meach's pictures of kittens do their work.

I wasn't there and hadn't thought much about until I saw this thread, but this post covers my own feeling pretty well.

Looks like it went smooth, no major snafus and several positive expiriences to ice the cake. Fine job. Congratulations.

 

[Chefcook]

Congratulations!!! I am so happy this went so well.

 

[Tonyscomputery]

I am just glad i had my hat off and on my hearts so i didn't have to get T'ed off lol. I had a great day, and a big thanks to Savage I have meet you twice now and respect you greatly.

 

[ATF Consumer]

I wasn't there and hadn't thought much about until I saw this thread, but this post covers my own feeling pretty well.

Looks like it went smooth, no major snafus and several positive expiriences to ice the cake. Fine job. Congratulations.

To see this comment coming from someone that generally cuts thru the bull and tells it like he sees it, I really appreciate the congrats...
All of the positive feedback is really great to see.

 

[longbarrel]

For the record, the walkers were not "representing the whole body," as this was not an INGO event.

That said, I am glad folks showed up, I am glad the walk went off without incident, and I'm sorry a few members felt the need to come into this thread with a chip on their shoulder and **** all over other members' accomplishments.

I realize this was not an INGO event. When I mistyped about representing the whole body: it should have read representing the whole body of gun owners. I am sorry for the confusion and hope that we can all get past this. I think if there is another one (which I'm sure there will be) then maybe more people will come and see all of the harm we did not cause, all of the trouble we did not get in, and all of the people that we reached. 30-40 out of 5400 is still sad.

 

[Liberty Sanders]

Hey folks, my wife wants to identify a young couple from the walk.

They were both dressed in black and mentioned that their anniversary is this Tuesday. He was packing a cocked n' locked 1911 and she was the young lady who said she studied photography while she was herding us together for a photo op.

The wife has some pix for them if we can get an e-mail address.

Liberty

 

[SavageEagle]

Yesterday afternoon, I was in a training session Downtown. I kept "peeking" at my lap top anxiously waiting for the next pictures of the walk. I was trying to figure out where you were so I could get a glimpse of the event. Sure enough, I was able to view the walk from a 9 story vantage point. It was great.
A few (10-12) of my fellow trainees also watched the parade. It was interesting to listen to the comments. Of course, many were appalled that people with weapons were blatently walking down the streets of Indy. My favorite comment was "where are the Police?" and sure enough as the words came out, there was the police presence in plain view. Oh, the confused faces when they saw the police WITH YOU!
After you passed by, we sat down to continue our training. The dialogue was about the open carry. I listened at first, and let the negatives spout out their dismay, BUT I was surprised and pleased at how many SUPPORTED you and the cause. After 20 minutes of good discussion about open carry and Indiana gun laws, we got back to training.
You will never know how many people you impacted with your walk. There were more, like us, who were watching at a distance. You got people talking.


WELL DONE!!!

That is just awesome. Seriously, this means that our mission was accomplished and we were highly successful. I was a little disappointed there weren't more people out to give info too, but enough people seen us to get word spread. This is great. We got people talking. Good work everyone!

Thank you so much for that. your story pretty much made my day

I am not a personal fan of SE but I like what they did as a group and I am willing to say that where others can see it.

Although we do not really like each other, it was really big of you to say what you said. I respect that and thank you.

You guys made the night shift chat last night, I was riding with the SLED IMPD unit last night and during a DUI investigation I heard another officer talking about the Open Carry march. I didn't hear what he said about it, was more interested in watching the DUI suspect go through tests, but some of the officers did hear about it.

Good. If you hear anything more, good or bad, could you let us know? Same for everyone else.

 

[zoglog]

seeing the photo of when we walked by the wedding group made me realize that we should have gave her a 21 gun salute, or a 36 gun salute since that how many people we had! great jobs guys and i cant wait to do another

 

[Indy317]

I listened at first, and let the negatives spout out their dismay, BUT I was surprised and pleased at how many SUPPORTED you and the cause.

You will never know how many people you impacted with your walk. There were more, like us, who were watching at a distance. You got people talking.

Now the question becomes: How did the group split between supporting and not supporting? Were some anti-OC, but OK with CC?

Getting people talking isn't always a good thing. Sometimes that can have unintended consequences. If enough people are anti-OC, we could easily see a change in the law to make it CC only. Trust me, comments on this message board about wanting some police interaction, about changing what you do in a normal day to see if people will say something, etc. won't look good when printed off by anti-OC police officers giving testimony at the state house. Of course I doubt they will print off the messages that show their officers don't know the law!!

 

[ATF Consumer]

Now the question becomes: How did the group split between supporting and not supporting? Were some anti-OC, but OK with CC?

Getting people talking isn't always a good thing. Sometimes that can have unintended consequences. If enough people are anti-OC, we could easily see a change in the law to make it CC only. Trust me, comments on this message board about wanting some police interaction, about changing what you do in a normal day to see if people will say something, etc. won't look good when printed off by anti-OC police officers giving testimony at the state house. Of course I doubt they will print off the messages that show their officers don't know the law!!

If that were the case then the Brady campaign would be making a bigger impact than they have thus far.

 

[BB62]

GREAT pics, I hope there are more to come. It was good to see a decent turn-out. We even had a contingency that drove in from Ohio! Four really nice guys, (sorry, I don't recall the names), found a reference to the walk a couple of weeks ago, gathered up a few buddies, and drove over to join us and show their support.

It was a nice walk! The police were VERY helpful, lit escort most of the way.

Unless I missed one, there were only three of us - me (Jeff), Kent (former Marine) and Joe. Two of us are from Cincinnati, and one from Dayton. If we appeared to be four, that's okay too! (next time, we'll bring more)

It was MORE than a pleasure to come. Kudos to Ryan and all the rest of you for all you did.

Just from reading this thread, it was more than evident that even as a first event it was going to be a superior one: the coordination efforts, the literature which was being worked on to hand out, etc. was superior. And to top it off, you all arranged for the weather to be excellent!

Oh, something else - in Ohio, the walks (I attended eight of them) tended to be middle-aged white guys. You guys broke that mold - with younger people and WOMEN (gasp!!)!


Finally, I gave a few of you my contact info, and I hope to receive e-mails so I can add you to my list.

One request - Chad, I would appreciate it if you would PM me - I forgot to give you my card.

 

[BB62]

One more thing - Indy has a VERY NICE downtown. All of us Ohioans were impressed!

Whether you do the next walk partly on your version of RiverWalk (when you get the preemption matter addressed) or not, I think all of us were interested in returning to Indy to spend more time and $$.

 

[SavageEagle]

Now the question becomes: How did the group split between supporting and not supporting? Were some anti-OC, but OK with CC?

Getting people talking isn't always a good thing. Sometimes that can have unintended consequences. If enough people are anti-OC, we could easily see a change in the law to make it CC only. Trust me, comments on this message board about wanting some police interaction, about changing what you do in a normal day to see if people will say something, etc. won't look good when printed off by anti-OC police officers giving testimony at the state house. Of course I doubt they will print off the messages that show their officers don't know the law!!

As ATF pointed out, if this were true, the Brady's would have been all over it. I do see your point though and the event we had COULD put that in the forefront now. But that's ok. If enough of us get involved locally we can squash it before it becomes an issue. I seriously doubt in the current climate they will introduce anything of the sort and I would not worry about it. Think realisticly on this.

Also, I know of a few people here on this very board who thought this was a horrible idea to begin with because they are openly very anti-OC. They always state tactical advantage as their reasoning. Now, I'm not debating OC vs CC, I'm just merely pointing out that there are many folks on this very board that are against it in the very way you spoke of. The point is, it doesn't matter because having to have a license to carry period is unConstitutional. We still abide by it so that we do not become criminals, unlike those out there that do not care about the law anyway.

We work peacefully and cooperatively to change that so that there will be no need to violently change things. I fail to see why anyone wouldn't be on board with that.

Unless I missed one, there were only three of us - me (Jeff), Kent (former Marine) and Joe. Two of us are from Cincinnati, and one from Dayton. If we appeared to be four, that's okay too! (next time, we'll bring more)

It was MORE than a pleasure to come. Kudos to Ryan and all the rest of you for all you did.

Just from reading this thread, it was more than evident that even as a first event it was going to be a superior one: the coordination efforts, the literature which was being worked on to hand out, etc. was superior. And to top it off, you all arranged for the weather to be excellent!

I gave a few of you my contact info, and I hope to receive e-mails so I can add you to my list.

One request - Chad, I would appreciate it if you would PM me - I forgot to give you my card.

One more thing - Indy has a VERY NICE downtown. All of us Ohioans were impressed!

Whether you do the next walk partly on your version of RiverWalk (when you get the preemption matter addressed) or not, I think all of us were interested in returning to Indy to spend more time and $$.

It was great meeting you all! Glad you liked Indy! I will be in contact but I'm still in decompression mode after this weekend. It's be fun but crazy! I had to let my gerbal recoup after all that!

BTW, I think he was including Liberty Sanders when he said you 4. All the talk from him about Ohio can mislead someone to think he still lives there.

 

[BB62]

...The point is, it doesn't matter because having to have a license to carry period is unConstitutional...

No doubt.

And leaving aside the US Constitution, in Indiana, where you have a RKBA in the state constitution, needing a license to OC is definitely bogus! No other RIGHTS I know of require one to obtain a license in order to exercise them.


Again, congratulations! It was an honor for us Ohioans to be participants in the fruits of the efforts of all of you.

 

[Delmar]

No but you should be aware of the conflict of interest here, as a moderator to challenge anything in this fashion brings more heat than usual. You have a protected status. At work it might fall under something along the lines of hostile workplace. You can push but it is hard for others to push back against you.

Once you become a mod you enforce the rules of the site but remaining neutral is an ethical decision. Even if you were right in your observation, and you were not, your opinion is not really germane to the purpose of this thread. These guys got a win here and they deserve recognition for that from all of us.

That is my opinion of what you did here.

I am not a personal fan of SE but I like what they did as a group and I am willing to say that where others can see it.

I'm not a moderator here, but I do moderate another forum with a different focus. It is silly to think that a moderator should give up his ability to say what he thinks, just because he is willing to give his time to help the board run smoothly.

 

[LLDJR]

Congrats on the effort everyone, unfortunately I was in Illinois all day Saturday