Gun advocates pack heat, pick litter
Scott Brownlie of Torrance strolls the Pier Plaza en route to a coffee house.
They wore guns at their sides, and they came to clean up this town. Of litter, that is.
About a dozen gun-rights advocates with holstered side arms – and two with long arms strapped across their backs – held a brief rally and then picked up litter along The Strand on Saturday, stopping to talk and hand out fliers to anyone who asked about the weapons.
The mid-day “open carry” event was designed to remind the public that it has long been legal to carry unloaded weapons in plain sight in most public areas of California.
As the open carriers, all but two of them men, walked the busy Strand, most passersby seemed not to notice the guns at their sides. Some people asked about the weapons and eagerly accepted informational fliers, and some others quietly moved a step or two to distance themselves from the carriers.
Three young men in front of a Strand house stopped Jeff Cude of San Pedro, who was picking up cigarette butts and the like with a 45-caliber Glock on his hip.
“I was like, is that a real gun?” said one of the young men, smiling broadly.
“Is that a Glock?” he asked. “I love Glocks.”
Harley Green of South Bay Open Carry addresses a gun advocates rally.
The young men listened eagerly as Cude and another armed man cited a state law allowing people to carry unloaded guns, along with ammunition, in plain sight.
“You can walk into the store like that?” the young man asked.
Cude said yes, but quickly added that school zones, government buildings and parks are out of bounds.
“Can you shoot?” the young man asked.
“In self defense, in self defense,” Cude answered, stressing that strict legal parameters apply to the firing of a weapon.
“I don’t want to shoot anybody anyway,” he said.
During the conversation a young woman who was with the young men looked on, her eyebrows drawn together and her mouth agape.
The trash pickup ended at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf on Hermosa Avenue, where nobody seemed to bat an eye at the armed customers.
Some of the advocates said they carry openly only in groups, and others said they carry unconcealed weapons often.
“I open carry constantly – Home Depot, Starbuck’s, wherever I go,” said Eric Barton of Compton, who was wearing jean shorts, a T-shirt and a Taurus 9 millimeter under his arm, in perhaps the only shoulder holster worn to the event.
“I didn’t want to tuck my shirt in,” he explained.
Most wore belt holsters, many of them with a gun on one hip and ammo clips on the other.
Richard Jack of Torrance needed no holster, wearing a Colt M4 semiautomatic long arm strapped across his back.
Barton said when he is asked about the gun, “I just tell them it is my right,” and a typical response is “Oh, right on.”
He said the gun is for self defense, to be drawn only if needed.
“I would feel better that I tried to protect my stuff rather than be victimized,” he said. “But I don’t wish for a reason or hope for a reason to take it out.”
Harley Green, 24, of Hermosa, the event’s organizer and the founder of southbayopencarry.com, said he can load his Springfield Armory 9 millimeter semiautomatic side arm in two and-a-half seconds.
“Over the last 50 years Californians have continually lost the ability to defend themselves,” Green said before the cleanup, speaking from a podium at Eighth Street and Valley Drive.
“Californians have also been bombarded by inaccurate negative imagery of firearms. South Bay Open Carry seeks to reverse these counterproductive trends by showing the public that Second Amendment supporters, like most Californians, represent safety and community values,” he said.
Green said gun control measures exacerbate crime.
“One does not have to be a, quote, gun person to see the need for actively supporting Second Amendment rights… If citizens sit idly by and allow politicians to strip away their Second Amendment rights, their other rights could soon be taken away,” he said.
Two Libertarian Party candidates offered their support as well.
Jeff Cude of San Pedro picks up trash with a Glock at his side.
“I strongly support what South Bay Open Carry is doing, I strongly support the Second Amendment, and I strongly support the entire Bill of Rights,” said Dale Ogden, the Libertarian candidate for governor.
“The Libertarian Party is the only party that came out here today to support open carry,” said Ethan Musulin, a candidate for a South Bay seat in the state Assembly.
Hermosa Beach Police Lt. Garth Gaines watched over the event, and police reported no incidents in connection with it. ER