I have been aware that California Penal Code section 12031 requires that a gun be loaded to be illegal so I would tend to agree that unloaded open carry is legal. (But you've got to read 12025 with it and it doesn't matter if the gun is unloaded if it's concealed or in your vehicle.) Carrying openly, whether loaded or unloaded, is a bad idea. I agree with statdoc. It's invites more problems than it deters. If you go to a state like AZ where open carry is legal and CCW's are relatively easy to get, still no one carries openly. Maybe they're carrying concealed but the point still is that they don't carry openly.

Carrying a unloaded firearm openly in California is just asking for trouble from a variety of sources. First off, you'd better be prepared to be proned out on the pavement, detained, and maybe even arrested until it's all sorted out many hours or even days later. During this process of being proned out you will be at gunpoint and there is always the risk of being shot due to a cop reacting to a furtive movement by you or simply by accident/negligence. If you walk into a bank, expect people to run screaming and the police to descend upon you. Walk into a post office and you could face federal charges.

In any event, why the hell would anyone feel they need to carry an unloaded gun, concealed or open? Being unloaded makes it about as useful as carrying a hammer; perhaps even less useful. If the idea is to carry it with the magazine out but the magazine is loaded up and one would just insert and rack the slide if a threat arose, there are two issues: Once that is done, your committing a crime and even if it's in the course of self-defense, you create a major issue for yourself. Second, I can't remember for sure but a loaded magazine out of the pistol but within close proximity to the pistol is constructively loaded for the purposes of the Penal Code.

I probably won't read the thread you linked because most of those people are probably complete morons like the guy in a firearms class I attended years ago who asked "if I see someone coming towards me and I think he's going to do something to me, can I shoot him?". Frightening.

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