Gun owner says open-carry is not posing but protection

A woman alone. After dark. In downtown Norfolk.

A recipe for fear?

Not last Tuesday. Safest place in town, I thought as I pulled into the dimly lit parking garage behind City Hall.

It was, after all, Dirty Harry Night at Norfolk City Council. Dozens of law-abiding gun owners were expected, all openly packing heat, to protest the city's alleged harassment of a gun owner who had been stopped several times for carrying a weapon.

The man in the bull's-eye is Danladi Moore, a 24-year-old Hampton man who seems to get in trouble every time he comes to Norfolk. After two encounters with the city's police, Moore was awarded $10,000 in July, to avoid a court battle.

The security guard barely had time to spend the loot before he says he was booted from an HRT bus - again, for carrying a weapon - and told he might be arrested.

On Tuesday night, just hours after he and others testified before a stone-faced City Council and received assurances that Norfolk police understood Virginia's gun laws, Moore was stopped again.

He claims he was disarmed, handcuffed and charged with trespassing at Waterside.

Cha-ching.

"Open-carry" is a concept that's alien to many. While everyone seems to know that the commonwealth issues permits to carry concealed weapons, many don't know that anyone who can legally own a gun can carry it without a permit, provided it's in the open.

Ignorance of the law explains the panicky 911 calls to report Moore poking around town with a holstered sidearm.

But it doesn't justify a police response that, according to Moore, resulted in officers hassling him and insisting he had no right to carry a weapon.

Why open-carry? Some say it's the comfortable way to carry a gun when it's hot. Others insist that a visible weapon is a powerful crime deterrent.

"Someone said they thought guys who open-carry are trying to look cool," Moore told me Wednesday. "That's not me. I'm trying to look like a guy who doesn't want to be robbed."

Moore believes he may have thwarted a convenience store holdup once when a suspicious person left after spying his gun.

His latest brush with authorities came after a knot of the open-carry guys headed to Hooters at the conclusion of the council meeting. Most sported weapons, yet their accessories reportedly attracted no attention in the restaurant. No surprise there; no one looks at men at Hooters.

Later, in Waterside, Moore said he and a friend were stopped by two police officers, told they couldn't bring guns into the complex, and ordered to leave.

Moore balked and insisted he was within his rights. Within minutes, Moore claims he was disarmed, handcuffed and charged with trespassing. He has a court date in November.

Before leaving council chambers Tuesday night, I spoke with Moore and asked him about his holstered gun.

"It's a Springfield XD .45," he said, adding with a grin, "I bought it with some of the money I got from Norfolk this summer."

Before this is over, Moore may have a matched set.

Kerry Dougherty, (757) 446-2306, kerry.dougherty@cox.net