First I want to say hello to everyone. I am new to your forum and this is my first post. I have been reading through your site and discussions for about the last 7-8 days. As you can see I live in southeast Arkansas but work and travel extensively throughout LA. I do have a Arkansas CCW and have been carrying for about 10 years now. However, I ''prefer'' to open carry when possible. I am very familiar that LA is an open carry state. I have also carried openly in many places and stores throughout LA with no problems at all even while having friendly conversations with LEO's. So now you know a little about me I will get to my point. The night of Dec 16th 2009 I was traveling through Metaire and stopped at the best buy store. I had my Ruger 9mm in a kydex belt holster owb at the 430 position open carried with no jacket. (I have been in this store several times before with no incidents or questions). anyway, I walked in past the duty officer nodding and saying hello and went about my business. After about 30 minutes he walked by me while pushing a cart and picking up a few things himself. As he got close to me he smiled and asked what department I was with. At first I thought he was referring to which department of my company I worked for since it is a very large, well known and respected, company with several departments and since I was currently wearing a nice button up shirt with my companies logo on it. When I told him this he said ''oh so your not a law enforcement officer?'' I said no sir i am not. He then asked if I had a permit? To which i said yes sir i do. He then asked if it was for concealed weapon and i told him that yes It was. He then proceded to tell me that ''concealed means completely concealed'' and told me that I needed to return my gun to my vehicle please beacause it was illegal for me to carry my weapon unless completely concealed. At that time I told him It was my understanding from researching LA handgun laws that LA was a completely legal open carry state. He then told me that ''LA WAS ABSOLUTELY NOT AN OPEN CARRY STATE AND WAS HIGHLY ILLEGAL''. As I was on a short time frame and didnt have any legal documents on me I just told him that I would make sure and double checkthe lawsand advised him to do the same. As I was ready to check out I asked if It was ok for me to go ahead and check out and leave or if he was ordering me to leave and secure the weapon first and THEN come back in to check out. He told me it would be fine for me to go ahead and check out but just be sure to remember to keep my weapon concealed at all times or leave it in the vehicle from now on. He was very polite during all this as was I. However, it does dismay me that either he was completely and knowingly lieing to me, or else he really truly had absolutely no idea of what the true law is regarding handguns and open carry. Has anyone else had any problems like this in this area or store before? Is this still a very common problem in LA or is this just an isolated incident? any questions or comments?
