Gun-Toting Demonstrators To Rally At Bay Fair Mall Saturday

Demonstrators carrying unloaded rifles and pistols plan to rally at on Saturday to protest the open carry ban that earlier this month.

The new law, AB 144, which takes effect Jan. 1, will make it illegal to carry unloaded sidearms in public.

It is already illegal to carry any loaded firearm in public.

Saturday's rally is being organized by Responsible Citizens of California, a group whose 476 registered members think the ban violates their Second Amendment rights.

Moreover, the group's spokesman said the new law does nothing to limit the right to carry long guns -- rifles and shotguns -- so long as they're unloaded.

So opponents of the ban will dramatize the issue by carrying unloaded rifles and shotguns.

"Saturday will be kind of a breakout event," said Responsible Citizens spokesman Yih-Chau Chang. "It will be the first time long guns have been carried out in public in an event setting."

The same group has scheduled a similar rally in San Diego on Saturday.

Chang, who works in San Leandro and lives in Dublin, said there was no particular reason this city was chosen as the site of the Northern California event.

He said he expects about 50 supporters to assemble at Hesperian Boulevard and Bay Fair Drive at noon. The event will last an hour.

Chang does not expect the rally to attract the kind of support that would lead to a repeal of the bill.

"There is a very strong anti-gun sentiment here in California," he acknowedged. "Our greatest chance of success (in reversing the ban) will be in the federal courts."

But he said open carry advocates had to stand up for their interpretation of the right to keep and bear arms.

"If we have a Second Amendment right and we're afraid to exercise it, did we really have that right at all?" Chang asked.