I still see long guns in the back window, from time to time. It really depends on where you are. In rural areas, it's really less likely that someone will snatch a rifle from a random truck. Urban and suburban areas are a different story.
As far as open carry, most people that oppose the notion tend to state the same concern, I've noticed. Namely, the concern that they might be bonked on the head and have their weapon stolen and used against them. (The secondary concern being that they don't want to make the neighbors nervous.)
As has been previously stated, use your situational awareness. You should be paying attention to your surroundings, anyhow. And, there's nothing like strapping a highly obviously pistol to your belt to heighten your senses. The other thing, though, is that you should choose your destinations wisely. If you think that there is a high probability that someone behind you in line at that c-store is suddenly going to decide to knock you in the head, steal your gun, and rob the joint, maybe you should pick a different store, to begin with, whether you are carrying openly, concealed, or not at all. Avoid potential problems by first avoiding the problem areas.
There are risks in everything. Houses start burning while it's occupants are sleeping, carloads of people are injured by bad drivers, sinkholes open up in the ground and swallow everything on top of it. But, I'm still going to sleep in my house; I've done what I can to keep my house from randomly combusting, then installed smoke detectors. I'm still going to drive places; I drive safely and keep aware of my surroundings, and try to anticipate the boneheaded moves that could be pulled, and prepare for them. And, if the earth just decides to open up underneath me, well, until levitation devices are commonly available at Walmart, there's not much to be done about that.
As far as making the neighbors nervous, they'll get over it. Be a kind and decent neighbor, and don't give them cause for concern. Act and look like a normal, law abiding human being, and the neighbors and surrounding community will have less cause for concern, when you suddenly decide to walk around visibly armed.
Open carry is a good thing. We're talking about tools that have been used, for quite some time now, by responsible adults. We're not talking about shamelessly carrying adult novelty items around, in full view of children.
The public, at large, really needs to see more normal people, doing normal things, while armed. It will help to re-normalize what should still be normal, to begin with. Firearms, in general, get a lot of negative press. The occasions in which law abiding citizens use firearms to defends themselves, their property, or others, barely make it past the local news, if it goes that far. Armed criminals, it seems, get far broader coverage, especially if the act is truly depraved. Think school and Church shootings, for example. The guns, of course, are where the blame is placed, which implies that those that own them are evil or unstable. The only way to counteract that negativity is for the impressionable viewers of CNN, MSNBC, etc., to actually SEE that gun owners are normal. But, if they don't see that you are a gun owner, then they won't know that you are a gun owner.
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