Rattled and shaken after seeing open carry in a grocery store

[AtheistCrusader]

394. Let me try again.

(The DC Snipers didn't open carry, and get ignored, later to have people recall they saw them and didn't report it. People didn't notice them at all, because they were looking for the wrong thing.)

Lanza leaves his house. Proceeds to school. Let's presume he's walking and armed, but carrying.... 'casually', OC like, and not an apparent threat. Someone sees him, dismisses him as not a threat. Later sees his picture on the news, after he commits horrifying murders. Person regrets not calling it in, because at the time it seemed 'normal' and not threatening.

Does that happen?

One person upthread found an incident where someone's judgement perceived a threat, and called it in and the police did not respond because there was no apparent crime, until the guy started killing people in the street. So that example is pretty good. Extremely rare though.

What I am getting at is, how often does Open Carry actually enable the commission of, or amplify the damage of one of these murderous sociopaths. It doesn't seem terribly often. Arizona is an open carry state, border to border. Totally normal. (And a shitload of actual wilderness, so kinda useful) Jared Lougnher didn't expose his firearm until he attacked Gabby Giffords and the crowd. Why? (I thought that fact spoke to premeditation and competence to stand trial, because he knew something about his behavior was wrong, but he was ruled incompetent.)

Nobody came out and said 'gosh, we saw him walking down the street with a gun, and a mag sticking a foot out of it, but didn't think anything of it. Wish we'd said something.'

So, what problem are we trying to solve here? How often IS it a problem? I've got one example (actually helpful, previously there were none I was aware of) of the police refusing to investigate what a reasonable person considered to be suspicious and some people died before the confirmation of that suspicion could be addressed. What else? What is the ask here, and why, and what problem does it solve?