In my state of residence, the handgun carry permit is not a concealed carry law. It is a permit it to carry a handgun, technically one of the make and caliber you used in the prerequisite class to qualify with. It says nothing about the weapon being concealed.
My personal classes strongly advocate concealing the weapon. Many people are not aware that provisions are made for carrying a weapon, and many criminals would like to know if you are carrying. It is not a deterent to display yur weapon openly, but it might be a cause for someone to challenge you, shoot you and steal your gun, or attack you and take it away from you. If you doubt this, do a little research on the subject, and you'll find an alarming high incidence of this happening to police officers who may be required to carry a weapon openly.
You lose any strategic edge that you may have by carry a concealed weapon. Once many years ago, I was returning home from a shooting competition held in a rural area of Tennessee. The place was big enough to have a Burger King, where I stopped to eat. I was famished. I was also wild looking with sunburn from the long summer meet. I was wearing one of my patent mesh shooting/concealed carry vests and wearing shorts. I often cut my own hair with a folding knife, and thereby go too long in between cuts.
My hair can be tamed even when fairly long under usual circumstances, but it gets touseled easily too. My eyes also stay bloodshot most of the time especially after being out in the sun for a while. So I probably was a very scary sight to the hamburger flipper who entered the restroom while I was washing up. He must have seen my 45, or another of my two weapons, which I take great pains to conceall for all the good reasons.
As soon as I saw the patrol car approaching and then two officers getting out, my antenae were up, whihc probably made me look nervous too. You should be nervous when approached by rural police officers or peace officers in general. They are not always the best informed about the legalities of carrying, and are very well endoctinatedabout the perils of armed encounters. I believe this to be one of the biggest dangers of carrying--the risk of being shot by a spooked officer of the law or a rookie.
These guys were okay though. They approached me casually and asked how I was doing. The senior of the two then asked if I had attended the competiton. I felt foolish, as I pride myself on discretion, but of course I kept my hands on the table and answered affirmatively. He then informed me that an employee had called in a complaint about an armed stranger who looked suspicious. He didn't ask to see my weapon (nor would I have dared touch it if he had, although I would have invited him to check it himself, nicely). We all had a good-natured laugh and I went my way with their good wishes.
There was another instance when I was traveling interstate and had my weapon on the seat next to me. It does you no good if you can't get to it, in the event of a car-jacking attempt and what not. I was stopped by a stae tropper and told that a trucker had called in that a guy in a car had been "brandishing a weapon." The two instance taken together with the following story.
Maybe you know offhand who said, "Discretion is the better part of valor." I don't recall offhand, but they were not twits. The following post from a fellow member of the Tennessee Firearms Association relayed this message and it further ilustrates my point.