I am ruralite but I do travel off/on ... and I open carry most of the time unless I feel like covering up to spare the local PD phone calls from the typical gun-fearing Karens. Thus, I've been said unknown man with a gun plenty of times ... when getting gas, when grocery shopping, when buying lottery tickets, when buying lunch, etc. On all but two occasions (both of which entailed overzealous, rookie cops intent on disarming me -- clearly just out of training/school), the local PD was always easygoing. To be fair, I'm always polite, know how to handle myself nonthreateningly as a firearms instructor, and I do my best to make the cops' jobs/lives easier. They're just doing their jobs, after all...
Let's also call out that I'm a short, white guy with grey/white hair, so there is my height and age working to my benefit .... and certainly white privilege in play (compared to, say, what a black CCH permit holding veteran I know gets when he open carries; we've compared notes).
Some people get on a 'duty to inform' kick, but I find that when I'm approached by an officer and (before even being asked) I state, 'Officer, for our mutual safety I'd like to inform you that I'm a licensed concealed carry permit holder in the state of North Carolina' ... and then I go on to state my carry status (if not openly carrying) and firearm location on/about my person if carrying (which is basically all of the time) ... it tends to set the tone for the conversation that follows ... and I'm usually rapidly on my way without issue (and so is the officer). The interactions are generally positive ones IMHO --
save the few bad apple morons I've run into who insisted on disarming me in states where that's lawfully allowed. (Seriously, unholstering and handling the firearm supposedly for the officer to be able feel safer -- only made us ~both~ LESS safe.) That said, even in states where I can legally carry and there is no duty to inform, I choose to do so, as I find it a beneficial tool when it comes to the tone of the encounter. Put another way -- even if there wasn't a requirement to do so, I would choose to do so, as I feel the personal benefits (to me) outweigh the (
nonexistent, to me) drawbacks.
Similarly, counter to armchair tacticians who claim one loses the element of surprise (and who can't name a single standing army that teaches surprise as a DEFENSIVE tactic ... since it's always an offensive one), I feel open carry is superior to concealed carry because it typically ends a violent crime in stage 2 (the 'interview' stage -- where a target is being sized up) of the
5 stages of violent crime -- completely averting attack or the need to draw/use the gun defensively (in all but the most extreme cases). By comparison, the same person carrying concealed may appear to be a juicy target rather than one that can resist, causing the violent criminal to move on to stages 3 and 4 ... and it's only in stage 5 (after the attack in stage 4) when the concealed gun is drawn/used as a reaction.
By the way ... I can understand morons prone to saying 'I've got a gun!' as their means of informing officers ... not wanting to be required to inform them of their carry status. If that's the best some people can come up with regarding how they will deal with a duty to inform when it comes up, perhaps they shouldn't be carrying ... or perhaps they deserve whatever Darwin Award comes their way.