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WALNUT CREEK — Gray skies and a spattering of rain didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of about 100 members of the Open Carry movement, who showed up Saturday morning displaying unloaded guns at a restaurant in downtown Walnut Creek.

The group hopes to make it easier to legally carry a loaded gun in California and has been gathering at Bay Area restaurants for the past few months. The original meeting place for Saturday was to have been nearby California Pizza Kitchen, but that company made it clear Open Carry advocates weren’t welcome, so the group moved to the Buckhorn Grill.

“We’re not politically involved. We’re a restaurant and we’re serving food,” regional manager Tom McLaughlin said as he welcomed the group into his establishment. Both Peet’s Coffee & Tea and California Pizza Kitchen have banned guns from their premises in response to recent requests from the national Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, while Starbucks refused the campaign’s request to do so.

Not everyone in the restaurant was a member of Open Carry. Some people came from as far away as Fremont and Sausalito to learn about the group. Other patrons were dismayed when they walked in and unexpectedly encountered a restaurant full of men with pistols on one hip and ammunition on the other.

“I’m a little worried,” said Hayley King, of Walnut Creek, who stopped in for lunch. “I don’t feel safe in here. I wouldn’t have come if I had known.”

“If it’s

(carrying guns) not for law enforcement, it’s completely wrong,” said Rumer Cantrell, a Walnut Creek resident who attends Carondelet High School in Concord. “Violence should never be promoted in any way. To be walking around saying, ‘You can see I have a gun,’ promotes violence.”

“By carrying a firearm I am creating a deterrent to violence,” responded Jon Schwartz, of Livermore, an active Open Carry member who attended with his wife and baby daughter. “I hope I never have to draw my firearm in response to anyone else’s actions.”

Pinkie Anderson, of Sausalito, moved to California in July from Connecticut, where she had a permit to carry a concealed weapon, her Ruger .357.

“I came here to learn more about Open Carry,” Anderson said.

In Connecticut, Anderson completed a weapons course and passed a background check and was automatically issued her concealed carry permit. In California, it’s much harder to get such a permit, a situation Open Carry advocates want to change.

“Because of budget cuts, there are fewer police officers on the street. We feel we should be able to defend ourselves,” said Emmanuel Tsompanas, of Antioch.

“How many times have you been in a restaurant when someone was holding the restaurant up?” said Griffin Dix, president of the Alameda County chapter of the Brady Campaign. “It’s much more likely that someone might make a mistake, thinking the gun is unloaded when it isn’t loaded, or start shooting and hit the wrong person.

“Stores should take responsibility to not allow people with guns,” Dix said.

Members of the group met with Walnut Creek police before the event to have their firearms checked to make sure they were unloaded, said Capt. Tim Schultz of the Walnut Creek Police Department.

The setting for Saturday’s event wasn’t disclosed until Friday night on KSFO radio, some group members said.

“There was some talk on local blogs about protesters showing up with water balloons and other mischief,” said Brad Huffman, an active Open Carry member. “We wanted to keep the possibility of anything going wrong to a minimum.”

Contact Janis Mara at jmara@bayareanewsgroup.com. Follow her at Twitter.com/jmara.