Tasered for openly carrying rifle in Texas

[BobB35]

Everyone who's been commenting that the police were violating this kids right to open carry, or that exercising your 2nd amendment rights shouldn't get you tasered....

Why don't you open carry a rifle in a place where it is legal to do so, and see what happens? Would you feel comfortable doing that?

The bottom line is that people in today's society DO NOT feel comfortable with people walking around with guns, even if it is legal.
Walking around with your gun is not making a political statement, guns are not political tools.
Idk what the goal of open carry is, to make it acceptable to walk around with an exposed weapon again? Why is that a big deal? What's wrong with concealed carry? Even if open carry of rifles was perfectly culturally and legally permissible, people would still be concealing handguns, because it makes more sense. As a civilian, we don't need to walk around with a rifle all the time. It would become more of a burden if anything. Walking around with any type of exposed gun makes you a target for robbery from somebody concealing illegally. It serves no self defense purpose better than a concealed handgun, and it makes people afraid.

As far as the way the police handled this kid, we have no idea what kind of experiences they've had, what type of people they've been in contact with, and what kind of altercations they've had with people carrying guns before.
It's not unreasonable to assume, that these cops receive a call about a man walking around with a rifle, and they think something bad is going to happen. When he refuses to comply with them, to even tell them his name, or give them his ID, they have no way to check his criminal history and find out if he's somebody they need to be worried about or not.

Maybe the taser was unnecessary. But I really can't blame the police for escalating force when they're called out at night to deal with a "man with a gun" call, and the kid doesn't cooperate.
To everyone who's going to respond and say "Just because it's dark/just because the kid wasn't cooperating doesn't excuse the police for tasering him"

Well...you go out and deal with violent and deranged individuals on a daily basis and see how you would react to this same call. I'm not a cop, never been LEO but these guys deal with scary people on a regular basis and I can't blame them for reacting the way they did in the video.

Ah anohter Conservative from the OC.

Here go the Bradycampaign.com the will listen to you.

What an idiot.

[BobB35]

I just don't understand how open carry does anything that concealed carry doesn't.

For me guns are about self defense. I have guns because I enjoy shooting and I want to be able to protect myself.
Open carry is just....it's a political statement. It makes all gun owners look bad when someone with a cell phone camera records a video like this.

What exactly do you guys want society to look like? What is the big deal about open carry for you folks? And don't say "exercising your 2nd amendment rights" because that just....doesn't mean anything. My right to protect myself is not in danger until an anti-gun law comes up, and then I email the legislators, donate to NRA-ILA, and go about my business. Nothing positive is being achieved by open carrying.

I'm not saying open carry should be illegal. I'm saying it doesn't make any sense. Like the cop was telling the kid, you have to be smart about firearms, and walking down the street with a rifle strapped across your back just isn't smart.

May as well turn your guns in. You don't understand the rights and responsibilities inherent in being a citizen. You don't need them...the police will always protect you because they are the most honest upstanding citizens out there. Oh yea except when they murder, rape, steal, lie and every other crime out there every day.

[GoZoner]

The problem with open carry is...well, that its openly carried. While it may be legal in some areas, when the libtard socialist ****tards that see you do it, they will call 911 and embellish like crazy to get the desired response from law enforcement. They don't call and say "Hey I saw a I guy walking around with a rifle on his back and I know its perfectly legal, but it makes me scared."

No, they call and say "Hey, there is a guy walking down the street pointing a rifle at people and threatening to shoot them." And don't think they don't do that. Then the LE shows up, and reacts in a way that gets thrown on youtube. 10 to 1, that is what happened here.

Nice.

Here is what dispatch should say: "I understand. Please stay on the line. As soon as I hear a shot, I'll send somebody out to investigate."

[IVC]

Cops have a tough job to do and they never know what kind of nut they are dealing with.

Answer me this, how are the cops suppose to know if you are a criminal or not if you won't give your name or ID?

That's the same reason used for pulling over people for "driving while black," for minorities walking in "good neighborhood" (wink, wink,) even for NYC "stop and frisk."

Do you also accept institutionalized racism to appease your concerns above? After all, how is a cop to know if the black man is a criminal or not and whether he is a total nut? Just prone them and let President have a beer with them later to apologize (remember black university professor?)

[CalBear]

Keep in mind when we talk about openly displaying rifles, there is no ability to truly conceal a rifle. I know a guy who lives in a low density semi rural area near Austin, and every time his Californian neighbor sees him transporting a rifle on his own property from his house to his garage or work area, she calls the cops.

While I wouldn't carry a visible rifle on my back like that, it's not a handgun so it can't easily be concealed (even if you case it).

Also, there are a pretty ridiculous number of straw man arguments being made by a few members in this thread. Gun rights are absolutely civil rights. You may have chosen to buy a gun, and weren't born with it as a characteristic, you were born a human with a fundamental right to meaningful self defense. Your right to self defense includes not having to spend your life building muscle and defensive martial art skills to physically match the strongest and most skillful of criminals. The right to bear arms is a civil right in this country, and if you can't see that, I feel really sorry for you.

[IVC]

The Guilty until proven innocent mentality of our government is out of hand

That's the real problem we are discussing in this thread. Not whether OC is or should be socially acceptable.

We should have collectivists give the OC-ers dirty looks and treat them the way they treat smokers as far as social unacceptability goes. It's quite different when the representatives of the state show up and use "guilty until proven innocent for their safety" approach.

Call me old fashioned, but I prefer "innocent until proven guilty" approach for my safety. The good news is that I can enforce that my safety is more important than the LEO-s. It's called civil rights and it's done in courts.

Why is this such a difficult concept?

[diverwcw]

Don't get involved in any gun drama. Just because you CAN do something does it mean you SHOULD do something? We have won a few skirmishes but there is still a big war ahead of us. Like it or not the libs have succeeded in making out gun owners as mentally ill, right wing radicals who shoot first and don't ask any questions. We have a lot of education to do before any of this changes.

[QQQ]

guns are not political tools.

What an incredibly moronic statement.

[jrwhitt]

I'm not telling anybody what to do. If you want to open carry then sure go ahead. I'm just saying you have to understand that people will react to that in a very unfriendly way.

I'm not trying to ban open carry.
I'm not preaching my own personal morality. I made a comment on the video, I was surprised that anybody had a problem with it.

I really don't see the connection between police harassing open carriers and police harassing CCW. If done right, not even the police will know you're carrying concealed

So you agree that the police were harassing the young man ? Either it lawful or it isn't.

[sarabellum]

So open carry is like a civil rights issue for you?

The difference between carrying a gun and your race is that you can kill people with a gun.

Cops get shot at by guys with guns. An unarmed black man doesn't pose a threat, an armed person regardless of their race does.

You just have to be realistic. You're not going to renormalize open carrying by just doing it and getting into confrontations with police.

You guys really don't see how open carrying a weapon attracts unnecessary attention to yourself?

How do you think the confrontation should have gone? Do you think the cops should have just waved at the kid from their police car and driven away?

Indeed the 2nd Amendment is one of the enumerated civil rights just like the 4th Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures (including privacy in the home), the 5th Amendment right to be free from forced interrogation (i.e. torture), the 14th Amendment rights to the family, procreate, be a person of color without being summarily executed and have the right to equal accommodations, the right to be free from bogus trials, the right to not have your property taken from you by the state, the right to a fair hearing, and the right to walk freely, the right to bodily integrity.

As I aptly described in my prior post above, for the right to simply exist (i.e. walk about and be), Native Americans did not have the right to simply exist nor could they assert that right because they were unarmed and could not carry openly (that was the norm). In this society just being black is a threat to the dominant culture- guess who's coming to dinner...it's the death squad:

http://www.worldsfamousphotos.com/2007/03/18/the-lynching-of-young-blacks-1930/

Just to be black and in a car, unarmed, to the dominant culture is a threat:



History teaches us lessons that we fail to heed. It is easier to oppress an unarmed populace.


The parallels between fascism here and in Germany or former South Africa are all too apparent.





We just have fascist apologists who would urge us to look the other way.

The right to bear arms is purely decorative if you can only carry a pistol stuck in your pants that you have to try to dig out when confronted by an armed sociopath wearing droopy pants, a hood, or a badge.

Under the 4th Amendment, the officers in Texas had no probable cause to arrest since open carry is lawful. "An arrest warrant is issued by a magistrate upon a showing that probable cause exists to believe that the subject of the warrant has committed an offense and thus the warrant primarily serves to protect an individual from an unreasonable seizure." Steagald v. U.S, 451 U.S. 204 (1981). A warrantless arrest is only lawful is there is probable cause to believe that the person or thing to be seized will escape. Id. This is a warrantless arrest without any risk of flight since the young man was surrounded and was not moving; worse for the thugs, who tasered him, cop 1 had admitted that he was not committing a crime and waived him home. Therefore, in response to your question, "how should it have worked out...," cop 1 answered that question by sending the young man home. The ONLY way for an encounter with the police to start and end is for them to scrupulously obey the constitution. Open carry encourages everyone to observe our civil right to walk about peacefully.

Under the 4th Amendment, the police may not stop you to hope to find/fish for a crime being committed. To detain for questioning, they must have specific articulable facts that crime is afoot. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968). Openly carrying a rifle where it is lawful to do so is not an articulable fact of a crime. That is the whole point of the 4th Amendment to be free from the state rifling through our documents and persons in search of dissenters. We have little ability to enforce that 4th Amendment or any other right when we walk about unarmed.

[sarabellum]

Don't get involved in any gun drama. Just because you CAN do something does it mean you SHOULD do something? We have won a few skirmishes but there is still a big war ahead of us. Like it or not the libs have succeeded in making out gun owners as mentally ill, right wing radicals who shoot first and don't ask any questions. We have a lot of education to do before any of this changes.

That is what people said to folks like Rosa Parks, don't rock the boat. It is only by rocking the boat of fascism that we make any progress socially.

[michaelthetrojan]

Police get calls that someone is pointing a rifle at people. Police find person and simply ask him to lay down his rifle so they can talk to him. But no, the kid had to argue and be a jerk. The police have no idea what he is doing or who he is or what he may be intending to do. They have to go off the calls that were placed.

It is easy to judge after the fact. But maybe if the kid did the simple request of just laying down his firearm so they could talk to him things would have turned out differently. But no, he had to act like he did.

Go ahead and flame away, I don't care. If he would have just done as asked, things would have turned out differently.

I completely agree, that being said, he's lucky the cops didn't shoot him.
Usually less lethal alternatives like teasers, batons, and pepper spray are used after a suspect has been shot.

[Jack Daniels]

Cops are out of control.....The civillian police (security)here on the Marine base got caught using tasers on a Marine who was passed out from drinking.

[Jack Daniels]

Interesting. I think I'd head to Calvin Klein. I usually find some nice items there. Depends on if it were a crappy build, but if it looked nice I might ask the guy about it.

Do these pants make my AR look fat?

[Artema]

Cops are out of control.....The civillian police (security)here on the Marine base got caught using tasers on a Marine who was passed out from drinking.

That made me pretty mad. Was this handled, or is there a link by chance? I imagine it'd likely be handled internally, but was it a good result?