Quote:
Originally Posted by WhiteTiger
Can you either stop using this example or get it right? When white rednecks in TEXAS (you know, that weird State with the Open Carry Law) show off their guns in a Target, it's 'exercising a right'. If a black man did the same thing in Texas, he'd have the same right. It's a dumb law, to be sure. When a black guy in Ohio (which DOES NOT have an Open Carry Law) picks up a BB Gun in a WalMart, and then is shot when not putting it down, one can figure that there may have been racial overtones and an overreaction...but it's still not the same as Texas' Open Carry Law (again, which seems like a really, really dumb idea to me.) I would imagine that if a white person in Ohio was playing around with a gun in a walmart, someone would likely call as well.
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Actually from everything I've read in the past regarding this story, as well as a quick little google search just now: Ohio is an open carry state, according to the NRA (and who would know better than the NRA?). According to their site, with regards to Ohio "State law does not prohibit the open carrying of firearms except in certain locations, but a person should exercise caution when carrying a firearm in public."
And even if it was not an open carry state--he's carrying a bb gun that he picked up in that very walmart, presumably with the intent to buy it. Rather than calmly dealing with the situation, they gun down an innocent man without really even trying to figure out what was going on.
Open carry is kind of a pointless argument when it was a bb gun that doesn't require a permit for open carry, a gun that's sold in the store he was shopping in at the time. The point is the same as I've been trying to make for pages now--police have a really itchy trigger finger, and they desperately need better training and restraint and apparently education on how to deescalate a situation rather than just going for the kill shot at the slightest sign of danger.