Given the low population (less than 400), it's highly unlikely that the "witnesses" didn't recognize the former deputy trading firearms with the other man.
In my hometown of about the same size, you wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow walking into the bank with a gun back in the 80s.
If I remember correctly, there is a gun shop right there. This area is also near a state park so there will be some non local traffic. This area is tree farms and logging, an Amish community and hunting and fishing.
I worked in a defense plant. A friend wanted me to see his gun collection. It was a table covered with cr*p. They were mostly cheap knockoffs of famous guns. The castings were mostly crude and unfinished. There was one ingram style machine pistol type with a clip ahead of the trigger. I asked him why he bought such junk. He said, “The first thing the blacks (at work) buy after they get a job is a gun. When they run into problems I buy the guns for $50.”
I said, “You exchange guns in a defense plant parkinglot?”
He said, “No, in my lab. Come out at break tomorrow and I’ll show you something.”
The next day as the employees went on break he would nod at one and say, “Look in the center of his back as he passes.”
There it was, the clear outline of a semi-automatic pistol against his company smock. My friend pointed out half a dozen others. I already knew I couldn’t approach management with any problems involving blacks. They’d panic and get very upset. (They cancelled drug testing because all the blacks failed and none of the whites had, so it was discriminatory.)
I asked my friend why they carried, thinking there was a gang problem. Nope. He said, “It’s about machismo. If they don’t have a gun they’re not a man.”
There was never a gun fired in the plant. This despite the fact that the Israeli management regularly screamed at the blacks. Amazing, really. (Well, they screamed at the whites too, but none of us were armed.)
About a year ago I needed some cash so I stopped by the bank machine located next to the main entrance of the bank on the main street of town. I was on foot, carrying my Mossburg 500 Mariner 12 gage down to the boat. I leaned the shotgun against the wall, pulled out my card and got my cash. A woman entering the bank stopped to admire and compliment my shotgun, mentioning that her husband wanted one like it. I tipped my hat and said “Why, thank you Ma’am”.
I did a little checking, and the Kingston National Bank in Adelphi has been robbed two or three times in as many years, which might go some way to explain their skittishness.
***for a possible charge of inciting panic.***
Does this mean THE BRADY BUNCH will now send people around the US looking for people with legal firearms, so they can roll their eyes, wave their arms, yell “GUN! GUN!” then fall down and get skinned up and dirty, just so they can get the LAW to file charges against the gun owners for “inciting panic”?
In fact, I purchased several rifles from a Coast Guard Chief, IN THE FEDERAL BUILDING..., and carried them down through the lobby and several blocks to my office WHICH WAS LOCATED IN THE FEDERAL COURT HOUSE! (without anyone soiling their underwear or suffering emotional trauma...)
I have come to the conclusion that I, long ago..., left the United States without ever relocating from it! The FOUNDING FATHERS warned us that the end of LIBERTY was only one generation away at any point! How prescient they were!!!!
The ninnies are everywhere these days.
Sheriff Lavender sounds “lavender.”
I think that is going overboard. There is no justification for charging these innocent bank tellers with a crime. The didn't intentionally seek to incite panic. They simply need some education about the meaning of the Second Amendment.