Posted on 08/03/2013 9:13:44 AM PDT by marktwain
RUTLAND — Joshua Severance says his Second Amendment rights to openly carry a firearm were violated, but Rutland police say they were following the law when they handcuffed and briefly detained the Milton man this week.
In a case that appears destined to end in a courtroom, Severance, 26, says he was walking down a residential Rutland street Monday afternoon with his shirt off and his 9mm Beretta semiautomatic handgun holstered on his hip when a city police cruiser stopped in front of him and an officer ordered him to place his hands on the hood.
“I figured they wanted to run the serial number and do a background check which is all well and good and part of being a responsible gun owner,” Severance said Thursday. “The next thing I knew I was being handcuffed, told I was ‘not under arrest’ and was put into the back of a cruiser.”
(snip)
Ed Cutler, legislative director for Gun Owners of Vermont, said what police in Rutland did wasn’t wrong, it was illegal.
“I think what they did was harassment and I would be happy to sue (Rutland),” he said. “Just because someone is carrying open the police have no right to detain them in any way.”
(Excerpt) Read more at timesargus.com ...
I'm being truthful. Why is that being smug?
"If you are not part of the solution, you are (or were) part of the problem."
The "problem" was crime. I arrested many people for violent felonies. How is that not being part of the solution?
Well written.
Being gratuitously strange in such an environment is okay, as long as it is not blended with a “red flag”. It is the combination of something unusual plus something they are trained to pay attention to, that really attracts predators.
That is why “shirt with gun”, is, or at least should be, okay with most officers in gun liberty states; but “shirtless with gun” gets their attention. They associate shirtlessness with mischief, both legal and illegal.
Some years ago, the singing group of attractive black women named En Vogue, did a music video called “Free Your Mind”, in which they dressed up in very exotic fashions, wore extreme hairdos, and complained about being stared at because they were black.
The best review of that was, “Lady, I’m not staring at you because you’re black. I’m staring at you because you’re dressed up to look like a space alien!”
If you don't ask the right question, seldom do you get the right answer. The discussion is about police misbehavior, not about your work ethic.
Yet some here don't understand that do they!
How tragic, that a citizen of the Roman Empire 2000 years ago could not be bound or flogged before being found guilty of a crime.
Today, in “the freest nation in the world”, our government employees are willing to defend both practices against men whom they should consider their brothers and countrymen.
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