A man in Georgia caused a panic by menacing people at a children’s baseball game with a gun that he was carrying. The sick thing is that it was all legal.
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According to WSBTV2:
Parents at a Forysth County park abruptly stopped a children’s baseball game after growing suspicions of the behavior of a man carrying a gun in a waist holster Tuesday night.
“He’s just walking around [saying] ‘See my gun? Look, I got a gun and there’s nothing you can do about it.’ He knew he was frightening people. He knew exactly what he was doing,” said parent Karen Rabb.
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He scared people to the point where we stopped the game, took the kids out of the dugout and behind the dugout, and kind of hunkered down,” Rabb said.
Park users flooded 911 with 22 calls about the man. Forysth County deputies questioned the man, and found that he had a permit for the handgun. Authorities said since the man made no verbal threats or gestures, they could neither arrest him nor ask him to leave the park.
“Why would anyone be walking around a public park, with a lot of children and parents and people here playing baseball, and he’s walking around with a gun? I don’t think the parents would have been nervous had he just had the gun in his holster and was just watching the game,” said parent Paris Horton.
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The Forsyth County sheriff said he didn’t believe the parents and children were in any danger and that parks are constantly patrolled. He said while the man was within his rights to carry the gun, his conduct was inappropriate.
“We support the constitutional right to bear arms. We will not tolerate bad behavior,” said Forsyth Sheriff Duane Piper.
They won’t tolerate bad behavior, but there isn’t a damn thing that they can do about it because there is no law against menacing behavior with a gun in Georgia.
This story illustrates the downside to the Republican utopia of no government, and guns for all. People can’t be trusted to behave responsibly. That’s why we have laws. The man in Georgia deserved to be arrested, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t behaving like a responsible gun owner.
The adults and children at that baseball game got lucky. If a guy with the gun wanted to shoot people, there was nothing to stop him from doing so. The point isn’t that guns are bad, or that the gun should be blamed. The point is that there is a downside to the Republican obsession with their version of freedom.
The guy with the gun was free to carry it, but the people at a baseball game had their freedom infringed upon by his menacing behavior. By only considering the freedom of the individual, Republicans are destroying our collective security and liberty.
Freedom is a code word in conservative speak for selfishness, and what happened in Georgia is just one example of deranged nation that Republicans dream of creating.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
