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Tag: open carry
NRA News Dismisses LGBT Students’ Safety Concerns Over Texas’ New Campus Carry Law

NRA News Dismisses LGBT Students’ Safety Concerns Over Texas’ New Campus Carry Law

Published with permission from Media Matters. 

The National Rifle Association’s radio show dismissed personal safety concerns raised by LGBT students at the University of Houston following Texas’ August 1 adoption of a law allowing concealed guns to be carried on many parts of public college campuses.

Cam Edwards, the host of NRA News’ Cam & Company, cited a Buzzfeed article where a University of Houston student, who self-identifies as transgender and intersex, expressed fear of being shot if someone was angered by their use of gender-neutral pronouns.

On the August 30 edition of Cam & Company, Edwards dismissed the student’s worries, as well as those of other LGBT students mentioned in the article, saying he feels “horrible” for those students because “they don’t have to feel that way and yet they’re being told by anti-gun professors, they are being told by anti-gun media, they are being told by anti-gun activists that oh yes, absolutely, they should feel this way, they should be scared of concealed carry holders.”

“Unless they have been living in a cave somewhere in Texas and they only emerged to go to college, they’ve been hanging around concealed carry holders virtually their entire life if they grew up in Texas,”  Edwards continued. (While discussing the article, Edwards mistakenly cited it as appearing in The Houston Chroniclerather than Buzzfeed.)

Edwards never read from sections of the Buzzfeed article, where multiple LGBT students talked about how they “regularly experienced intimidation on campus before the law was implemented,” especially from extremists who hold hateful protests on campus, and expressed concern that guns can be carried at the school’s LGBT center:

Some of the students thought about protesting, but they didn’t think it would be safe. “We would also out ourselves in the process, which isn’t safe for many of the LGBT students on campus,” [student Robyn] Foley added. “Especially now.”

[…]

Many of the LGBTQ students told BuzzFeed News they regularly experienced intimidation on campus before the law was implemented — both from fellow students and from non-student religious protest groups on campus, which the students refer to as “Hell Yellers.”

Many non-student religious groups, including one called Bulldog Ministries, show up on UH’s campus during midterms and finals and yell at students, the students at the LGBT center told BuzzFeed News.

On Bulldog’s website, men can be seen in various locations in Houston holding signs reading, “WARNING: drunks, homosexuals, abortionists, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists, witches, idolaters, HELL AWAITS YOU.”

[…]

Foley said they have had slurs yelled at them and been “intimidated” on campus before. Other LGBT students said they have had similar experiences.

According to news reports analyzed by the Violence Policy Center, since May 2007, 885 people have been killed by concealed carry permittees, including 48 people in Texas. The gunman who committed the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history on June 12 by targeting an Orlando LGBT nightclub was licensed to carry a gun in public.

Dallas Police Chief Debunks Conservatives’ ‘Good Guy With A Gun’ Myth

Dallas Police Chief Debunks Conservatives’ ‘Good Guy With A Gun’ Myth

The Dallas police chief stepped into America’s fierce gun rights debate on Monday when he said Texas state laws allowing civilians to carry firearms openly, as some did during a protest where five officers were killed, presented a growing law enforcement challenge.

Dallas Police Chief David Brown also gave new details about his department’s use of a bomb-carrying robot to kill Micah Johnson, the 25-year-old former U.S. Army reservist who carried out last Thursday’s sniper attack that also wounded nine officers.

A shooting in Michigan on Monday underscored the prevalence of gun violence in America and the danger faced by law enforcement, even as activists protest against the fatal police shootings of two black men last week in Louisiana and Minnesota.

Two sheriff’s bailiffs were shot to death at a courthouse in St. Joseph in southwestern Michigan, and the shooter was also killed, Berrien County Sheriff Paul Bailey told reporters.

By Monday evening, protesters were marching again in several large American cities, including Chicago, Sacramento, and Atlanta, where news footage showed a number of protesters being arrested after street demonstrations north of downtown.

President Barack Obama and others reiterated their calls for stricter guns laws after last month’s massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, but many conservatives responded that such measures could infringe on the U.S. Constitution’s protection of the right to bear arms.

Texas is known for its gun culture and state laws allow gun owners to carry their weapons in public. Some gun rights activists bring firearms to rallies as a political statement, as some did at Thursday’s march in Dallas.

“It is increasingly challenging when people have AR-15s (a type of rifle) slung over, and shootings occur in a crowd. And they begin running, and we don’t know if they are a shooter or not,” Brown said. “We don’t know who the ‘good guy’ versus who the ‘bad guy’ is, if everybody starts shooting.”

Seeing multiple people carrying rifles led police initially to believe they were under attack by multiple shooters.

Brown did not explicitly call for gun control laws, but said: “I was asked, well, what’s your opinion about guns? Well, ask the policymakers to do something and I’ll give you an opinion.”

“Do your job. We’re doing ours. We’re putting our lives on the line. Other aspects of government need to step up and help us,” he said.

‘SIMPLY MISTAKEN’

Rick Briscoe, legislative director of gun rights group Open Carry Texas, said Brown was “simply mistaken” in viewing armed civilians as a problem.

“It is really simple to tell a good guy from a bad guy,” Briscoe said. “If the police officer comes on the situation and he says: ‘Police, put the gun down,’ the good guy does. The bad guy probably continues doing what he was doing, or turns on the police officer.”

Police used a Northrop Grumman Corp Mark5A-1 robot, typically deployed to inspect potential bombs, to kill Johnson after concluding during an hours-long standoff there was no safe way of taking him into custody, Brown said.

“They improvised this whole idea in about 15, 20 minutes,” Brown said.

“I asked the question of how much (explosives) we were using, and I said … ‘Don’t bring the building down.’ But that was the extent of my guidance.”

The incident is believed to have been the first time U.S. police had killed a suspect that way, and some civil liberties activists said it created a troubling precedent. Brown said that, in the context of Thursday’s events, “this wasn’t an ethical dilemma for me.”

The attack came at the end of a demonstration decrying police shootings of two black men in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and near St. Paul, Minnesota. Those were the latest in a series of high-profile killings of black men by police in various U.S. cities that have triggered protests.

In the shooting near St. Paul, the Star Tribune newspaper reported that the officers had pulled over 32-year-old Philando Castile because one of the patrolmen thought he and his girlfriend matched the description of suspects involved in a robbery.

In Dallas, a vigil was held for the slain officers on Monday evening.

In Chicago, images and footage on social media and news stations showed about 500 protesters marching through downtown after holding a quiet sit-in in Millennium Park that spilled into the streets and a rally near City Hall.

In Atlanta, media footage showed a number of handcuffed protesters being loaded onto a police bus surrounded by armed officers and emergency vehicles with lights flashing. Television station WSB-TV reported that police started arresting demonstrators marching on Peachtree Road at about 8:30 p.m.

In Sacramento, about 300 people were marching peacefully on Monday evening. Earlier in the day, in an incident not linked to protests, Sacramento police said officers fatally shot a man carrying a knife after he charged at police.

Johnson was in the U.S. Army Reserve from 2009 to 2015 and served for a time in Afghanistan. He had been disappointed in his experience in the military, his mother told TheBlaze.com in an interview shown online on Monday.

“The military was not what Micah thought it would be,” Delphine Johnson said. “He was very disappointed. Very disappointed.”

The Dallas police chief, who is black, urged people upset about police conduct to consider joining his force.

“Get off that protest line and put an application in, and we’ll put you in your neighborhood, and we will help you resolve some of the problems you’re protesting about,” Brown said.

(Additional reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas, Fiona Ortiz and Justin Madden in Chicago, Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles, and David Beasley in Atlanta; Writing by Daniel Wallis, Scott Malone and Eric M. Johnson; Editing by Will Dunham, Peter Cooney and Paul Tait)

 

Photo: Members of the FBI Evidence Response Team survey the crime scene two days after a lone gunman ambushed and killed five police officers at a protest decrying police shootings of black men, in Dallas, Texas, U.S., July 9, 2016. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

Dallas Mayor Explains How Texas Open Carry Laws Complicated Thursday’s Shootings

Dallas Mayor Explains How Texas Open Carry Laws Complicated Thursday’s Shootings

On CBS’s Face The Nation Sunday, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings explained how Texas’ open carry laws affected last week’s Dallas shootings. Civilians armed with rifles, body armor, and camo gear took law enforcement’s “eye off the ball for a moment,” he said.

As Dallas police searched for a hidden shooter at a large protest against police brutality, Texans carrying legal rifles immediately became suspects; some of them were taken and questioned by police, wasting valuable time. One man carrying a rifle was mistakenly identified as a “person of interest” and had his picture spread all over social media, instantly becoming the most-wanted man in the country.

“That is one of the real issues with the gun right issues that we face, that in the middle of a firefight, it’s hard to pick out the good guys and the bad guys,” Rawlings said.

 

Photo and video: CBS/ Face The Nation

Open Carry Is No Big Deal In Texas So Far

Open Carry Is No Big Deal In Texas So Far

By Anna M. Tinsley, Fort Worth Star-Telegram (TNS)

FORT WORTH, Texas ––Open carry seems to be going off without a bang in Texas.

Law enforcers statewide had anticipated being overwhelmed by 911 calls from Texans reporting others openly carrying holstered handguns, but the phone lines haven’t been even close to slightly busy.

“We do not have anything interesting to report,” Cpl. Tracey Knight, spokeswoman for the Fort Worth Police Department, said last week. “Two calls so far, no issues. We have no concerns and we have had no problems.”

That’s two more calls than have been logged by the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Department.

“I said before this became law that I thought it was going to be much ado about nothing but I didn’t know it was going to be this much nothing,” Sheriff Dee Anderson said.

That sentiment has been echoed by other law enforcers across the state — and by many open-carry supporters — about the new Texas law that went into effect Jan. 1.

“As we predicted, the passage of the open-carry law has been a real nonevent,” said C.J. Grisham, president of Open Carry Texas.

Not everyone agrees.

“It’s too soon to tell,” say opponents such as Carolyn Daniel, a volunteer with the Texas chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.

She and others with Moms Demand Action opposed the law before it took effect and remain opposed.

“Changes in legislation can take years to determine an impact,” she said.

Some say the biggest effect of open carry is the growing number of businesses that have outlawed guns on their properties.

The Legislature first restricted the carrying of pistols in public in 1871.

That law first changed in 1995, when lawmakers allowed handguns to be carried if concealed.

Lawmakers again approved changes last year, and Jan. 1 was the first day Texans who are licensed — which means they are at least 21, have clear criminal records and no record of mental illness — could legally carry their guns openly.

“So far, all seems quiet — which is consistent with what we expected,” said Shannon Edmonds, a staff attorney for the Austin-based Texas District and County Attorneys Association, which has had staffers traveling across the state teaching prosecutors, police and judges about details of the law.

In Texas, more than 925,000 people, about 3.4 percent of the state’s 27 million residents, have licenses to carry handguns, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Some gun owners say open carry is just the beginning.

Many say they hope Texas lawmakers will consider “constitutional carry” next year to let Texans openly carry handguns without licenses.

Since Jan. 1, a number of gun owners have posted pictures of themselves openly carrying holstered handguns in public — including in front of the Texas Capitol — on Facebook and Twitter.

And many have been asking which businesses allow people to openly carry on their property and which ones prevent it.

“Yes, it seems some businesses have decided to put up signs, but it’s not as widespread as the media has made it sound,” Grisham said. “This is the same sort of business reaction that occurred in 1995 when the concealed handgun law was passed, so we expect that within a year or so the hype will die down and the signs will begin disappearing.”

Some open-carry opponents say they won’t go into businesses such as Kroger, Home Depot or Bass Pro Shops that have said licensed Texans may openly carry on their property.

And open-carry supporters say they won’t go into businesses such as Half-Price Books, Torchy’s Tacos or AMC movie theaters, which won’t let them openly carry their weapons.

©2016 Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: What open carry looks like. Paul Weaver via Flickr