This is not freedom, people
by digby
Public parks are a nice idea and all, but be advised that if some gun nut wants to intimidate you and your family there’s nothing you can do about it. Not in Georgia at least.
A Georgia man panicked parents and children at a local park and baseball field by randomly walking around and displaying his gun to anyone he encountered in the parking lot.
According to witnesses who spoke with WSB-TV, the man wandered around the Forsythe County park last Tuesday night showing his gun to strangers, telling them “there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“Anyone who was just walking by – you had parents and children coming in for the game – and he’s just standing here, walking around [saying] ‘You want to 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.
Rabb said that the man’s intimidating behavior panicked parents causing them to hustle children who were there to play baseball to safety after the man refused to leave.
“It got to the point where we took the kids and brought them into the dugout and the parents lined up in front of the dugout,” Rabb said.
You’ve got a problem with that? Tough luck.
After deputies arrived, they questioned the man who produced a permit for the handgun. According to authorities, since the man made no verbal threats or gestures, they couldn’t arrest him or ask him to leave.
The police did say they thought his behavior was “inappropriate”, so there’s that.
The upshot is that if parents want to protect their kids from some asshole who’s waving a gun around they can’t use the park when he’s there. He has the gun. He doesn’t need to make threats. Nobody sane with kids would confront him back, armed or not. Therefore, he owns the park.
That’s what this fetishizing of guns leads to — freedom for the people who have them to do whatever the hell they want. Everyone else is out of luck.
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