Police Kill Man Attempting to "Open Carry" ..wait for it...

[doubtingt]

The gun was not fake, toy guns have red caps on the end of them. It is a real gun, and other than looking at the end closely, you cannot tell the caliber of any gun. So stop say it.

Irrelevant. Ohio is an open-carry state; he had as much right to carry that pellet gun as he did to carry a baseball bat.

See my post above. Having a theoretical "right" to do it doesn't mean that every rational person in the area shouldn't have assumed he was about to go on a killing spree, since almost no one ever exercises that right in such a stupid and careless and sure to freak people out sort of way.
He had a right, and the other shoppers and the cops had reasonable cause to think he was a deadly threat. That shows how absurd it is for him to have that right.

 

[doubtingt]

How often do you suspect that people in Ohio walk around department stores with a gun that looks like that in their hand?

Irrelevant. It is perfectly lawful to do so, therefore it wouldn't matter if he's the only one who ever did it or if everyone in the state did it all the time. He was shot and killed because the officer believed he was doing something that wasn't even illegal (and even then, he was mistaken).

Wrong. What is irrelevant is that it is lawful to do it. The other shoppers and the cops also could have acted reasonably and legally, and yet the guy still be dead.

The fact that he can be dead and yet no one have done anything illegal (and only he have done something unreasonable and stupid) shows how wrong the law is that gives him that right, because the law that lets cops shoot someone that to any reasonable person looks extremely armed and dangerous is a good law and I want cops to be able to shoot them.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Irrelevant. Ohio is an open-carry state; he had as much right to carry that pellet gun as he did to carry a baseball bat.

See my post above. Having a theoretical "right" to do it doesn't mean that every rational person in the area shouldn't have assumed he was about to go on a killing spree

The state legislature of Ohio disagrees with you. According to them, openly carrying an assault rifle is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, any time, any place. If you disagree with them, you should get them to change the law.

But that doesn't exonerate the cop's behavior, seeing how the job of police officers is to ENFORCE THE LAW. If you lived in a state where it was perfectly legal to have sex in public places, the cop who shoots you in the head for bending your wife over the counter-top at Ikea is not properly enforcing the law.

He had a right, and the other shoppers and the cops had reasonable cause to think he was a deadly threat...

No they didn't. They had reasonable cause to think he was a law-abiding citizen who was doing nothing wrong whatsoever.

That shows how absurd it is for him to have that right.

Very true.

 

[doubtingt]

See my post above. Having a theoretical "right" to do it doesn't mean that every rational person in the area shouldn't have assumed he was about to go on a killing spree

The state legislature of Ohio disagrees with you. According to them, openly carrying an assault rifle is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, any time, any place.

The legislature says no such thing. It says only that it is not itself illegal to do, not that it is at all a reasonable thing to do or that it is not reasonable for others, including cops, to perceive you as an deadly threat. IOW, the cops can and should treat such a person as a likely deadly threat, and doing so would violate no law nor standard police practice.

He had a right, and the other shoppers and the cops had reasonable cause to think he was a deadly threat...

No they didn't. They had reasonable cause to think he was a law-abiding citizen who was doing nothing wrong whatsoever.

The law has zero impact on what it is reasonable for them to suspect. It is reality that determines what is reasonable to suspect, and the same reality for them as for a random person in a department store in any other state with or without the "right" to make people think you are a mass murder.

That shows how absurd it is for him to have that right.

Very true.

So we agree that he shouldn't have that right, but the absurdity lies in that his actual acting out the right can get him shot by the cops without them doing anything illegal, unreasonable, or at all morally wrong.

 

[Malintent]

what I feel is missing from this discussion is the fact that "open carry" does NOT mean "allowed to brandish a weapon".
What you CAN do in a "open carry" state, is carry a firearm with you without the need of a permit to do so. What you CANNOT do in a "open carry" state is wave a gun around, carry an assult rifle in a "readied" manner in a crowded store, or any other activity that scares the shit out of the people around you.. that is "Brandishing a weapon" and is illegal anywhere you go. You can have a holstered weapon and be ok... the second you say somethihng like, "my 6 shooter says otherwise" and reveal the holsterered weapon (as if to say, see.. I can shoot you if I wanted to), you have broken the law.

It is very much like harrassment... it exists in the eyes of the beholder... If you scare someone with your gun, in any state, you have broken the law.

 

[Deepak]

what I feel is missing from this discussion is the fact that "open carry" does NOT mean "allowed to brandish a weapon".
What you CAN do in a "open carry" state, is carry a firearm with you without the need of a permit to do so. What you CANNOT do in a "open carry" state is wave a gun around, carry an assult rifle in a "readied" manner in a crowded store, or any other activity that scares the shit out of the people around you.. that is "Brandishing a weapon" and is illegal anywhere you go. You can have a holstered weapon and be ok... the second you say somethihng like, "my 6 shooter says otherwise" and reveal the holsterered weapon (as if to say, see.. I can shoot you if I wanted to), you have broken the law.

It is very much like harrassment... it exists in the eyes of the beholder... If you scare someone with your gun, in any state, you have broken the law.

What remains to be seen is if this was actually the case, and ultimately the video is the only thing that can provide a clear answer to that.

On its face, the statements made the by individual who called 911, and the actions of the selfsame man and his wife are not consistent with the claim that Crawford was brandishing the weapon or waving it around.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The state legislature of Ohio disagrees with you. According to them, openly carrying an assault rifle is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, any time, any place.

The legislature says no such thing. It says only that it is not itself illegal to do

... because they deem it as a reasonable thing for people to do. If they didn't think it was reasonable, it wouldn't be legal.

not that it is at all a reasonable thing to do or that it is not reasonable for others, including cops, to perceive you as an deadly threat.

Irrelevant, as in this case "being perceived as a deadly threat" is not illegal either. That's kinda the whole POINT of open-carry.

The law has zero impact on what it is reasonable for them to suspect.

It does in legal parlance. Which, btw, is several shades removed from morality or even REALITY.

But we're discussing laws, not morality.

So we agree that he shouldn't have that right, but the absurdity lies in that his actual acting out the right can get him shot by the cops without them doing anything illegal, unreasonable, or at all morally wrong.

It is not morally wrong to exercise your rights, especially rights granted to you by an explicit act of your state legislature.

It IS morally wrong to provide firearms and authority to people who lack the impulse control to safely use them in public places, though.

It's also morally wrong to pass stupid laws that put people in dangerous situations just because the fucking NRA is threatening to blackmail you.

But again, we're discussing laws, not morality.

 

[+or-1]

The idiot was waving it around, a policeman told him to drop it and he didn't.

Except that the "idiot" was "waving around" a toy.

A couple weeks ago here in Phoenix, a gun rights advocate took it upon himself to carry a loaded AR-15 into the airport and "waved it around."

Not a toy. Not an air rifle, but an actual weapon.

Somehow, the police refrained from shooting him.

[sarcasm]Luckily, it's not about race.[/sarcasm]

 

[doubtingt]

The legislature says no such thing. It says only that it is not itself illegal to do

... because they deem it as a reasonable thing for people to do. If they didn't think it was reasonable, it wouldn't be legal.

That presumes that the State legislature makes every possible act illegal, and only allows those it has evaluated as "reasonable things to do".

Only in the most fascist authoritarian society is that remotely the case. In our society, the default is an act is legal, and the deemed unreasonableness of act is at best moderately correlated with, but neither a neccessary nor sufficient condition for its being made illegal, and its reasonable never even need be considered. In this case of acts deemed "basic rights" this is especially the case, since the legislature might and often does consider solely whether the act is a protected right, without any thought to its reasonableness either now or when it was deemed a right.

not that it is at all a reasonable thing to do or that it is not reasonable for others, including cops, to perceive you as an deadly threat.

Irrelevant, as in this case "being perceived as a deadly threat" is not illegal either. That's kinda the whole POINT of open-carry.

It isn't "illegal", but it is legal grounds for the cops to treat you like you are a deadly threat. IOW, he can be legally shot for doing something legal. The legality of his act does not diminish the legality of the cops actions in treating him like a deadly threat.

The law has zero impact on what it is reasonable for them to suspect.

It does in legal parlance. Which, btw, is several shades removed from morality or even REALITY.

But we're discussing laws, not morality.

Show me anywhere in the law that open-carry requires cops to alter the basis of reasonable suspicion of an armed threat. Reasonable suspicion in this case is whatever, judges and juries think is reasonable for cops to infer when a guy is (and has been) walking around for 20 minutes in a department store with a gun.

So we agree that he shouldn't have that right, but the absurdity lies in that his actual acting out the right can get him shot by the cops without them doing anything illegal, unreasonable, or at all morally wrong.

It is not morally wrong to exercise your rights, especially rights granted to you by an explicit act of your state legislature.

You're missing the point. It isn't about whether he did anything illegal or morally wrong. It is about whether the cops could have shot him without themselves doing anything illegal and morally wrong, and they answer is "yes". Furthermore, what is morally right has nothing to do with what is legal to do or what your legal rights are. Intentionally making people think you are about the kill them is morally wrong, and no law nor legal rights has any impact on that morally wrongness. We know this guy was a raving moron, and if he knew he knew he was freaking people out then he was also acting immorally and he is the primary moral blame for his own death. Regardless of whether it was intentional, the cops might not bear any legal nor moral responsibility for his death (that depends on the details of his and the cops exchange when they arrived on the scene).

It IS morally wrong to provide firearms and authority to people who lack the impulse control to safely use them in public places, though.

To date, I see little evidence that the cops lacked impulse control. I only see evidence that they had strong reason to suspect someone about to open fire in a Department store, given the lack of plausible reason for anyone to be otherwise wandering around the store holding what looks to be a deadly firearm. Note once again, the fact the person could in theory do that legally without killing people, has zero impact upon what the cops should have reasonably suspected he was doing and about to do.

It's also morally wrong to pass stupid laws that put people in dangerous situations just because the fucking NRA is threatening to blackmail you.
.

Agreed, but only stupid people do stupid things just because a stupid law says its legal for them to do it. This guy was an idiot, and may very well have engaged in immoral acts that led perfectly reasonable and moral people to shoot him.

 

[Deepak]

His having purchased said item in the store seems pretty reasonable to me.

 

[RavenSky]

The gun was not fake, toy guns have red caps on the end of them. It is a real gun, and other than looking at the end closely, you cannot tell the caliber of any gun. So stop say it.

Irrelevant. Ohio is an open-carry state; he had as much right to carry that pellet gun as he did to carry a baseball bat.

. More right, per the constitution (according the NRA)

 

[RavenSky]

Ohio is an open carry state. It would have been legal for Crawford to have carried a loaded weapon around Walmart, but he did not do that. He picked up a bb gun and someone got scared and erroneously called the police that there was a shooter in Walmart, which was not true.

The police arrived and instead of assessing the situation, killed Crawford who had no idea and no reason to know that he was suspected of being a shooter in Walmart. Because Crawford had no idea and no reason to know he was under any kind of suspicion, he was not as quick to assess his own situation as the police, quickly mis-assessing the situation--were to kill him.

How often do you suspect that people in Ohio walk around department stores with a gun that looks like that in their hand? We aren't talking standing there in the bb gun aisle next to the box, inspecting it for a few minutes, but rather roaming around the store for 20 minutes with the gun. Unless the answer is "somewhat often" to "all the time", then the open carry law is irrelevant to the other shoppers' reaction, and largely irrelevant to the cops' state of mind when the enter the situation.

IT is extremely reckless for Walmart to sell such deadly looking bb guns in the first place, let alone to have them sitting on the shelf for anyone to grab and take out of the box. If on a jury I'd find them culpable for many millions in damages, and convict their CEOs of involuntary manslaughter.
This case also shows the absurdity of open carry laws and the unreasonable position it places cops if people were actually doing what the law allows and just waltzing around public places with assault rifles in their hand, far from any legal shooting range.

However, unless a shopper was acutely aware that Walmart sold such a gun, the perfectly rational response to seeing someone walking around the store with it is "That guy (not "boy" but very full grown man who looks old for his age of 22) is about to go on a killing spree!" That would be the reasonable fear no matter his race and whether he was age 15 to 90.
When the cops get a "Guy walking around with an assault rifle at Walmart" call and they walk in and see just that, their rational response to presume the guy is a deadly threat. The fact that in hypothetical theory a person could legally do what he is doing, even though no one ever does, wouldn't enter into it. It is this that makes the callers and the cops not look racist, but at the same time makes Walmart liable and the open carry law recklessly dangerous.

It is recently becoming quite common thanks to the Open-Carry nuts. When a few of them are shot and killed by police responding to calls from concerned shoppers, then we can again discussed why this guy had to die.

 

[RavenSky]

what I feel is missing from this discussion is the fact that "open carry" does NOT mean "allowed to brandish a weapon".

Since the only [sarcasm] evidence" [/sarcasm] that Crawfird was "brandishing" anything is Derec's fertile imagination, I feel that it should remain missing from this discussion.

 

[Toni]

what I feel is missing from this discussion is the fact that "open carry" does NOT mean "allowed to brandish a weapon".
What you CAN do in a "open carry" state, is carry a firearm with you without the need of a permit to do so. What you CANNOT do in a "open carry" state is wave a gun around, carry an assult rifle in a "readied" manner in a crowded store, or any other activity that scares the shit out of the people around you.. that is "Brandishing a weapon" and is illegal anywhere you go. You can have a holstered weapon and be ok... the second you say somethihng like, "my 6 shooter says otherwise" and reveal the holsterered weapon (as if to say, see.. I can shoot you if I wanted to), you have broken the law.

It is very much like harrassment... it exists in the eyes of the beholder... If you scare someone with your gun, in any state, you have broken the law.

Who was frightened by Crawford? Who felt threatened? Aside from the woman on the scooter and her husband and their over active imaginations, no doubt amply fed by Fox news.

What evidence is there that he carried an assault rifle? It was a bb gun, it was not loaded and could not be easily or quickly loaded or readied for firing. Even if it were loaded and pumped up the 10 times required to get full velocity on the bbs, what could those bbs have done?

Even the couple with the over active imaginations do not claim that Crawford was making threats; only that they were frightened. So what? Some people are afraid of dogs, even tiny chihuahuas. Doesn't mean that dogs should be shot on sight because someone is afraid. Personally, I find someone carrying a pistol in or out of a holster anywhere but a firing range to be frightening and threatening and idiotic as well. That doesn't mean that I should call the police and tell them that said pistol packing guy is brandishing it about threatening people. Unless he is actually doing just that.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

When the cops get a "Guy walking around with an assault rifle at Walmart" call and they walk in and see just that, their rational response to presume the guy is a deadly threat. The fact that in hypothetical theory a person could legally do what he is doing, even though no one ever does, wouldn't enter into it. It is this that makes the callers and the cops not look racist, but at the same time makes Walmart liable and the open carry law recklessly dangerous.

If it were a real weapon his actions would have been brandishing a firearm--not legal.

As it stands I don't know what the legal situation is when you point a realistic weapon at someone. Since it's not real it's not brandishing but it certainly seems like it's making threats.


Personally, I think brandishing should apply to anything that looks like a real weapon.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

what I feel is missing from this discussion is the fact that "open carry" does NOT mean "allowed to brandish a weapon".
What you CAN do in a "open carry" state, is carry a firearm with you without the need of a permit to do so. What you CANNOT do in a "open carry" state is wave a gun around, carry an assult rifle in a "readied" manner in a crowded store, or any other activity that scares the shit out of the people around you.. that is "Brandishing a weapon" and is illegal anywhere you go. You can have a holstered weapon and be ok... the second you say somethihng like, "my 6 shooter says otherwise" and reveal the holsterered weapon (as if to say, see.. I can shoot you if I wanted to), you have broken the law.

It is very much like harrassment... it exists in the eyes of the beholder... If you scare someone with your gun, in any state, you have broken the law.

We are dealing with a bunch of people who have no real understanding of firearms, they don't see the difference between carry and brandish.


And the behaviors you list would be legal in a self defense situation. Revealing a holstered weapon is an acceptable means of running off someone that's threatening you. (And, in fact, most self defense "uses" of a gun are at this level--a tough realizes their target isn't going to be easy pickings and bugs out.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It is recently becoming quite common thanks to the Open-Carry nuts. When a few of them are shot and killed by police responding to calls from concerned shoppers, then we can again discussed why this guy had to die.

Lets look at those open carry nuts (simply some images off Google):

Note how they are carrying them.

All the handguns are in holsters.

All the rifles are pointed in safe directions, most are slung, not in the hands at all. Even the few images out there with hands on the grips still are being done in a safe fashion:

It's in a safe direction and note his extended finger--it's *NOT* inside the trigger guard.

In looking through a couple hundred images I find only one example of unsafe gun handling--and that's on a post pointing out the failure and showing other problems also--likely not even a real gun.

 

[RavenSky]

Now post a photograph showing that Crawford was doing anything different from the leather vest guy or the blond woman behind him.

Per scooter woman's own description, Crawford had the non-gun cradled in his arm while he was talking on the phone that he had tucked between his ear and shoulder. That is not "brandishing".

Until you post a photo or video showing that scooter woman is a liar and that Crawford really was "brandishing" or doing anything different from the "open-carry" nuts you posted above, you need to quit repeating Derec's fevered fantasy as if it was fact.

 

[OLDMAN]

If this is legal, why did the police respond in the first place?

 

[George S]

From post #5 in this thread:

“He got on his cell phone right after he walked past me,” April Ritchie said. Ritchie was on her cell phone, talking with her mother. She had broken an ankle and was riding a scooter.

“Guy. Gun. Hold on,” April Ritchie recalled telling her mother.

They followed the man at a safe distance and Ronald Ritchie, a former Marine, called 911 at 8:21 p.m.

“Anytime I saw people walking his way, I would get their attention,” April Ritchie said, waving her hands for the reporters to demonstrate what she did. She said at one point, a family was standing next to the man with the rifle, but didn’t notice the rifle. The man turned to look at them with a stare she described as if he was telling them, “don’t come near me.”

He was holding a cellphone between his left ear and left shoulder while messing with the rifle, she said. “He just kept messing with it and I heard a clicking,” she said.

The original question was "guess the dead guy's race."

I don't know whether April and Ronald might be racist. Regardless they called 911. We will come to know what was said on the 911 tape. We will know much more of the mindset of the policeman dispatched. I want to hear that tape.