The Wild West...

[RANT]

...Or the "Good Guys" with guns right up to the moment the shooting starts.

There is a new sick trend coming out of the Republican party doing away with gun permit and background checks!
Permitless carry laws raise new dilemmas for police officers
AP News
By Rebecca Reynolds
October 29, 2022


Police saw Carmon Tussey walking briskly toward a crowded Louisville bar carrying a semi-automatic weapon.

With people running away, officers moved in, service weapons drawn. They put the 26-year-old in handcuffs and confiscated his gun. Tussey was later charged with terroristic threatening, wanton endangerment and disorderly conduct, prosecutors said, and could face up to 20 years in prison.

His lawyer says he “was engaged in perfectly legal behavior” in the incident last year, raising a relatively new legal argument in the United States that now stands before the courts to settle.

That’s because Kentucky made it legal in 2019 to carry a gun in public without a permit, joining what is now a majority of states with similar laws.

Many celebrate the end of the bureaucracy erected around what they consider every American’s constitutional right to carry any firearm they want. But permitless carry laws have created a dilemma for officers working the streets: They now have to decide, sometimes in seconds, if someone with the right to carry a gun is a danger.

They are “good guys with guns” right up until they pull the trigger!

Opinion: These laws tie law enforcement's hands behind their backs
CNN
Opinion by Art Acevedo
April 8, 2022


Politicians spend a lot of time arguing about police reform and how best to combat violent crime. As a former police chief with 35 years in law enforcement, my answer is we can reform the nation's police departments and combat violent crime at the same time. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Lawmakers also debate whether embracing gun rights precludes enacting common sense gun safety legislation. I heard back-and-forth on this often in my home state of Texas, while serving as chief of police in Houston and Austin. I've always felt we can adopt common sense gun safety laws while respecting the gun rights of law-abiding Americans.

One thing law enforcement officers cannot do, however, is fight crime and violence with one hand tied behind our backs, which is what "permitless carry" laws being introduced around the country require us to do.

With permitless carry, anyone wishing to carry a firearm essentially can do so with no questions asked. Most states require a permit to carry a concealed handgun in the United States, according to Everytown.org, an anti-gun violence group. But there are now some two dozen states with permitless carry on the books, and more are joining their ranks all the time.

[...]

Almost no one thinks permitless carry a good idea except for the gun lobby. The gun lobby wants you to think the permitting system hinders law-abiding gun owners, but a 2019 poll by PBS News Hour, NPR and Marist found 72% of Americans support permits.

For a party that says they support the police these permitless bill are creating a nightmare for the police and for us the laws are creating fear for us. Can you imagine standing in line at a bank and someone walks in with an assault weapon and wearing a surgical mask, I would freak out!

I think many of the people who carry assault weapons around town have fantasies of being the Lone Ranger or Bat Holiday and killing the “bad guys.”

[/RANT]