Fox News:
Second Amendment groups are accusing the gun control lobby of putting law-abiding owners of firearms in danger by urging people to call the police on anyone carrying a gun in public.
As more states relax rules about open-carrying of guns, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence has taken to social media to urge the public to assume gun-toters are trouble, and to call the cops on anyone they feel may be a threat.
“If you see someone carrying a firearm in public—openly or concealed—and have ANY doubts about their intent, call 911 immediately and ask police to come to the scene,” the group wrote on its widely followed Facebook page. “Never put your safety, or the safety of your loved ones, at the mercy of weak gun laws that arm individuals in public with little or no criminal and/or mental health screening.”
That approach, according to a blog post by Ohio-based Buckeye Firearms Association, could give rise to needless, tense confrontations between police and gun owners. The association and other similar groups liken the tactic to “swatting,” or the act of tricking an emergency service into dispatching responders based on a false report. Many online harassment campaigns have been known to participate in the practice.
“This practice is exactly what they [Coalition to Stop Gun Violence] are doing,” said Erich Pratt, spokesman for Virginia-based Gun Owners of America. “It’s one thing if someone is using a gun in an illegal or unlawful manner. No one is questioning that. But this clearly sounds like swatting.”
The gun control groups are certainly clearly to blame for putting lives at risk, but the primary responsibility for this lies in the fact that there is such a thing as a SWAT team at all for deployment in situations like this.
If the 911 operators and police would simply educate the public like they should, this sort of thing wouldn’t happen. 911 – what’s your emergency? “I see a man carrying a gun down the street.” Ma’am, that’s not illegal. What’s your emergency, is he brandishing it or threatening anyone? “Well, no. But I can’t be sure of anything.” Ma’am, you are using the valuable 911 time that might be needed in real emergencies, so if you don’t hang up we intend to press charges for misuse and abuse of 911. Click.
That’s all this takes. It’s a lie to assert that every call must be investigated. They don’t investigate your “widdle tummy hurting,” any more than they investigate why your cable TV stopped working. In states where it isn’t illegal to open carry, 911 should be one stop shopping for explaining that police are only deployed when crimes are committed. And claiming that the cops have a need to know who you are runs directly contrary to the notion of legitimate “Terry stops.” No … they … don’t. Not even in “stop and identify” states, for which the stipulation is suspicion of a crime.
