Roosevelt Twyne, a licensed armored car guard, was arrested this week in New Jersey. For carrying a gun illegally, and for carrying hollow points (which are illegal to possess in New Jersey outside your home unless you’re at the range).
Just two problems:
He was fully licensed for concealed carry in the state.
His Hornady Critical Duty rounds weren’t hollow points — according to the police’s own website. “Ammunition lacking a hollow cavity at the tip, such as those with a polymer filling, are not considered to be hollow point ammunition. An example of this can be seen with the Hornady Critical Defense / Critical Duty….”
But he was arrested and charged anyway. Welcome to gun laws, where the rules are made up and the points don’t matter. Some great silver lining here is that the community has come to Roosevelt’s defense, with support from Colion Noir, the NRA, and a GoGetFunding fundraise that has already gathered over $46,000 for his defense (including a bit from OSD!).
One lesson from this is a well-known one about how when police are wrong (knowingly or not) about a law, they can inflict a lot of harm with impunity. But this also touches on a less well-known lesson about how gun laws are an ideal foothold for this kind of dangerous power-tripping.
We wrote a Twitter thread on this this week. People generally have no idea how dramatically the gun laws can change from one state to the next. The same behavior that’s a fun weekend at the range in one state can be punishable by life in prison in the next state over. Seriously.
We wrote it up in this thread. Share it with people who don’t know about this stuff, because it helps illustrate the same sort of dangers that Roosevelt Twyne is currently fighting his way out of. The people clamoring to give police and prosecutors more courtroom weapons might be surprised to find out how those weapons get used in real life — and who they get used on.
The good news is that that’s an opportunity. People’s hearts are in the right place, but they don’t know the facts. The heart is the gas pedal and the mind is the steering wheel. So take their passion, share some facts to get it pointed right, and then you’ve got a supporter for life.
Make it a great week, gang.
This week’s links
Gun safety with rapper 10cellphones
Rappers doing content marketing where they show you how to take down and clean your Glock and your AK. What a time to be alive. To beat a drum we like to beat frequently: normalization is freedom. This is how we continue to make the culture hospitable to gun rights.
T.Rex Arms – Winter shooting
Remember that drum we like to beat frequently, from one paragraph ago? Here we go again: normalization is freedom. And when it comes to spreading content, high production values count for a lot. Here’s a highly shareable special from T.Rex Arms. Cool stuff is cool.
Fearful of a coronavirus backlash, some Asian-Americans are stocking up on guns
Gaughran said his store has seen a sixfold increase in sales in the same two weeks. His new customers, most of them first-time gun owners, were almost entirely of Asian descent, he said. Bellevue is just a 15 minute drive from Kirkland, where 11 people have died from the virus.
There’s no way to get an accurate accounting for how many people buy guns on a weekly basis, or in real time. However, in Washington, local police departments do process background checks for most first-time gun buyers. In Bellevue, police say they’ve registered the spike in demand. Meeghan Black, the Police Department’s public information officer, said that since August of last year, the department has processed a steady average of around 158 checks per month. But in the first four days of March, they handled more than a hundred.
“The officer who processes these checks said he’s been processing the last ten years, and has never seen anything like this in his life,” she added.
Mark Robinson wins GOP nomination for Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina
Just an update on a potential newly influential position for someone in the 2A community. Mark got famous for an awesome speech he gave during the public comment period at a Greensboro, NC City Council meeting a while back.
“Apartment maintenance staff came in last night at 2am, no knock, no call. I woke up and pointed my LEGAL gun at them. They called the police and want to file charges.”
A first-hand account of how quickly a real-world DGU can get complicated, even with no shots fired.
Neil Gorsuch’s statement on Guedes v. ATF
This case was an attempt to get an injunction that would prevent the federal bump stock ban from going into effect. While the Supreme Court declined to grant an injunction, they didn’t touch on the merits of the ban itself. There are several cases working their way up through the system on that right now, and Gorsuch’s statement heavily implies that he’s itching to grant cert on one of them.
This is also a good time to plug @2Aupdates’s gun case tracker, a dead-simple Airtable database that gives you details on every important gun case in every court in the country.
Lucky Gunner: Stuff you should know about buckshot
Characteristically good and practical stuff from Lucky Gunner. Ideal for sharing with beginners or gun-curious friends.
RECOILtv shoots a Knight’s Light Assault Machine Gun
Because every week should with a video of someone holding a SAW out like a pistol and dumping a belt of 5.56.