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baldeagle wrote:I understand what y'all are saying, but your rights don't mean squat on the street. If a police officer abuses your rights, you can take him to court, but that doesn't help you when you're being abused.

Read the thread No Warrant? No Exigent circumstances? No Problem. How will that man ever be made whole again? He plead to a misdemeanor charge because the DA threatened him with four felony counts. He was completely within his rights and did nothing wrong, yet he now has a record that will be with him the remainder of his life. And he's very lucky he wasn't shot dead, just like Erik.

Erik doesn't even have that option. He's dead. His 2A rights didn't mean a thing when the officers killed him. If that doesn't make you at least stop and think, then you're not being realistic. I don't live in a high crime area. I don't frequent high crime areas. So I have to weigh the danger of being shot by police because I was legally carrying against the very remote possibility that something might happen to me. In my home, I have no problem. Elsewhere? I'm not so sure any more. Erik's death weighs heavy on my heart, for more reasons than one.

I can't afford an arsenal like some of you have. I can't afford to buy a different gun for each situation I might carry in. So I have to decide if the one gun I have is worth carrying in public, where someone might misinterpret my intentions and then, when panic sets in, I die because a cop was told I was armed and erratic and extremely dangerous and arrived with adrenalin pumping, ready to shoot at the drop of a hat or the slightest misinterpreted move on my part.

I've always thought of cops as the good guys. I still do, but now I think of them as extremely dangerous good guys. A threat to my life, if I'm carrying. I don't like feeling this way, but how can you not after what happened to Erik?