This year, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican lawmakers passed permitless carry. We can’t call it constitutional carry because there are still restrictions in place–you must have your firearm concealed, after all–but it was a big step forward for Floridians.
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And like pretty much everywhere else, some in the media are likely to misrepresent facts to try and paint permitless carry as bad.
Oh, it’s easy to speculate on something like that, yet I don’t actually have to. It’s already happened.
Newsweek ran a piece on Thursday headlined, “Florida Man Shot by Police While Celebrating Ron DeSantis’ New Gun Law.”
That seems…troubling, especially since the new gun law in question is, in fact, permitless carry.
Except, that supposed celebration isn’t really the crux of what happened.
A Florida man who fired a rifle to celebrate the state’s new open carry laws before promptly being shot by a police officer has finally been arrested following a two-month stint in hospital.
Christian Labaut, 37, was shot by police on July 7 after he fired a gun into the air. A law enforcement officer shot him when he refused to comply with officers and began running away from them. He was arrested on September 15 following his recovery.
According to the arrest report seen by the Miami Herald, law enforcement traveled to an Upper East Side apartment complex near the 7800 block of Northeast 10th Avenue, Miami, where they found a Labaut wearing body armor and wielding a gun. Witnesses reportedly told officers that Labaut announced he was celebrating the new law and firing a string of bullets into the air.
Police have said officers attempted to reason with Labaut to put the weapon down and show his hands, but he did not comply. He reportedly ran down a corridor and was shot by an officer several times.
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So he claimed he was celebrating a law that went into effect nearly a week earlier, was using the kind of firearm that wasn’t impacted by the law anyway, then was shot because he failed to comply with police orders and started running with a loaded firearm, thus threatening everyone, but sure, let’s take his word about why he was shooting up into the air.
What we really have here is an idiot being an idiot, then acting like an even bigger idiot, and getting shot for his trouble.
The presence of a firearm isn’t justification for someone being shot and merely celebrating the passage of a law or that law going into effect isn’t grounds for that either.
Yet this dipstick–who has been treated and is recovering from his injuries–endangered God only knows how many people by firing into the air and then taking off running instead of putting his weapon down.
None of this has anything to do with Ron DeSantis, permitless carry, or anything the governor has done while in office.
Newsweek, however, knows that many people never look past the headlines. It’s common knowledge in the news business, after all, so when I see a headline like this, I know it’s meant to look bad for DeSantis, not convey the truth of what happened.
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