Gun-Rights Activists Take Aim at Cops With Misleading Video

| Wed Jan. 23, 2013 5:01 AM GMT







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While Smith comes across in the video as a largely harmless victim of an overzealous cop, the legal case Florida Carry is currently pressing involves a bona fide felon, highlighting what's at stake in the proceeding. Anthony Mackey was hanging around outside a Miami apartment building in 2010 when a police officer drove by and noticed the handle of a gun sticking out of his pocket. The officer confronted Mackey and, after a pat-down, found the gun. He arrested Mackey, who was convicted of illegally carrying a concealed weapon; because he had a prior record, he was also convicted of possession of a gun by a felon. Mackey is appealing that conviction, arguing that because carrying a concealed weapon is legal in Florida, the cop who stopped him performed an illegal search. Mackey didn't have a concealed weapon permit, but he and his supporters argue that the police officer should never have stopped him in the first place because simply standing around with a gun on one's pocket isn't necessarily against the law. For all the police knew, his gun could have been legal.

Despite its pro-gun reputation, the state of Florida isn't buying this line of argument. In fact, the state attorney general, Pam Bondi (generally a revered tea party figure no less), argued that it's not only proper but also legal for officers to assume that anyone carrying a firearm is a felon. She writes in a brief:

[A]n overwhelming majority of Floridians are not licensed to carry concealed weapons. As of August 31, 2012, the number of concealed weapon or firearm permits issued in Florida is 971,263. Where Florida had an estimated population of 19,057,542 in 2011, the percentage of the population that is licensed to carry a concealed weapon is only five percent (5%). Given the small percentage of the population that is licensed to carry a concealed firearm, the overwhelming majority of firearms, or 95%, are not licensed to be concealed. Thus, an officer’s suspicion that a firearm is not licensed would be reasonable because, in any given case, there would be, statistically speaking, a 95% likelihood of illegality.

The brief has earned Bondi the wrath of many of the same people who used to worship her after she took Florida's Obamacare challenge all the way to the Supreme Court. Now they're calling for her ouster. The case is set for oral arguments this spring. Meanwhile, Florida Carry is contemplating a lawsuit against the Citrus County sheriff's department because of the incident on the video, so even if the activists lose in Mackey, they'll be aiming to try again, and this time, perhaps, with a far more sympathetic victim.
