While city officials in New Orleans have been trying since last year to create a “gun-free zone” including the city’s entire French Quarter, the slaughter of 14 people on New Year’s Day is graphic proof that bad people are the problem, not firearms, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said.
“Alleged mass killer Shamsud Din Jabbar murdered all of his victims with an electric-powered pickup truck,” noted CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “While he reportedly had a rifle and pistol, he also apparently placed IED bombs in a couple of places prior to his rampage. Does anyone seriously expect us to believe that designating the area as a ‘gun-free zone’ would have somehow deterred this madman and prevented this horrible crime?”
Jabbar was killed in a short gun battle with New Orleans police officers, but the carnage was really caused by driving the truck through holiday revelers.
This was not the first time in recent memory when a crazed terrorist weaponized a motor vehicle to inflict massive mayhem. Last month saw the Christmas Market attack in Magdeburg, Germany. There was the July 14, 2016 terror attack in Nice, France when a man drove a stolen cargo truck through a crowd, killing 86 people and injuring 434 others. In 2017, another man drove a rented pickup along a bike path in New York City, killing eight people, CCRKBA recalled.
“What does it take to convince public officials, in New Orleans or anywhere else, that restricting the rights of legally-armed, law-abiding citizens will not prevent incidents of horrendous violence,” Gottlieb wondered. “While the myopic gun prohibition lobby concentrates on banning firearms in so-called ‘sensitive places,’ dangerous individuals have demonstrated repeatedly they don’t need guns to commit mass murder. The terrible tragedy in New Orleans merely underscores that fact.
“It’s time to abandon the one-size-fits-all strategy of disarming the public as a solution to violent crime and a preventive measure against wholesale killing,” he stated. “Trampling the constitution has never solved anything. You don’t protect people by disarming them. You simply turn them into defenseless victims.”
Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms
With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (www.ccrkba.org) is one of the nation’s premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States.
Mark “Choppa” Manley celebrates Christmas with his wife and children. ATF agents conducted a no-knock search warrant at Manley’s home November 21st using flashbang grenades. While the family was harmed and extremely traumatized, no arrests were made, and no charges have been filed. (Photo courtesy Mark Manley).
ATF Special Agent Katie Rottman, a public information officer in Baltimore, claimed the convoluted case against Mark Manley and his family, which involved an early morning search warrant by more than a dozen heavily armed ATF agents who lobbed two flashbang grenades, is still an active investigation, according to a brief email exchange.
Rottman’s emails, which were the first received from an ATF Special Agent about the raid that occurred around 5 a.m., November 21st, came in response to messages sent to ATF supervisors after their botched raid targeted the Manley family.
“I received your inquiry about Mr. Manley. What questions do you have for me?” Rottman said in an email sent at 1:20 p.m. on Friday, Dec 27, 2024.
“What is he charged with? Who conducted the investigation? What were the nature of his charges,” we replied.
“No charges have been filed at this time. This is an ongoing investigation so that is all the information I can give. If you have any other questions, please let me know,” Rottman said in her email reply.
“Since no weapons were seized, isn’t the investigation over? Mr. Manley believes he’s not going to be charged,” we asked.
“As previously stated, this is an ongoing investigation and I cannot provide you with any additional details,” Rottman replied.
She did not reply to any further emails, which is not a surprise. The ATF doesn’t like talking about its raids, which always involve a massive use of force but little else.
Manley’s search warrant was most likely caused by someone outside of the family arrested by ATF, who told the agents he had a lot of guns, which is true. Manley estimated he owns more than 70 firearms, but all of them comply with Maryland and federal laws. He owns no full-autos, suppressors or destructive devices. The ATF learned this after threatening to blow open Manley’s gun safe, which he opened for the agents, who found nothing illegal.
After the botched search warrant, one of the agents who had told Manley’s wife he was the lead investigator, asked her for dimensions and other information about the doors and windows his team had destroyed, which he promised to replace. She did not reply.
The ATF’s flawed tipster must have also told agents that Manley was a convicted felon, who cannot lawfully possess firearms. Manley, while cuffed, told agents he had no felony record, which they quickly confirmed.
Neither Manley nor his family have heard anything from the ATF since the botched raid. They have started a Go Fund Me page, which so far has raised more than $36,000. They are also speaking with several attorneys.
ATF’s other victims
The ATF has a lengthy history of botched raids.
In March, agents shot and killed Bryan Malinowski, executive director of the Clinton National Airport in Little Rock, Arkansas, in his home.
Agents were clearly spoiling for a gunfight when they went in during early morning hours, and they got one.
ATF has yet to comment officially on the March 19 killing, other to claim Malinowski fired first. But Malinowski’s family released a statement, which confirms what everyone already knew: It is extremely unlikely that the 53-year-old airport executive director knew he was trading gunfire with federal agents. It is far more likely Malinowski believed he was defending himself and his wife from armed home invaders.
“Bryan Malinowski was asleep but rose to the sound of the door crashing and located a firearm. His wife believed the noise must have been intruders and she fully believes her husband thought the same. He loaded a magazine into a pistol and emerged from the master bedroom into a hallway leading indirectly to the front entryway. He reached a corner in the hall and looked around it to see several unidentifiable figures already several steps inside his home,” Malinowski’s family said in the statement. “We do not know who shot first but it appears that Bryan shot approximately three times at a decidedly low angle, probably at the feet of the intruders who were roughly 30 feet away.”
Malinowski is not alone. Months earlier, ATF agents raided the Tuskahoma, Oklahoma home of Russell Fincher, who worked as a high school history teacher, a Baptist minister and a parttime gun dealer, just to make ends meet.
Fincher had a Federal Firearm License for three years, but he had no brick-and-mortar gun shop. He was what used to be called a “kitchen table FFL.” He sold most of his firearms at gun shows, including Wanenmacher’s Arms Show in Tulsa.
On June 16, 2023, Fincher and his son were packing for a gun show in Tulsa when the phone rang. It was the ATF. They said they wanted to talk to him before he left for the gun show. Seven vehicles roared up to his home and disgorged a dozen ATF agents wearing tactical gear, armed with AR-15s.
“They called me out onto my deck and handcuffed me. My son was there and saw the whole thing. He’s 13 years old,” Fincher said. “They held me on the porch for about an hour. I was surrounded by agents. One by one, they yelled at me about what I was doing. In my mind I decided if they were going to beat me up over every little thing, I’m done. As soon as I said, ‘If you want my FFL, you can have it,’ one of the agents pulled out a piece of paper and said, ‘Well then sign here.’ He had made three copies in case I screwed one up. It was exactly what they wanted. I was shocked.”
As soon as Fincher relinquished his Federal Firearm License, the ATF began loading up his guns.
“I asked them why, and they said they were ‘evidence.’ I’d estimate they took $50,000 to $60,000 worth of guns,” Fincher said at the time.
ATF’s own history shows a complete disdain for the sanctity of human life. In addition to the scores of lives lost at Waco, a Deputy U.S. Marshal and Randy Weaver’s wife and son were killed during ATF’s Ruby Ridge fiasco. Their “Fast and Furious” scheme resulted in the death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and hundreds of Mexican nationals, who were killed by the weapons ATF allowed to walk straight into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels.
Both David Koresh and Randy Weaver visited nearby towns frequently, as did Manley, Malinowski and Fincher.
A local police officer or deputy sheriff could have easily and safely arrested any of the men without incident, but when the ATF gears up and dons its tactical blinders, they lose sight of simpler and safer enforcement options.
Simple solution needed
While there are dozens of federal agencies likely to receive attention from President Donald Trump after he takes office in around three weeks, the ATF is different. Quite simply, they don’t know what they’re doing, but they have access to the same types of weapons and tactical gear other federal agencies use when they conduct raids and search warrants. As a result, even law-abiding Americans should fear the ATF.
The training course for ATF’s Special Response Team is only two weeks long. Their poorly trained ‘operators’ are a threat to public safety, but they’re better trained than the agents who routinely kick doors and toss flashbangs like they’re cool.
Given their poor training and complete lack of professional leadership, if they’re allowed to continue their raids, it is only a matter of time before an ATF agent kills another innocent American in their home.
President Trump should keep this in mind when he decides what to do about his most lethal but most poorly trained and horribly led federal law enforcement agency, the ATF.
The Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project wouldn’t be possible without you. Click here to make a tax-deductible donation to support pro-gun stories like this.
Lee Williams, who is also known as “The Gun Writer,” is the chief editor of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project. Until recently, he was also an editor for a daily newspaper in Florida. Before becoming an editor, Lee was an investigative reporter at newspapers in three states and a U.S. Territory. Before becoming a journalist, he worked as a police officer. Before becoming a cop, Lee served in the Army. He’s earned more than a dozen national journalism awards as a reporter, and three medals of valor as a cop. Lee is an avid tactical shooter.
7.62x39mm AR-15’s like this SBR utilize a proprietary magazine, but still use a standard AR-15 lower. IMG Jim Grant
A recurring theme of modern culture is the idea that ordinary people cannot “handle” the truth. It is a way to say that ordinary people cannot be trusted to know what the government knows. It is an excuse and justification for the government to keep secrets from the American people. The supposed stupidity and cupidity of most people is a key part of Progressive ideology.
A ubiquitous theme promoted by Progressives is the necessity of controlling “public opinion” and “manufacturing consent”. This is in direct opposition to Christian ideology, as common in colonial America. The founding ideology of the United States of America is natural law supported by Judeo-Christian ethics. Natural law is based largely on the ability of individuals to understand what is in their own interests, and to act on those interests.
The Second Amendment is based on the idea that people can know their own interests. People can band together to promote their own interests. Society is better if everyone is armed to protect their own, and societies, interest in mutual defense, property rights, and the rule of law.
The worship of the truth is a key part of Christianity. In the Bible, Jesus says, “I am the truth.” Jesus says the revelation of the truth will set his followers free. The pursuit of the truth flowered during a combination of the Reformation and Renaissance when the printing press and paper created an explosive revolution of knowledge as important as the invention of writing.
The pursuit of the truth led to the scientific method and the Industrial Revolution. Islam floundered on a denial of objective truth, because the dominant theology in Islam came to be an insistence that Allah could and would change reality at will. The past, the present, every bit of existence at any instant, is subject to change at any moment in Islam. Thus no search for objective reality or for physical laws would or could be fruitful.
Progressivism echos this fluidity in its understanding of the universe by its insistence that nothing is permanent or knowable (except to “Experts”). Everything is changing all the time. Only skilled and dedicated Progressive “experts” can understand what is happening. Governments have to be able to change all the time and instantly, to cope with a changing reality. Therefore, what the mass of the people know and think has to be constantly managed to prevent them from doing stupid things and doing things against their “own interests.”
Stupid things are defined to include throwing Progressives out of power.
How often have you read of Progressives (leftists) saying a certain group voted against their own interests? This is a shortcut version of the above. Progressives assume they know everyone’s interests better than the people themselves do. Marxist theory does the same. Marxists claim people who disagree with them to have “false consciousness”. The consciousness Marxists consider to be true is that which validates their assumptions about reality. Woke theory is a variant. White people are defined as racist, whether they know it or not. No one who is not Woke can define what a woman is.
In contrast, the American Founders trusted the people, on average, over time, to know their own interests. They also knew different people’s interests and different groups interests, often conflict. The checks and balances of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were put in place to keep any one interest group, especially the interest of people in political power, whether State or Federal, from promoting their interest ahead of all others.
The First Amendment is based on the theory a vigorous debate is the best way to determine the truth. The Scientific Method is based on anyone being able to challenge scientific findings by duplicating experiments to see if the same result is obtained. “Scientists” who refuse to reveal their data invalidate their own results.
If you cannot see the data sources, you cannot duplicate the results.
If a person “can’t handle the truth,” they should not be trusted to handle firearms responsibly. Progressive ideology has gun control in its DNA.
You can handle the truth. You can handle weapons. The truth shall set you free.
The flip side: Lies enslave you, and liars lie to you to keep you enslaved.
When someone tells you the public cannot handle the truth, they are advocating for unlimited governmental power.
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
Donald J. Trump to Address NRA Members IMG NRA-ILA
New York — As we approach 2025, Donald J. Trump’s reinauguration as President heralds what many believe will be a renewed golden era for the United States.
His administration is often hailed as the most impactful since the founding of our Republic, marked by a stark contrast to the tumultuous terms of his predecessors.
Historians, free from the bias of contemporary progressive politics, predict that Trump will be remembered as one of the greatest American Presidents. His tenure is characterized by a profound dedication to the nation’s core values of liberty and individualism, a stark juxtaposition to the perceived failures of the Biden administration.
Trump’s leadership style—direct, unapologetic, and resolute—resonates with many Americans.
His tenure has been defined not only by significant policy achievements but also by his remarkable fortitude in the face of relentless political adversity. Trump’s approach to governance is rooted in a clear vision for America’s future, one that prioritizes economic strength, national security, and the preservation of freedoms.
From the onset of his first presidential campaign, Trump faced unprecedented challenges. The media’s relentless scrutiny and the political establishment’s disdain highlighted a systemic opposition that no other president has faced to such an extent. This opposition reached its zenith with two assassination attempts in 2024, which he narrowly survived. These incidents, while shocking, underscored his resilience and further solidified his resolve to lead the nation.
Trump’s policy initiatives have often been met with controversy but also with significant support. His stance on issues such as immigration, economic reform, and foreign policy has invigorated a substantial segment of the American populace.
His famous slogan, “Make America Great Again,” encapsulates his commitment to restore America’s standing both at home and internationally.
Stark Contrast
By contrast, the Biden administration’s tenure is often criticized for its lack of effective leadership and policy direction, which many argue has led to a decline in national prosperity and global standing. The transition from Biden to Trump is seen by many as a necessary shift to realign the country with its foundational principles.
As Trump prepares to assume office for the second time, expectations are immense. The Republican Congress is urged to vigorously support his agenda, which aims to dismantle the bureaucratic overreach and policy missteps of the past years. This collaboration is crucial as the nation faces ongoing threats to its freedom and sovereignty.
The legacy of Trump’s presidency, fraught with challenges but also filled with significant achievements, sets the stage for a pivotal era in American history. His leadership promises a return to principles that many Americans hold dear: individual liberty, economic prosperity, and a government that truly serves the people.
The full article provides a comprehensive discussion on these points and is available for those interested in a deeper exploration of Trump’s impact on America’s past and future. For more read the full article at Arbalest Quarrel.
About The Arbalest Quarrel:
Arbalest Group created `The Arbalest Quarrel’ website for a special purpose. That purpose is to educate the American public about recent Federal and State firearms control legislation. No other website, to our knowledge, provides as deep an analysis or as thorough an analysis. Arbalest Group offers this information free.
Bryan Bowers and his business partner, Mike Licata, planned to build medical office space across from a new hospital in downtown Utica, New York. The Oneida County Industrial Development Agency nixed that plan by agreeing to take the property so a competing business next door could use it for a parking lot — a land grab that a state appeals court approved last February.
The U.S. Supreme Court invited such abuses with its 2005 ruling in Kelo v. City of New London, which blessed the use of eminent domain to promote economic development by transferring property from one private owner to another. Bowers’ case offers the justices another chance to revisit that widely criticized decision, which endangered property rights by letting government officials reassign them to politically favored businesses.
The Institute for Justice, which represents Bowers, is asking the Supreme Court to clarify the limits of that license. Alternatively, it says, the court should overturn Kelo, which was “wrong the day it was decided.”
The Fifth Amendment imposes two restrictions on government takings of private property: They must be accompanied by “just compensation,” and they must be for “public use.” But in New York, the state appeals court noted, “what qualifies as a public purpose or public use is broadly defined as encompassing virtually any project that may confer upon the public a benefit, utility, or advantage.”
In this case, the court said, “the acquisition of the property will serve the public use of mitigating parking and traffic congestion.” That sort of reasoning, Bowers argues, is suspect even under Kelo.
Writing for the majority in Kelo, Justice John Paul Stevens emphasized that the condemnation of homes in the Fort Trumbull neighborhood of New London, Connecticut, was based on “a ‘carefully considered’ development plan” that supposedly would “create in excess of 1,000 jobs,” “increase tax and other revenues,” and “revitalize an economically distressed city” (none of which actually happened). In Bowers’ case, by contrast, OCIDA was not implementing a “development plan”; it was simply imposing its judgment that a parking lot was a better use for his property than the office building he planned to open.
Stevens said New London would not be “allowed to take property under the mere pretext of a public purpose, when its actual purpose was to bestow a private benefit.” But he noted that the city adopted its plan without knowing exactly which new owners would benefit from it.
“It is, of course, difficult to accuse the government of having taken A‘s property to benefit the private interests of B when the identity of B was unknown,” Stevens wrote. In Bowers’ case, by contrast, it is easy to accuse the government of doing precisely that, since the main beneficiary of its seizure, Central New York Cardiology, is a private business that stood to profit by restricting the supply of medical office space.
“Taking our property wasn’t for the public,” Bowers says. “It was to benefit our competitors.”
Dissenting in Kelo, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor warned that “all private property is now vulnerable to being taken and transferred to another private owner, so long as it might be upgraded — i.e., given to an owner who will use it in a way that the legislature deems more beneficial to the public — in the process.” That hazard could have been avoided, Justice Clarence Thomas said in a separate dissent, if the court had hewed to “the most natural reading” of “public use” — that “it allows the government to take property only if the government owns, or the public has the legal right to use, the property, as opposed to taking it for any public purpose or necessity whatsoever.”
In addition to Thomas, three other current members of the court — Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh — have indicated they favor curtailing Kelo or overturning it altogether. Given the nakedly protectionist nature of the Utica land grab, Bowers’ case seems like a good opportunity to do so.
Jacob Sullum is a senior editor at Reason magazine. Follow him on Twitter: @JacobSullum. During two decades in journalism, he has relentlessly skewered authoritarians of the left and the right, making the case for shrinking the realm of politics and expanding the realm of individual choice. Jacobs’ work appears here at AmmoLand News through a license with Creators Syndicate.
Dettelbach submitted his letter of resignation on Dec. 20th, 2024, and it becomes effective Jan. 18th, 2025, just two days before Trump is sworn in as the 47th U.S. President.
“That’s one less person Trump will have to fire after he takes office,” CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb observed, “and it is one less gun prohibition lobbyist on the government payroll.”
Since playing a key role in helping Trump win the November election, American gun owners and Second Amendment advocates have been urging him to make replacing Dettelbach a priority. Grassroots activists want an ATF chief who adheres to the Second Amendment, and who “can tell the difference between the good guys and genuine bad guys.
“We’re delighted to learn Dettelbach will be gone and that President Trump will be able to place someone in authority at ATF who can turn that agency around,” Gottlieb stated. “The country needs someone at the ATF helm who will lead the agency, not weaponize it; someone who not only can define what an ‘assault weapon’ is, but also understands what it is not.
“We are hopeful the next ATF director will straighten the record by telling Congress, the media and the gun prohibition lobby that modern semiautomatic rifles are not ‘weapons of war,’ and that there is not, and never was, a ‘gun show loophole,’” he added. “The next ATF director should know how to disassemble a pistol instead of trying to regulate it out of existence. He should lobby Congress for funds to revive restoration-of-rights procedures, and stop harassment of lawful, small business firearms retailers. He should be someone willing to visit a gun show rather than shut it down.
“For four years,” Gottlieb said, “the Biden-Harris administration has waged war on gun owners and the Second Amendment, with Dettelbach leading an ATF that helped make it happen.”
“The next ATF director must be someone who recognizes law-abiding gun owners as allies, not enemies in the fight against crime, which is a battle we all want to win.”
Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms
With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (www.ccrkba.org) is one of the nation’s premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States.
Things didn’t work out so well for tyrants and their enablers the last time they tried to disarm the people and rule them against their will. (Battle of Lexington, William Barnes Wallen, 1910-National Army Museum)
“Congress has the power to block Trump from taking office, but lawmakers must act now,” opinion contributors to The Hill, Evan A. Davis and David M. Schulte, assert in a Thursday screed advocating the representatives of the people ignore the will of the people expressed in the November election, both electorally and popularly.
Their reason?
“Disqualification is based on insurrection against the Constitution and not the government. The evidence of Donald Trump’s engaging in such insurrection is overwhelming.”
What “evidence”? They provide three examples, curiously concluding in each:
[T]he trial in the Senate…failed to reach the two-thirds vote required for removal from office…
[T]he U.S. Supreme Court… held that states lack power to disqualify candidates for federal office and … did not address the finding that Trump had engaged in insurrection.
The inescapable conclusion of this evidence [from the “House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol”] is that Trump engaged in insurrection against the Constitution.
After more “if”-filled ramblings long on wishful thinking and short on settled law, we get to their end game:
If all (Count Act House) votes for Trump were not counted, Kamala Harris would be elected president.
So, just have career politicians overturn 77,297,721 popular votes…? This from supporters of a party that calls requiring Voter ID racist voter disenfranchisement…?
These guys are top lawyers? Try top Democrat lawyers. Who want to overturn the will of the people if the vote doesn’t go their way… But when you are part of the Big Club, why should you care about what those who aren’t in it want?
The Hill criticized for op-ed urging Congress to block Trump from taking office: ‘You people are sick’
Some of us would use a different word.
Among other things, Schulte is “an Obama supporter and investment banker with Chicago ties [and] the Guy Who Owns the Obamas’ Vineyard Rental.” He’s also, per Michelle Malkin, a “vulture capitalist” who has “happily embraced the nickname “grave dancer…”
You know, from the party of the workin’ man.
Davis is another long-time transparent apparatchik, heading a Richard Nixon impeachment task force, serving as then New York Governor Mario Cuomo’s counsel, and “A candidate for the Democratic nomination for Attorney General in 1998.” And he’s shown us one of the strategies he would like to impose that would be necessary for his latest bright idea:
“The law treats dangerous dogs more carefully than assault-style rifles,” he shrieked in another rant published by The Hill showing just how delusional Democrat legal influencers can be. “There’s an opening for gun control here — one that can be pursued in court, rather than Congress.”
Yeah, he went there. What a dope. One who wants to unlawfully invalidate our votes and to unlawfully disarm us. Correction: Have others do it for him.
At least he and his partner in subversion are not so detached they think there’s a chance of Congress seating Harris, but that’s because self-serving politicos are first and foremost survivors who, for the most part, know that would start a civil war with the most heavily armed (and extremely peaceable without justifiable provocation) civilian population on the planet. And if they actually believe January 6 was an “insurrection,” wait ‘til they see the response their little plot would bring.
Still, you gotta wonder: If they believe Donald Trump telling the crowd on Jan. 6, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard,” was his marching order to riot and hang Mike Pence, how much culpability will Davis and Schulte share with other Democrat rabble rousers if Trump is prevented from taking office or prevented from serving by those who heed their words?
It sure sounds like “seditious conspiracy” to me, but I guess that would have to be decided by the victors…
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
On December 28, an armed robber entered a Mini Mart & Tobacco store in Chesterfield County, South Carolina. The robber put a gun to the clerk’s head. The clerk accessed his own gun. The clerk shot the robber, killing him before the robber could kill him. The Sheriff’s office responded quickly, investigated the scene, and watched video from the store.
On December 28, 2024 at 8:47 pm, the Chesterfield County Sheriff’s Office responded to an Armed Robbery at the Hwy. 9 Mini Mart & Tobacco store located at 28495 Hwy. 9 in Pageland. Upon arrival, deputies discovered a deceased black male with gunshot wounds. The store clerk gave a statement that the black male had entered the store and put a gun to his head and demanded money. The clerk then produced his own handgun and fired multiple shots at the robber. This was confirmed by the store surveillance video obtained and reviewed by Chesterfield County Sheriff’s Office Investigators. The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) was called to process the crime scene.
Sheriff Cambo Streater would like to remind the citizens of Chesterfield County, that South Carolina law states “A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in another place where he has a right to be, including, his place of business, has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force, if he reasonably believes it is necessary to prevent death or great bodily injury to himself or another person or to prevent the commission of a violent crime.”
Sheriff Streater strongly supports the rights of our citizens to protect themselves.
Based on the above facts, and after consulting with the 4th Circuit Solicitor’s Office, no charges will be filed in this case.
This case was investigated by the Chesterfield County Sheriff’s Office, the Chesterfield County Coroner’s Office and SLED.
The case, the investigation, and Sheriff Cambo Streater’s quick release of a statement in South Carolina exemplify how digital technology is changing and improving responses to crime. The speed of the investigation and the decision not to charge the clerk were possible because of the video evidence. The outcome is far different from cases where a victim may wait for weeks or months to know what will happen while investigators re-create the scene, do forensic analysis, and leave the victim in doubt about legal jeopardy.
When someone has been killed in a violent encounter, investigating officers should not blindly accept the account of a person who claims to be the victim. Careful analysis is called for. Video can immediately answer obvious questions. Did the deceased actually put a gun to the head of the clerk? Does the video confirm the account of the clerk?
The video of the encounter should be released to the public. This removes doubt about the incident and stifles rumors. As of this writing, the video in this incident has not been released. Trust in law enforcement can be enhanced by public access to video evidence.
Video can mislead as well as enlighten, especially if the video has been edited. Video editing has been used to mislead the public. The Rodney King case is a classic example.
About Dean Weingarten:
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of Constitutional Carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
