According to Firearm Chronicles
Jackson, Mississippi Mayor Chokwe Lumumba is quickly finding himself without many allies over his edict banning the open carrying of firearms in the city during its declared state of emergency. On Tuesday, the city council unanimously approved a resolution opposing the mayor’s actions, and on Wednesday the council took the step of hiring an attorney to represent them in a federal lawsuit filed over the ban.
Now the U.S. Attorney for southern Mississippi, Mike Hurst, has taken to the pages of the Clarion-Ledger newspaper to absolutely obliterate Lumumba’s argument about the supposed need to for his extraordinary and unconstitutional action.
It is false for the mayor to say that many of the killings in Jackson could have been avoided if people would not have had a right to openly carry firearms in Mississippi. Our office works closely with the Jackson Police Department, and I have not seen a single case where a killing in Jackson could have been prevented if open carry rights had been revoked. The mayor’s illegal order will only disarm law-abiding citizens and result in more victims.
Despite his statement to the contrary, the mayor also knows full well, as a former criminal defense attorney, that the right to openly carry firearms is not interfering with law enforcement taking criminals off the street.
For over 50 years, the U.S. Supreme Court has authorized law enforcement to stop a person and investigate whether a crime has been committed based on a reasonable suspicion, a much lower standard than the probable cause standard mentioned by the mayor. Nothing prevents a police officer from asking questions of anyone, even with no basis for suspecting a crime has been committed.