FL Black Man Beat Up for Lawfully Carrying Gun: Zero Con Outrage

One thing you get used to in Florida in recent years is seeing people with guns walking around. Admittedly, they are mostly out-of-shape white dudes. However, this week, a 62-year old black man walked into Walmart. A white, middle-aged man saw the black man and spotted a holstered gun. He freaked out and screamed "He's got a gun!", then proceeded to tackle him. The white man punched him, held him down, then put him in a chokehold--all the while thinking he was a hero.

Problem was the old black man, Mr. Clarence Daniels, had a permit, as he repeatedly screamed as he was being choked by Mr. Michael Foster. The poor guy was just trying to buy coffee creamer.

Now just imagine if the races were reversed here. Imagine if an elderly white man with a gun was tackled by a black man. Two likely outcomes:

1. This would be a huge story on Fox News with many talking heads warning our 2nd amendment rights were in danger,
2. More hysteria from conservative media about black "thugs", and
3. Most likely, the black guy would have been killed.

Of course, since the guy who committed the assault was white and the law-abiding citizen was black, I haven't heard one peep about this from conservative media. No condemnation of the attack, and no outrage from gun nut groups. After all, Mr. Foster was only reacting to the minority hysteria that they all generate about scary black people. No chance if he was your typical fat, white redneck that he would have been tackled and choked.

Florida has the highest number of concealed weapons permits in the nation. Rick Scott and Adam Putnam held a celebratory press conference when Florida became the first in the nation to surpass one million. It was one day before the Sandy Hook massacre.

I'm all for a law-abiding citizen to own a handgun, but this should disprove the NRA talking about that walking around with one automatically makes you safe. In this case, the "bad guy", Mr. Foster, was able to wrest it away from Mr. Daniels pretty easily. If I was the victim here, I'd give serious consideration to pepper-spray instead.

This could have ended in mortal tragedy very quickly. If the victim was a lot quicker, he could have killed Mr. Foster; or, Mr. Daniels could have been killed by Mr. Foster by his own gun--both cases would have been legal under Florida's Stand Your Ground law since both could claim they feared the other.

Of course, in those hypothetical scenarios, my money wouldn't be on the white guy going to jail.