Out-Of-Control Cops Recorded Busting Hiker for Non-Existent Firearms Offense

Fascinating record of official stupidity

I just got off the phone with Army Master Sergeant C. J. Grisham, a serving American soldier and veteran of the the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, who recently was illegally disarmed by the Temple Police Department while out for a walk with his son.

"We live out in the country in Texas, near Temple," he told me. "My son and I were on a ten-mile hike so that he could earn his hiking merit badge – it's the last badge he needs to become an Eagle Scout." But half way into the hike, Grisham said, "a police officer pulled up." Initially, he was "cordial" and he "asked what we were doing." Grisham told him. "Then he looked at my rifle. I carry a rifle any time I walk around because there are feral hogs and cougars and things like that."

From here, things took a turn for the worse.

"'Where you going with that rifle?' he asked me. I said, 'does it matter? Am I breaking any laws?'" Then, he says, the officer "grabbed the rifle without telling me – but it was attached to me. My immediate reaction as a combat veteran was to grab it back and then take a step back. I asked him what he was doing. So he pulled his gun on me.

(H/T Otis B. Driftwood)