So a teenager without a license or insurance rams into the back of a guy's car. The teenager starts to flee the scene, and the guy takes his gun (fully permitted, and he'd been carrying for 28 years) and fires one shot into the air. The teen stops, and the guy holds him there until police arrive. Police don't arrest the teen -- they arrest the guy, for "pointing a firearm," a Class D felony. Ten months later, a jury acquits the guy, and, under state law, he was supposed to get his gun and license back. But the state won't give him either. The guy had pulled his gun once before, four years earlier:
According to a Noble County Sheriff's report, Grimes was driving on County Road 400S on Jan. 17, 2004 when he was rear-ended by a vehicle driven by Carl Liggett. “Grimes advised that Liggett was instigating a fight,” the report stated. “Grimes advised that he did have a gun in his hand which he removed from the glove box. Grimes advised that he did not point the gun at Liggett.”
The prosecutor and sheriff contend, and an administrative law judge agreed, that the two incidents together prove the guy is not a reasonable person "to have a license to carry a firearm - something state law also seems to allow under certain conditions. In this case, Shelton concluded, Grimes was not justified to fire his weapon, 'displayed an inappropriate suspicion of others' and had 'demonstrated a propensity for violence and emotionally unstable conduct.' " He pulled his gun twice in nearly 30 years of carrying, and no one was hurt either time, and that demonstrates a "propensity for violence"? In both incidents, he was rammed from behind, and in one case the other driver was fleeing the scene, and that means "inappropriate suspicion of others"?
We all need to be reasonable about guns and the efforts to keep them out of the hands of those who shouldn't have them. But on the surface, this seems awfully thin. Maybe the sheriff and prosecutor know more about this man than they're saying -- like he's a well-known hothead or something, If you have to spend $20,000 (the guy's legal bills so far) when you exercise a right, it isn't much of a right.
