It's An NRA World

Act like a jerk in a Black Friday crowd, get punched, draw your weapon...and if you live in Texas, you get to go home.

A shopper who brandished a handgun during a Black Friday scuffle at South Park Mall was within his rights, according to San Antonio police.

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Salame reportedly showed proof that he had a concealed handgun license, and he told officers that he pulled the gun out to defend himself because he was punched in the face by Alejandro Alex, 35. Salame, who did not fire the weapon, said he feared further injury by Alex.

The store had opened its doors to Black Friday shoppers about an hour before the incident, which occurred as crowds packed into the store.

Witnesses reportedly told police that Salme had behaved rudely that morning and had provoked the situation before pulling the handgun and pointing it at Alex, though San Antonio Police Sgt. Rob Carey said at the scene of the incident that he had actually pointed it at the ground.

Roger Rivera, who was shopping in the Sears, said Salame was punched then pulled a gun. Everyone scattered, "tumbling over things, dropping boxes," Rivera said. The man who was trying to cut in line ran and hid behind a refrigerator before he fled the store.

"It kind of went a little crazy in there," Carey said.

Rivera told his kids to get down. While everyone was panicking, the man with the gun stood there, he said, and looked around, lowering the weapon.

The exact same thing would have happened in Florida, of course, as Stand Your Ground would have applied in this situation.

So here's the drill. Act like an asshat, bully or hothead until someone gets sick of your BS and then when that someone decides to address the situation, pull out your firearm and do your best Clint Eastwood imitation. It's a reaction totally and completely protected by Stand Your Ground and the Republican Party.

Right-wing legislators probably never imagined that their kowtowing to the NRA would ever embolden the knuckleheads among us but, as the above shows us, it has.

It's the price each one of us pays every single day for our paranoid neighbor's gun fetish and our legislator's hunger for milk from the gun industry's wonderfully prodigious teat.





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