NBC’s Chicago PD exaggerates the danger to law-abiding concealed handgun permit holders
People may remember the Philando Castile case out of Minnesota in 2016. It is the only case that I know of where a police officer, Jeronimo Yanez with the St. Anthony police department, fatally shot a concealed handgun permit holder, Castile, who was black. The media acknowledged that This episode of Chicago PD mimics the events in that case, but it makes some critical changes in the story (Season 8, Episode 8, March 10, 2021).
It won’t be surprising if this is one of those television shows where gun control activists worked scriptwriters and producers to get across the anti-gun message they wanted — that nothing good ever comes from having a gun for protection. With over 20 million concealed handgun permit holders and people carrying concealed handguns legally for decades, this episode doesn’t give viewers a very representative view of the risks of carry permitted concealed handguns. It is just one in a series of episodes on TV where something always goes wrong for concealed handgun permit holders (see here and here).
Both Philando Castile and the young man shot in the TV episode are black. Both have concealed handgun permits. Police ordered both not to reach for their guns. But the big difference is that in the TV episode, the young man didn’t reach for his gun while Castile did disobey the officer’s orders. The TV episode also portrayed the young man as a very successful student at the University of Chicago, a top university.
While the jury acquitted Jeronimo Yanez on all counts, the officer in the TV show admits towards the end of the episode that he murdered the concealed handgun permit holder. Years after the Castile shooting, gun control activists, such as Shannon Watts with Michael Bloomberg’s Moms Demand, keep raising the Castile case to warn of the dangers for people, particularly blacks, to get concealed handgun permits.
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