Man Legally Stalks Children's Baseball Game: 'I've Got A Gun & There's Nothing You Can Do About It'

[Xithras]

26. "'See my gun? Look, I got a gun and there's nothing you can do about it.'"

I have a CCW. I can carry a handgun anywhere I want in the state of California. What if I walked up to a stranger and started saying "I have a gun. It's under my jacket and there is nothing you can do about it. I have a gun right next to your kids and it is perfectly legal. I have a gun, does that make you nervous?"

The gun is actually irrelevant to menacing charges. Menacing charges can be filed when you deliberately stoke peoples fears and lead them to believe that you are about to commit a crime, even when you don't actually have any intention of committing the crime. This guy created an atmosphere of fear, deliberately, and with the intent to be disruptive. He could have had a rock and it would have been "menacing". The gun is simply the tool he had when he committed the crime.

When I went through my CCW class, we spent several hours simply discussing the various legal situations that people need to be aware of when they're armed. Menacing was one of the topics we spent a bit of time on, because it's something that has bit a lot of CCW holders...many have mistakenly believe that "intimidation" is legal if you don't directly threaten or pull the weapon. Simply displaying its presence in an attempt to intimidate others qualifies as menacing in California and many other states (it's also an automatic CCW revocation in most California counties).