Man claims harassment by police after bringing AR-15 into airport
If Webster's dictionary needed any finer definition of “gun nut,” they need look no further than Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, where Cold-Blooded 'Merican Jim Cooley created some hubbub after bringing his AR-15 semi-automatic rifle with him to drop off his wife and daughter last week.
This being Georgia, a state passed an open carry gun law last year, Cooley is actually perfectly within his rights so long as he doesn’t try to pass through the TSA-controlled secure areas at the airport.
When police officers questioned him about his firearm, Cooley responded that he needed it for "safety." Unable to legally detain him, police had to let him proceed through the airport, where he was stopped several more times and followed into the parking lot. For posterity (and his daughter’s clear embarrassment), he recorded the incidents and posted them to YouTube.
“You’re not even allowed to ask me,” Cooley tells the officer who quite politely (too politely, in my eyes, for a semi-automatic rifle) asks what’s going on. “I’ve never seen someone walking around with a gun inside the airport,” the officer continues (with a chuckle). “What you need to go do is read the policy.” Cooley responds...cooly.
Subsequent encounters follow the same basic format, again with the weirdly polite tone you might use when bringing a neighbor a fresh baked pie.
As for other people’s safety, Cooley cares little. “You got quite a few people afraid,” another officer tells him, “because calls are just coming in left and right.” To that, he merely states, “people's fear are not my responsibility.”
Taking names and badge numbers of the officers, who followed him into the parking lot, the argument goes on. “It’s a shame when people are performing legal acts,” Cooley tells the cops before walking away, “and then you just want to harass them. That’s not the law, that’s not the Constitution.”
Come to think of it, the incident could serve as the definition of a few other words for Webster's, too.