Stupid Lib author

Posted on: July 24, 2025 at 10:14:23 CT

Concealed carry is legal in Louisiana and does not require a permit...

so NO!! The cops can't stop and search you and your belongings because they suspect you are doing something that is legal.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/a-court-just-ruled-cops-can-t-stop-and-frisk-you-if-they-suspect-a-gun/ar-AA1JcY8i?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=f2c0a8f4460b4543a84a63cca21d567e&ei=25

The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is well known as the most extremist Republican court in the entire country. The circuit oversees Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, and it’s a big reason those states consistently lead the nation in bigotry and cruelty. The Fifth Circuit is so reactionary that even the extremist Republicans on the Supreme Court have tried to reign them in. This past term, the Supreme court heard 13 cases from the Fifth Circuit, and reversed the circuit in 10 of them.

The occasional rebukes do not slow the circuit’s roll, however. It is home to a number of judges—Stuart Kyle Duncan, James Ho, and Andy Oldham to name a few—who all see themselves as Supreme Court justices some day. And those guys know that the way to get promoted in Federalist Society and MAGA judicial circles is to keep throwing out insane legal theories and bigoted opinions until the white-wing supremacy machine recognizes their contributions.

Indeed, I try not to write about Fifth Circuit opinions very much, because I know that, when people like me get angry at what they’re doing, it reads as those judges “owning the libs,” and that’s the only currency that matters in MAGAland. But they dropped an opinion last week that is so drenched in violent, racist hypocrisy that I can’t ignore it.

The Fifth Circuit announced that the cops cannot stop and frisk a person if they suspect you have a gun but made it pretty clear they can still stop and frisk you for existing while Black. Reading it made me feel like I had ingested a hallucinogen and was having a very bad trip into white boy Wonderland.

The case is called U.S. v. Wilson and it involves the stop-and-frisk of a Louisiana man named Damion Wilson. (Neither the judicial record, nor basic Google searches, reveal Wilson’s race. I’m going to assume he’s Black, but your mileage may vary.) Wilson was stopped by Deputy U.S. Marshall Michael Atkins after Atkins observed “a bulge in [Wilson’s] waist.” Atkins believed it to be a “hard object”… like, perhaps, a gun.

Wilson was stopped and did indeed have an unlicensed firearm. Marshall Atkins wanted to talk to Wilson about a federal fugitive he was looking for. Wilson denied knowing his whereabouts, a statement that was probably false. After that, local police arrested Wilson for carrying an unlicensed firearm, searched the backpack he was carrying, found drugs in the backpack, and charged him with that too. Then they obtained a search warrant for Wilson’s apartment, found more drugs there, and charged him with more crimes. In all, Wilson was indicted and convicted on four criminal counts, including the gun charge, lying to a federal officer, and various drug charges.

Wilson moved to have all evidence against him suppressed and his convictions thrown out. He argued that officers violated his constitutional rights when they stopped him merely on suspicion of having a gun. Wilson argued that possession of a concealed firearm is not, by itself, enough to create a “reasonable suspicion” of criminal activity or give the cops “probable cause” to execute a stop-and-frisk.

Writing for a majority panel of Fifth Circuit Judges, Andy Oldham agreed. But if you think that means the conservatives were just going to let this man just walk away free, you don’t know the kind of law they do down on the Fifth Circuit.

Oldham writes: “The mere fact that a citizen carries a firearm does not create reasonable suspicion that he committed a crime.” This statement is outrageous. Damion Wilson was subjected to a “Terry stop,” which is lawyer jargon for a “stop and frisk,” because the authority for cops to harass and molest you comes from a 1968 Supreme Court case named Terry v. Ohio. In Terry, the thing the defendant did to create “reasonable suspicion” was walking—back and forth—in front of a store. Cops thought he was “casing the joint” and stopped him for questioning. According to Oldham, we’re living in a world where loitering outside of a store is enough for the cops to stop you, but carrying a concealed firearm is not.

And don’t even get me started on all the other reasons courts have invented to allow cops to stop people since Terry. I don’t want to spend the next year of my life on this paragraph. Courts have regularly ruled that “acting nervous” or “looking over your shoulder” or “being present in a high crime area” or “talking to other people who are suspected criminals” is enough to warrant a stop. And, of course, it’s far more likely that “acting nervous while Black” will earn you a stop and frisk than “looking over your shoulder while white.”