Op-Ed: May I Be Frank?

By David Codrea
GUNS Magazine

I do not carry guns on planes, I carry two guns,” Jackson, Miss., Mayor Frank Melton told WLBT Channel 3 reporters, according to the Jackson Free Press, which related the mayor “admitting that he had carried a weapon on almost every commercial flight for years.”

“Melton has … been asked to no longer fly armed,” The Clarion Ledger attributed to “a federal transportation official.”

“Asked?”

Unauthorized carrying of firearms aboard commercial airliners is a federal felony. Would you or I be “asked”? And still unresolved is the issue of Melton traveling with two armed bodyguards, and why TSA could produce no evidence of their being trained and certified to carry weapons on planes.

...Then there’s the matter of Melton’s trip to Washington. Again, per The Clarion Ledger, “Melton posed as a police officer when he visited Capitol Hill in July … [and] was ‘presumed to be armed’… Melton was issued a security badge reserved for armed and on-duty law enforcement,” the report stated. “The badge, issued by Capitol Police, allows a law enforcement officer to go through security checkpoints without being searched.”

...And the Melton saga continues. Per the Associated Press, “in a deal with prosecutors that lets him stay in office and out of jail,” he “pleaded guilty to … two misdemeanors for carrying a weapon into a church and a park, and no contest to a reduced charge on what had been a felony count involving a gun on a university campus.

So why the focus on Frank Melton? Two reasons, really. First, there’s the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law. We’re all supposed to get the same treatment. Frank, as a government official, has been given a pass time and again on situations that would and have resulted in We the People doing prison time.

And then there’s this little matter of the Second Amendment. It’s not like Frank is asserting his right to keep and bear arms as a matter of Constitutional principle. He just wants his guns, and the hell with everybody else. You see, Frank is not only a member of Michael Bloomberg’s cabal of anti-gun mayors stumping for more citizen disarmament laws, but he also wrote an executive order to ban gun shows in Jackson, Miss., along with closing down gunshops...

Click here to read the entire op-ed at GunsMagazine.com.

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