CCW laws "completely insane": Canton City Council President rails against Americans upset about cop's behavior on dash cam video

by Chad D. Baus

Perhaps now we know why police officer Daniel Harless thought it was acceptable behavior to unleash his violent, profanity-laced tirade on a concealed handgun license-holder in Canton, Ohio, saying "People like you don't deserve to @#$%#$ move throughout public. Period!" before threatening to murder the CHL-holder.

Canton City Council President Allen Schulman has unleashed his own version of that same tirade against law-abiding concealed handgun license-holders. After explaining that he would not be making any comments about the deplorable behavior of Harless, which were exposed on the dash cam video that has been seen across the country, Schulman said this:

"I did want to make a comment, uh, reflecting the out of town emails that we have all received from people who do not live in this community, do not know out police, do not know the firefighters, do not know our public servants, our employees, know nothing about the City of Canton. But because a video went viral on the Internet they're excu - excoriating the City of Canton out of this particular incident. And they're excoriating our police force, its conduct, and our city. I take very strong exception to what I've read, uh, what I've heard, from out-of-towners, uh, making comments about our city.

"This is, in my judgement, a symptom of this arming, literally the arming of our population, with handguns, and the flooding of handguns into our communities."

Got that? Allen Schulman believes the violence and profanity-laced tirade from one of his city's police officers, who told a CHL-holder he "shoulda taken two steps back, pulled my Glock 40, and just put ten bullets in your ass and let you drop" is the fault of the Second Amendment, and not the angry cop.

It goes downhill from there:

Um, the - these laws that allow our citizens to carry a concealed weapon at a university, in a school, in a bar where liquor is served, in automobiles in the worst part of our, uh, neighborhoods, whether it's high crime, drugs, prostitution, and somebody is packing a Ruger at 1:30 in the morning? That's not acceptable in our society. And I told one caller who called me from Phoenix, Arizona yesterday, who complained abour our police and this particular incident, I said to him 'You want to know something, my friend? You can blame our city, but you're next. Because as long as these laws permit people to carry weapons under the worst of circumstances, and in the worst situations, there is, there are deaths waiting to happen - either police officers or citizens who think by arming themselves they're somehow safe. So my only remarks tonight are designed to those out of town people who are complaining about our police department and our city. Believe me, if you allow the kind of carry and conceal weapons laws that are in existence in Ohio and are all over the United States you're gonna have the same problems over and over again, and death will result.

Amazingly, despite his admission the "high crime" streets of Canton present the "worst of circumstances" and "worst situations" to his constituents, Schulman opposes the legal exercise of the right to bear arms for self-defense, a right specifically recognized in the Ohio Constitution, which says "The people have the right to bear arms for their defense and security."

By threatening that "you're next," and saying the "same problems are going to happen over and over again," Schulman apparently believes that people who chose to exercise their right to bear arms for self-defense all over the country should expect the type of treatment the CHL-holder in his city received on June 8, when Officer Harless yelled "I should blast you in the mouth right now...I'm so close to caving in your head." Schulman seems to be alleging that unless we abolish the right to bear arms for self-defense, "deaths will result" because rogue cops will shoot CHLs just because they have a gun.

His tirade concluded with this:

"Finally, just for those people who are going to say that I am against guns: I am not against weapons, I am not against handguns, I am not against people that hunt with weapons. But we all should believe in common sense, reasonable gun control laws that don't allow this kind of thing to happen at 1:30 in the morning in a crime-ridden neighborhood with prositution and drugs, when we sit every week and listen to our citizens step forward saying 'we want to be protected.' We, we are being protected. And I know the police department, the safety director and the mayor will investigate this throughly, and that's one of the benefits of having a video that allows our citizens to have some transparency as to what happens in these stops. But these laws are completely insane."

According to Allen Schulman, gun control is all that is needed to prevent police officers like Daniel Harless from threatening to "pull [my gun] and stick it to your head," and saying that had he actually followed through on what he "shoulda done", he would have "executed" the CHL-holder "because you are stupid." Got that?

According to The Canton Repository, Schulman has only received about 100 emails on the subject so far. I have no doubt that number is about to grow exponentially.

Contact information for the Canton City Council is available here.

Listen to Schulman's remarks here:

Chad D. Baus is the Buckeye Firearms Association Vice Chairman.