The 14-year-old who was attacked by a phalanx of officialdom for wearing an NRA t-shirt in Logan, WV, Jared Marcum, has been vindicated yesterday with a complete dismissal of all charges.

Charlo Green, a feisty TV reporter who saw herself reporting on being thrown out of court and threatened with a contempt arrest by out-of-control judge Eric O’Briant for challenging an unconstitutional gag order for merely trying to report on the case, takes a well-earned victory lap at WOWK TV:

“I didn’t think it would go this far because honestly, I don’t see a problem with [the shirt], there shouldn’t be a problem with this,” Jared told WOWK on April 18, the day he was arrested.

While Jared didn’t see a problem with the shirt, neither did the Logan County School District, as it has publicly stated that Jared’s shirt did not violate the district’s dress code.

Yet, Jared’s refusal to change his shirt as demanded by Logan Middle School band Teacher David Burroway and his refusal to stop talking landed him in handcuffs facing an obstruction charge.

If O’Briant thought threats would get Green off the case, he miscalculated. (Her ambush-reporting  interview attempt of a sheepish, plump Logan cop is a model of the genre — she was never out of line, but made him look like a jackass, a position his department put him in, really). She and Jared weren’t looking for the role of civil-rights hero, but when it fell on them they both stepped up and bore it with grace.

Jared’s family’s attorney, Ben White, called it a victory for common sense and spoke of the prosecutors in conciliatory tones: after all, he still has to live in the one-party environment that characterizes Huntington politics. But he and Jared’s family do plan a civil suit for the school’s and the police’s brutal repression of Jared’s civil rights, which shocked the conscience of a nation.

The case united 2nd Amendment and 1st Amendment activists and civil libertarians, not for the first time, and not for the last. Americans are learning once again what happens if they don’t hang together, as Franklin advised so long ago.

Now all that remains for the good citizens of the area is to vote O’Briant and the prosecutors, Christopher White and Sabrina Deskins, into the Dreaded Private Sector. The anti-gun Democrats are all members of the anti-gun Manchin democratic machine, and all are elected to their offices, which they’re clearly unfit to hold. The anti-gun school teacher, Burroway, is probably unassailable: just one more example of the thugs, slugs and monsters protected by the public school tenure and union system.

One of Ms Green’s earlier reports on the dismissal is here, and any of her other reports on this case are worth reading.

Hat tip: Sebastian at Shall Not Be Infringed.

PS

If anyone from Jared’s family reads this, and if they and he would like, WeaponsMan.com would be pleased to sponsor him (i.e. pay) for a life membership in the NRA as our way of making the apology that West Virginia educators and politicians never will. We’re sorry they’re such jerks!

PPS

We never expected to write about gun law and policy and court cases and all that bumf here. We also never expected our rights to be under a well-funded, centrally orchestrated attack, either. In West-By-God-Virginia, even! The only possible response to such an assault is to fight back with the tools at hand. And fight we shall. We shall never surrender.

This entry was posted in Lord Love a Duck on by Hognose.

About Hognose

Former Special Forces 11B2S, later 18B, weapons man. (Also served in intelligence and operations jobs in SF).

3 thoughts on “Breaking: Charges for NRA T-Shirt dropped

Aesop

And yet another reporter and another 14-year old are both “radicalized” as the realization that the government is the problem, not the solution, is once again writ large in 20-foot tall letters on the side of city hall.

Their mottoes should be

“We’re the government. We never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”

and

“Gun Controllers: We’re not happy until you’re not happy.”

Tom Schultz

When more Americans wake up to the fact that the Bill of Rights is a package deal, the better off we all will be.

Y.

Gag order on reporting on a case?

Where does the judge believes he is? The UK?