Fairfax,
Virginia, resident and open-carry advocate Robert Dickens heard the
police siren and saw the lights, so he very carefully stopped his
motorcycle, locked his hands on his head and calmly waited for
instructions.
He said yes when an officer asked if he could remove a handgun from a
holster Dickens was wearing. He gave the same answer when the officer
asked to take temporary custody of a pocketknife he had in his pocket.
In the end, he’s thankful he’s still alive after an up-close and
personal encounter with “swatting,’ the practice of making a false
report of an on-going critical incident to prompt an emergency response.
“Wow, I could have been killed!” he wrote in a report on the Bearing
Arms website of an October incident in which officers from many police
units suddenly pulled up around him while he was riding his motorcycle
home from a couple of errands.
Such swatting incidents are becoming more common. They started out with
Internet gamers who would hide behind online personas and anonymous
names to report that their gaming opponent had a gun or had taken
hostages.
The response often is a full-scale SWAT team at the location, with guns
drawn and military vehicles at the ready. It’s even happened to actor
Clint Eastwood.
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