The mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, announced an executive order suspending the state’s open carry law within the city limits during the coronavirus pandemic.
“I am given the discretion in the interest of public safety and welfare to issue such orders that are necessary for the protection of life and property,” Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said in a video statement. “In this moment of great distress and economic tension, it is important that we eliminate the ability for illegal weapons to inflict irreparable harm on our city.”
Lumumba said he has “no principal disagreement” with the Second Amendment but argued that all rights must be balanced by “reasonable regulations.”
“A right that protects illegal guns and puts more people in fear, a right that escalates conflict beyond the point of resolution, and a right that interferes with another person’s right to live is not a legitimate right to be maintained,” he said. “Your right to swing ends at my nose.”
“The open carry law interferes with law enforcement’s ability to take illegal guns off of the streets,” Lumumba continued.
The National Center for Health Statistics reports that since 2013, child deaths by firearms have increased 72% in the South.
“Many of these killings could have been avoided if we had state law that enabled us to better control the presence of firearms on our streets,” Lumumba said.
Statewide law in Mississippi allows for the open carrying of long guns in public without a permit or license. The statute prohibits, however, any person who has or is carrying a deadly weapon from exhibiting the weapon “in a rude, angry, or threatening manner in the presence of three or more persons.”
Gun sales in America have increased steadily since the beginning of the pandemic.
Lumumba called on state lawmakers to use the coronavirus pandemic as an opportunity to repeal Second Amendment laws, which he says puts Jacksonians and Mississippians everywhere in danger.
“While this order will only be in effect for a short period of time, I am calling on every Jackson resident and all state and local leaders to act in the interest of our innocent children,” he said. “How many babies do we have to bury to appease someone’s desire to open carry?”
