I forget the details of the arrest, but there are plenty of reasons possessing a gun is illegal. Don't immediately assume he was innocent and rule out the possibilities that concealment laws or registration laws didn't come into play. Maybe he didn't violate any laws after all, but that wasn't his defense so it seems irrelevant to the topic.
I am not being smug or judgemental, and I wouldn't have batted an eye or cared in the least, if he hadn't tried to play the racism card. Maybe it's foolish of me, but let me try to illustrate with a more extreme example.
Suppose a black man was to commit some heinous crime, and we had irrefutable proof he was completely guilty (just suppose, bear with me). Normally, he'd be tried and put away. But what if this black man's defense was 'well, I was being profiled- if it wasn't for the stereotype that blacks are more violent and commit more crimes, I wouldn't have been caught so clearly this is unfair. I should go free.'
IMHO, you can file complaints and suits and get all the damages you like for being unfairly profiled, and I'll generally back you up, but as soon as you're guilty of what they profiled you for, you loose all my support and earn my disgust. He may be right, maybe through racism we catch more guilty blacks than whites or something, but either way the hypothetical man is guilty. The way to fix that flaw is not let him go but start catching the whites too.
re: double standards and corrupt law enforcement, I'll give you that.
A) There's two issues here: whether the incident was racism, and whether the retelling you gave was, due to the assumptions it carried. I was addressing the latter.
B) Of course you were being judgemental; the entire point was to communicate your judgement of the situation as a flagrant race card play. Smug is in the eye of the beholder; I'm certain it wasn't intentional.
C) Re: hypo. It can be true that he is guilty and that he was persecuted due to racism at the same time. Not mutually exclusive; just as in another situation someone fully guilty may be proven so by an illegal search. Its up to the courts to decide whether the violation of equality would prevent a conviction. (Currently: racism no; illegal search yes.)
D) Would you hold the same position if the crime was possession of a recreational amount of marijuana?
I am not being smug or judgemental, and I wouldn't have batted an eye or cared in the least, if he hadn't tried to play the racism card. Maybe it's foolish of me, but let me try to illustrate with a more extreme example.
Suppose a black man was to commit some heinous crime, and we had irrefutable proof he was completely guilty (just suppose, bear with me). Normally, he'd be tried and put away. But what if this black man's defense was 'well, I was being profiled- if it wasn't for the stereotype that blacks are more violent and commit more crimes, I wouldn't have been caught so clearly this is unfair. I should go free.'
IMHO, you can file complaints and suits and get all the damages you like for being unfairly profiled, and I'll generally back you up, but as soon as you're guilty of what they profiled you for, you loose all my support and earn my disgust. He may be right, maybe through racism we catch more guilty blacks than whites or something, but either way the hypothetical man is guilty. The way to fix that flaw is not let him go but start catching the whites too.
re: double standards and corrupt law enforcement, I'll give you that.