Atlanta Mayor Bottoms: Open Carry Partly to Blame for Rise in City Shootings — ‘We Don’t Have Probable Cause to Stop Them’

Friday on “MSNBC Live,” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D) weighed in on the recent surge in shootings in her city.

Host Stephanie Ruhle noted that shootings in Atlanta are up 124% and asked Bottoms, “What is going on?”

Bottoms explained that the shooting violence is “happening across the country” and is a combination of a “lack of access to healthcare,” unemployment, coronavirus and injustices seen across the country. She then added that Georgia is an “open carry state,” which allows people to “walk down the streets with assault weapons” without being stopped for probable cause.

“What’s happening in Atlanta is what’s happening across the country. There is a combination of things,” Bottoms replied. “There are … these systemic issues, including lack of access to healthcare, including people being unemployed, people are dying of COVID-19. We witness the injustices that have happened in front of our eyes, and it’s boiling over into our streets. It’s happening in Atlanta. It’s happening across the country.”

“The irony of it is that our overall crime rate is down by 18%. But in Georgia, an open carry state, people are allowed to walk down the streets with assault weapons and we don’t have probable cause to stop them,” she continued. “You don’t get to pick and choose which demographic you get to stop and question as to why they are walking in our streets with open weapons. It is an issue in Atlanta. It’s an issue in other cities across this nation, and it is one that we take very seriously. But this notion that somehow the governor is helping us with law and order is false. He has military tanks in front of state buildings. … This is a play out of the Nixon playbook: distract, talk about law and order when the reality is that people are dying of COVID-19, and this president and this governor have failed us.”

Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent