When The Media Doesn’t Understand Facts of Gun Laws

Most of us aren’t lawyers. Most of us never even considered a career in the legal field. I thought about it, personally, for about five minutes, but decided I didn’t want to have to go to law school. Probably a good thing since I didn’t finish college and went into the Navy instead.

Regardless, because we’re not lawyers, we’re unlikely to really understand all the nuances in the law. I probably have a better grasp of it than most laymen, at least on things like gun control and adjacent matters, but I freely admit I probably get a fair bit wrong on that front.

But the media that likes to latch onto things and make a huge deal out of gun-related stories? They know even less, and here’s a prime example out of South Carolina.

South Carolina’s Holy City was abuzz this week after a trio of young men were found on the roof of a College of Charleston parking garage – allegedly passed out in a vehicle loaded to the gills with guns and ammunition.

The incident unfolded at approximately 2:40 a.m. EDT on Sunday (June 1, 2025) on the roof of the Saint Philip Street parking garage in downtown Charleston, S.C. After observing a suspicious vehicle on surveillance footage, officers with the college’s public safety department approached it and encountered three individuals – Jorge Antonio Calvario, A’tavious Sincere Flowers and J’marri Aisian McCall – unconscious inside the car.

Multiple automatic weapons and handguns were discovered on their persons – along with a massive cache of ammunition. Specifically, police recovered three dozen rounds and three magazines of 10mm ammunition, 14 rounds of .45 caliber ACP (Automatic Colt Pistol) ammunition, 184 rounds of .300 ammunition and five 7.62mm rifle magazines.

The trio was, definitionally, “loaded for bear.”

Upon removing the three men from the vehicle – a process which occurred without incident – responding officers noted all three were “unsteady on their feet” and had “red, glassy eyes and the odor of alcoholic beverage emanating from their breath.”

After placing the three men in custody, campus police attempted to charge them with a violation of S.C. Code of Laws § 16-23-420 – which prohibits the possession of “a firearm of any kind on any premises or property owned, operated, or controlled by a private or public school, college, university, technical college, other post-secondary institution.”

When these charges were taken to Charleston County magistrate Mary Paige Adams, however, she conferred with fellow magistrate Amanda Haselden and a decision was made not to sign arrest warrants on this charge – and to release the three men from police custody.

To read mainstream media accounts, this decision by Adams and Haseldon lacked any rational justification – or explanation. In fact, reporters with The (Charleston, S.C.) Post and Courier specifically called Adams out for refusing to return their calls seeking “the reasoning behind her refusal to approve the swearing of arrest warrants.”

Never mind that judges are not allowed to speak with members of the media, meaning Adams couldn’t provide “the reasoning” for her decision even if she wanted to.

Public outrage predictably – and on the surface, appropriately – followed. Charleston residents were up in arms over the apparent miscarriage of justice and subsequent endangerment of their community.

There’s just one problem. 

See, there are exceptions carved into that particular bit of South Carolina law as to who actually can carry lawfully on a college campus. That includes the military.

All three men are active-duty Army. They fall into the exception.

Yet the media tried to fuel the outrage, tried to pretend the judge was afraid to answer tough questions, and basically failed to actually look at the law in question before stirring up the crap storm.

Now, was this the kind of exception the lawmakers who passed the law intended? Probably not. They were probably thinking of it in the context of the military performing some lawful duty on the campus.

It doesn’t matter, though. The law is the law, and this was most definitely the right call.

And here’s the kicker, at least in my mind: This isn’t some legal nuance. The law is explicit. Just a phone call to the DA’s office likely would have helped them clarify that no, there’s nothing shady or underhanded going on here.

Let’s also be real here, these guys were drunk off their butts. They were sleeping it off, and while they clearly drove there and thus committed some kind of DUI, the mere presence of guns isn’t an indication they were up to anything. They had a handful of firearms and a number of magazines, which I’m assuming were loaded based on the context, but guns aren’t illegal. Nothing they possessed was illegal under South Carolina law.

That’s why there was no arrest warrant signed.

But instead of just saying, “Hey, you can’t sleep here,” people freaked out because there’s hysteria around firearms. If anyone is found with guns, for some reason, it’s alarming when it shouldn’t be. That’s probably a bigger problem here, and the media is most definitely responsible for that, too.