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NOTE on update to this article on 5/11/20: This article was originally published last year (2019) but is being republished because anti-gunners are up to their usual tricks (such as harrasment) in order to force businesses to adapt policies that ban open carry.
Their mission is to get open carry banned to use it as a success of their own organization:
Below is an example of the dirty tactics these people will use to get their way.
On 9/7, Patrick Korellis (a survivor of the 2008 NIU school shooting who became a well known activist) stated he saw someone “with a gun on their belt” at a JoAnn Fabrics store. After the intial tweet was sent out, he tagged Moms Demand Action and their leader, Shannon Watts.
This in turn lead Shannon Watts to send out a few tweets of her own, which rallied the troops of her organization and their supporters.
JoAnn’s was getting hit left and right with threats of boycotts and customers stating they were done shopping there until they jumped on the “open carry ban” train. Patrick started a national outrage. There’s just one major problem: Patrick is from Illinois:
Illinois doesn’t allow open carry in public:
Patrick was confronted about this from various posters on twitter and he then locked his account (and later deleted it fully):
Since he deleted his account, his original comment that JoAnn Fabrics responded to has disappeared (very first photo in the article).
In the past, Patrick has had the ear of politicians, including Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-IL14)
One of the questions being asked was “was he not in Illinois at the time, perhaps in an open carry state?”
According to a Facebook post (roughly an hour before his claim), he had linked this (Chicago weather):
After that got out, he locked his Facebook account down, until the next day or so, which is when he plugged a book he’s featured in (and one in which part of the proceeds go to gun control organizations).
As for the organizations that will benefit, well.....
He was confronted about his JoAnn Fabrics statement by someone linking the article that started it (found here):
He blocked the individual (erasing comment) and changed his profile name (perhaps attempting to hide from those that don‘t “follow” him?). His post remained active though:
Another poster commented w/link:
He then blocked them and made his account private yet again, having this book plug dissapear from public view.
An interesting fact is that the book he is advertising was released on 9/3, which is just days prior to his tweet about JoAnn Fabrics.
Is it possible that he created a fake incident to get his supporters (gun control advocates) in a frenzy on purpose in order to push a book release? We have yet to hear an answer for that or for where/when he was at the time he claimed to see an open carrier at a fabric store in Illinois. One thing seems certain: This has the stench of a hoax.