Adding to recent weeks’ increasingly pervasive “holy shit, cops are monsters!” narrative is a recent resurfacing of the case of Dennis Krauss. Krauss was a police officer who, after having his gun taken away due to the fact that he allegedly threatened to anally rape a woman with it while he was in the process of responding to a domestic violence call placed by aforementioned woman, has finally had his gundick handed back to him by the state of Georgia. I’m armpit farting the Star Spangled Banner right now.
Ian Millhiser of Think Progress outlines the extent of allegations against ex-Officer Krauss, which includes beating a prisoner so badly that his brain bled, coercing more than 10 women into sex acts with him in exchange for avoiding arrest, and trying to extort a man into letting officer Krauss sleep with the man’s wife by threatening the man with arrest (pattern noticed!). But it was his conviction for this instance of sexually assaulting a person in custody that led to Krauss losing his precious, precious gun:
Krauss asked the victim to ride with him in his police car. Once she was in his car, “Krauss told the victim that he could take her to jail if he wanted to” or, if she did not want to be arrested, she could have sex with him instead. Krauss’ words, according to the court opinion, were “[w]e can go to the motel or you can go to jail.”
At the motel, Krauss drew his service weapon and told the woman that he wanted to anally penetrate her with the gun. When she refused, and began to cry, “Krauss then pushed her back, pulled off her pants, and had sex with her.” And then he drove her home to the same husband that led her to call the police in the first place.At the motel, Krauss drew his service weapon and told the woman that he wanted to anally penetrate her with the gun. When she refused, and began to cry, “Krauss then pushed her back, pulled off her pants, and had sex with her.” And then he drove her home to the same husband that led her to call the police in the first place.
Despite this, in 2013, Krauss got his gun back. Lord knows what he’s done with it since.
Krauss is a violent felon, the quintessential “bad guy with a gun” that the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre promised good guys with guns would use their gun magic to stop. But in Georgia, the state with some of the most cartoonishly permissive gun laws in the country, it seems that almost every guy with a gun constitutes a good guy with a gun in the eye of the law. The state has restored gun ownership rights to a total of 358 violent felons over the last 6 years. Forty-four of them had committed sexual assault.
Somehow, this doesn’t seem like something the Founding Fathers intended.
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