A man standing near a Maryland school bus stop with an AR-15 has made a lot of people very upset. He didn’t do anything except stand there with a gun.

Despite that, or rather because of it, he’s been the subject of a lot of criticism. We’ve all seen it, of course, including some suggesting that his mere existence in that place and time constitutes a threat.

The latest is the governor condemning the man in question.

Maryland’s governor is condemning a man who says he was protesting gun control laws by openly carrying an assault rifle near school bus stops in Anne Arundel County. Law enforcement says the man was not breaking any laws.

The man said he was “just showing people it’s legal.”

A spokesperson for Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, said the man’s actions scared children and “won’t help make Maryland safe.”

“To stem the tide of gun violence and create safer, stronger communities, we need partnership – not shallow acts of cowardice and intimidation,”press secretary Carter Elliott IV told CNN in an email Monday.

“Scaring our kids and threatening our communities won’t help make Maryland safe,” he continued. “The governor won’t allow these tactics to stop his administration from taking common-sense steps to protect our communities. He condemns this behavior and will keep fighting to build a safer Maryland.”

I’m sure he’s all heartbroken that the governor doesn’t like him very much.

Now, I’m not a fan of these kinds of protests, mostly because it detracts from the actual issue. No one is talking about concealed carry in Maryland now, just this dude with an AR-15.

The discussion becomes about the gun, not the issue.

That said, no one is required to agree with me. Free speech means protesting in whatever way one thinks is best so long as no one is being hurt.

Contrary to what the governor’s spokesman claims, no one was threatened, much less hurt. That means this is a perfectly valid protest.

Oddly, while he wrote a book about the riots that gripped Baltimore in the wake of the death of Freddie Gray, he didn’t seem interested in condemning them when speaking with the press.

But a guy standing there doing nothing? Yeah, that’s truly the problem.

Gov. Wes Moore can condemn law-abiding Americans engaging in protected speech if he wants. However, what he’s saying by doing so is that the only speech that can be approved, no matter how actually violent, is left-leaning speech.

I suppose if he’d stood there with an AR-15 to protest something Moore approves of, the governor would take a different tone.

Maryland deserves better than that. They’re not going to get it, though, because the people haven’t realized they deserve better and, instead, vote for people like Moore.

It’s downright pathetic that a governor would do anything like this, yet here we are. Welcome to 2023 where anti-gun lawmakers can do whatever they want and the media eats it up without question. After all, anything to advance the narrative.