The Media Nom­i­nates Their New George Floyd

Last year, a man in his mid-20’s named Dex­ter Reed was charged with three counts of aggra­vat­ed unlaw­ful use of a weapon and one count of pos­ses­sion of a firearm with a revoked “Firearms Own­ers Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Card,” which is required in the state of Illi­nois before you can pos­sess a weapon or ammu­ni­tion. Because no one real­ly spends time in jail in Illi­nois any­more, Reed was free on pre­tri­al release for these felony charges as recent­ly as this past March.
It goes with­out say­ing that at that point, any func­tion­ing mem­ber of soci­ety who some­how found him­self charged with these crimes would try to lay low for a bit. Maybe they’d keep their ille­gal guns at home, for exam­ple. But Dex­ter Reed did not choose that approach because he’s not a func­tion­ing mem­ber of soci­ety. Instead, in March, Reed went for a dri­ve in an SUV wear­ing a ski mask and car­ry­ing a firearm. 
That’s wh …