The police officer smelled pot, investigated where the smell was coming from, and found, not only pot, but two illegal handguns.
He was absolutely right to arrest the people he thought were in violation of the law.
That's his job.
Ok, I know to some people pot and guns are darn near the devil, and I'm going to try to avoid being too non-sports with this but to address this we do that a little.
A: The amount of pot was something like half a gram. You know how small that amount is? The idea that a police officer could smell that from any distance away is laughable.That's the point, he couldn't actually smell it, he said it smelled it and that was pretense for a search. Does that excuse them having a plant? No, I suppose not, we made rules against owning plants, but am I really supposed to get worked up because they had a small amount of a plant? Not really...
B: Both guns were not "illegal" and from what I understand no laws were broken in acquiring either gun. Now I'm not entirely aware of all the rules in play here but it's certainly not illegal to own and transport a firearm. The main issue was one gun turned out to be stolen. Now, that gun was stolen from Baldwin County. Do you think Cam, who has no reason to ever be near there, actually went to Baldwin County and stole the gun? I don't, but he did purchase a stolen gun. He wasn't the one who stole it though and that's pertinent. I buy things from thrift stores sometimes, and how do I know who the original owner was? How do I know no one stole the stuff and dumped it there? How can I tell? I don't, but I bought and paid for it legally, if for any reason any second hand item I end up with turns out to be stolen it was through no fault of my own. By the way I'm not even getting into the fact that two guys that didn't play football for Alabama were let off without being arrested. That is very suspect.
Anyway, yes these guys broke rules and should be punished. However, to reiterate their only crime was that of possession. Of having something. Are we really going to condemn them on the basis not of harming anyone, not of participating in harming anyone, not of condoning someone, but for having stuff? C'mon...
They didn't break anyone's jaw in a bar, they didn't beat a helpless woman on the ground, they didn't knock out a female student at the university, they didn't rape a girl at the university, they didn't beat up their girlfriend, they didn't do any number of harmful acts other football players have done and basically gotten away with. It's sad if people can't draw the distinction between harming someone and not harming anyone, we get more worked up over stupid rules we make then actually doing things to other people. That's absurd.