Tampa Bay Times13%
In viral gun video, Tampa Bay is the Wild West | Column 72%
By Stephanie Hayes88%
7/24/2026, 10:00:01 AM
Keywords: Viral Gun Video, Florida, Car Wash, Gulfport, Charles Hoffman, Race, Gun Culture, Stand Your Ground
BS Summary: This article contains 29 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Hasty Generalization, and Appeal to Emotion, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 28.4% saturation with 227 hits. Analysis detected 1,521 faulty-reasoning hits from 799 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 64.2% and a BS Rank of 72% (6,235 of 21,886 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 71.50% of the article peer group.
Plenty of Florida gun owners know that pulling firearms on strangers who aren’t threatening anyone is, well, nuts.
But this state has romanticized gun culture, open carry, Stand Your Ground and the ethos of cold, dead hands.
In that environment, it is no surprise to find some people hungry for the frontier, those who would sooner settle disagreements on a dirt road at sundown.
They can’t evolve.
They can’t slow down.
They can’t harness fear.
They can’t help but terrorize.
And law enforcement is willing to stutter around the language of the law to avoid punishing these self-styled Doc Hollidays.
At whose expense?
The newest addition to Tampa Bay’s canon of shameful viral videos involves Charles Hoffman, who approached three men canvassing a neighborhood near Gulfport in June.
The men were looking to wash windows and detail cars.
Per their accounts to Tampa Bay Times reporter Natanya Friedheim , they had been trying to work with honest intentions.
Giovonnie Lenhart, Santiago Salinas and Alekos Speaker, all between 18 and 20, avoided homes with “no soliciting” signs or empty driveways.
Hoffman suspected they were casing houses.
He demanded they show ID and took out his gun, which he admitted was ready to shoot.
The men, two Black and one Hispanic, handled themselves tremendously, trying to calm Hoffman and even compliment him.
A bystander named Patrick K’Maur deserves credit for helping defuse the situation.
The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office decided Hoffman did not break Florida law, that he acted inappropriately, not illegally.
The law states that a person can’t brandish a weapon in a “rude, careless, angry or threatening manner, not in necessary self-defense.”
Here’s what he said with a gun in hand:
“I can tell you’re checking out the homes.
I want to know why.
If you want to f--- with people on this street, you’ve got the wrong f---ing street.
You got me?
There are a lot of f---ing guns on this street.”
Not rude, careless, angry or threatening at all.
Hoffman said the men seemed suspicious because of how they parked and because they didn’t go to every house, including his.
That’s right, we have entered a bizarro world where it’s legally sound to pull a gun on people who are not on your property.
To touch on the point about their methods, sales involves all kinds of flexibility.
In 2022, Times reporter Christopher Spata dove into the world of door-to-door solar sales .
He found a fascinating calculus in which the angle of a car, the length of a lawn, the condition of a roof all conveyed information.
Was the decision-maker home?
Was the homeowner analytical?
Would they be likely to listen?
To be sure, most people are annoyed by door-to-door salespeople.
No one wants to see someone standing on the porch with a clipboard.
But even the crankiest crank has to admit there’s a certain throwback, all-American spirit to what the men in this case were doing.
These entrepreneurs got out there, bootstraps and all, working to promote their business, 2 Clean Whips.
They showed printed fliers and took time to explain an app they use, all under the threat of a gun.
There is only one last conclusion to draw.
That’s the elephant in the room.
Hoffman, who is white, denied being racist.
“And believe me, it’s got nothing to do with color,” he offered before anyone else brought it up.
In elementary school, we used to call that “you smelt it, you dealt it.”
But even if he’s sincere, it doesn’t matter.
This moment was about race, about the snap-judgment tragedies permeating so many streets.
If the guys here were, say, white college students offering to do chores for money, would their actions be “suspicious”?
If they were not Black and Hispanic, would they have been expected to handle themselves in a calm, generous manner, calling their aggressor “sir”?
Would they have needed to apologize, to soothe the one uttering expletives and holding a gun?
The country has watched in horror as people of color are murdered for daring to participate in American life, to go for a run, to walk home with candy, to sit in their own apartments, to speak up for themselves, to run a business, to exist in the myriad ways white people don’t think about twice.
This day in June ended without injury, but it’s not because state lawmakers or local police prioritized the men’s wellbeing or justice.
It’s because these young entrepreneurs did what they had to do to get home safe in a world where that right, time and time again, has been unequally guaranteed.
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