Dyer said there will be access checkpoints on Friday and Saturday evenings downtown to limit how people can enter the downtown area. The city said patrons will have to go through metal detectors and a weapons check at these checkpoints before walking into the access areas.
I believe that this zone is a clear violation of Florida’s preemption law. What’s more is that violating this law places Orlando and any of its officials at risk of a lawsuit. Even more, since the quote in this news article shows that the mayor knew it was illegal to do so, he becomes liable to any taxpayer whose rights are violated.
If any county, city, town, or other local government violates this section, the court shall declare the improper ordinance, regulation, or rule invalid and issue a permanent injunction against the local government prohibiting it from enforcing such ordinance, regulation, or rule. It is no defense that in enacting the ordinance, regulation, or rule the local government was acting in good faith or upon advice of counsel. If the court determines that a violation was knowing and willful, the court shall assess a civil fine of up to $5,000 against the elected or appointed local government official or officials or administrative agency head under whose jurisdiction the violation occurred.
So my question here is this: Are there any pro gun organizations who are willing to take this on?
People ask why a person needs an AR-15. The Uvalde shooting is a great illustration as to why. Dozens of police were in fear of a single loser with an AR-15, but have no problem harassing an unarmed mother who is telling the truth about their cowardice.
Perhaps if she had an AR-15, they would leave her alone, too.
On a side note, this is why I have security cameras. To catch wrongdoing. The videos of cops parking outside of my house and flashing the lights at me would look great in the courtroom when I sued them.
semiautomatic rifles that have the capacity to use a magazine that isn’t a fixed magazine, and any one of the following:
a pistol grip,
a forward grip,
folding, telescoping, or detachable stock.
a barrel shroud,
a threaded barrel,
a “functional grenade launcher.”
Or a semiautomatic rifle that has a fixed magazine with the capacity to accept more than 10 rounds, except for an attached tubular device designed to accept, and capable of operating only with, .22 caliber rimfire ammunition.
any semiautomatic pistol that has the capacity to use a magazine that isn’t a fixed magazine, and any one of the following:
a threaded barrel
a second pistol grip (these are already NFA weapons. I don’t know what effect this law will have)
a barrel shroud
the capacity for inserting the magazine anywhere outside of the pistol grip (such as the CZ Scorpion and other PDWs)
if it looks like a machine gun
weighs more than 50 ounces (this is obviously aimed at AR pistols)
a Stabilizing brace
a buffer tube (again, aimed at AR pistols)
The tax will also apply to any ammunition magazine, belt, drum, etc. that holds more than 10 rounds of ammo, but specifically excludes fixed tubular .22LR magazines.
Plus a bunch of other stuff. Then it goes on to charge the tax on any of the frames, parts of the firearms covered, and parts of magazines. This is, in effect, a ban most firearms and their parts by taxing them into oblivion. Essentially the same thing that happened with the NFA. The only firearms that seem exempt are bolt, lever action, and rimfire.
Imagine a basic AR-15 that costs $11,000 and using $110 magazines.
Since it is a tax, the Senate doesn’t even have to vote on it. It can be passed through budget reconciliation.
It was always obvious to me that military tactics, training, and weaponry had little place in civilian policing. The goal of the military is to overwhelm enemies, regardless of whether any particular individual on the other side “deserves” to be overwhelmed. It seems clear that police should not approach fellow citizens, rights-bearers, with the same attitude.
The article goes on:
So much of this turns out to be LARPing: half-trained, half-formed kids playing soldier in America’s streets and schools. Many of the thousands of SWAT-team members in this country don’t have the training and expertise to respond like they’re SEAL Team 6. It’s time to stop pretending that they do.
Read the entire article. It makes some great points. The money quote?
we have accepted a more and more militarized and aggressive police culture, with serious damage to basic constitutional liberties. What we got in return is 19 cops standing outside a classroom while children were slaughtered.
Sheriff John Mina, Orange County, Florida Was a Republican, now a Democrat
Chief Rick Braziel (retired), Sacramento, Calif. He was one of the law enforcement officers who publicly lobbied for registering ammunition sales in California.
Deputy Chief Gene Deisinger (retired), Virginia Tech, Va. He has been covering for bad policing since at least 2013: While this may be true, Deisinger said he is frustrated by the widespread criticism of law enforcement without providing any real alternatives. “One of my criticisms of North American culture is that we are really good at criticizing what somebody else did or failed to do,” Deisinger said.
Director of Public Safety Frank Fernandez (retired), Coral Gables, Fla. He has been involved in the gun control movement for most of the last decade: “An 18-year-old with an AK-47 and an AR-15 is completely unreasonable,” said Frank Fernandez, director of public safety in Coral Gables, Florida, and the chairman of the International Association of Chiefs of Police’s firearms committee. “That is a weapon that is meant for destruction. It’s not a weapon that you can use to go hunting. That is a weapon … used in the theater of war.”
Albert Guarnieri, FBI Unit Chief. This is the only panelist I couldn’t find a thing on.
Major Mark Lomax (retired), Pennsylvania State Police, Pa. While campaigning for Sheriff of Bucks county as a Democrat, his position on guns was: While he supports the Second Amendment, he believes strongly in licensing and training and sees on need for assault weapons such as AR-15s.
April Naturale, Assistant Vice President, Vibrant Emotional Health This woman is everywhere. She claims to specialize in traumatic stress. She has responded to the war in Ukraine, she was involved with the Feds, the UN, and COVID-19 (pdf warning), the shootings in San Bernardino, Sandy Hook, Hurricane Katrina, and numerous other mass shooting events. It’s like she goes everywhere there is a tragedy that was exploited by the left.
Ignorance of the law, the judges and cops are fond of saying, is no excuse. In 1925, this is what a complete copy of all Federal laws looked like:
That one volume represents all of the laws that were passed by Congress in the first 150 years of this country’s existence. That Federal Law library has now expanded immensely.
What was one volume in 1925 expanded to become 22 volumes just 90 years later. Here is a picture of one of the 53 titles of the United States Code:
The number of federal crimes you could commit as of 2007 (the last year they were tallied) was about 4,450, a 50% increase since just 1980. About 600 crimes a year are added to the Federal Code, so we should be somewhere near 14,000 Federal crimes in the US Code by now.
A comparative handful of those crimes are “malum in se”—bad in themselves, which include things like rape, murder, or theft. The rest are “malum prohibitum”—crimes because the government disapproves, such as owning a machine gun made after 1986, when owning one made in 1985 is perfectly legal.
In 1982, the Justice Department tried to determine the total number of criminal laws. In a project that lasted two years, the Department compiled a list of approximately 3,000 criminal offenses. This effort, headed by Ronald Gainer, a Justice Department official, is considered the most exhaustive attempt to count the number of federal criminal laws. In a Wall Street Journal article about this project, “this effort came as part of a long and ultimately failed campaign to persuade Congress to revise the criminal code, which by the 1980s was scattered among 50 titles and 23,000 pages of federal law.” Or as Mr. Gainer characterized this fruitless project: “[y]ou will have died and [been] resurrected three times,” and still not have an answer to this question. (There are 53 titles now.)
So you see, even the Justice Department of the US government is not sure of how many laws there are, yet each and every one of us is responsible for knowing every one of them, along with the court cases that modify and define them, upon penalty of prison: “Ignorance of the law is no excuse.”
All of that pales in comparison to the regulations. Congress isn’t the only body that passes laws. There are also several dozen Federal bureaus, who have had the power to write laws since 1940. The laws that they write are called regulations, and they are found in the Code of Federal Regulations.
The laws passed by Congress are just the beginning. In 2018, the Code of Federal Regulations numbered over 250,000 pages. Only a fraction of those pages involved regulations based on something spelled out in legislation. If a regulatory agency comes after you, forget about juries, proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, disinterested judges and other rights that are part of due process in ordinary courts. The “administrative courts” through which the regulatory agencies impose their will are run by the regulatory agencies themselves, much as if the police department could make up its own laws and then employ its own prosecutors, judges and courts of appeals.
The result of all of this is that each and every one of us is responsible for reading, understanding and following over one million pages of laws, regulations, and court decisions- with complete understanding. If one were to begin studying these laws at age 12 by reading 50 pages per day, by age 67 you would have read all of them. The only problem is that, at the current rate, the government would have added another 500,000 pages of laws and 28 years of reading to your quest while you were busy reading.
There are nearly 1.7 million regulatory crimes that a person can commit in this country as of 2020.
Remember, though: Ignorance of the law is no excuse. If you are spraying insect killer on some ants using a bug spray that says spray from 6 inches away, but you spray from 8 inches, you are a Federal criminal. If you are buying a gun and you live in Florida, you had better use the abbreviation of FL as your address, because using the old abbreviation of FLA is a felony and can land you in prison.
Why is this happening? Ayn Rand gives us an insight into this:
The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.
Truer words were never spoken. More laws equals more crimes, which equals more criminals, which equals more power for those enforcing the laws.
There is only one destination for the path we are on: tyranny, enslavement, and the complete control of everything. That will eventually lead to revolution. Whether or not that will happen in my productive lifetime is anyone’s guess.
I asked a couple of days ago why they were making such a big deal about the police not doing their jobs. I was wondering what the end game was, and I think I have it. They are following the Alinsky “Rules for Radicals” and the CIA insurgency manual. If you are unfamiliar with them, I did a three part series on them back in 2020. You can find part one here, part two here, and part three is here.
When an attempted overthrow of a government is in the works, one of the things that needs to happen is a loss of trust in the government’s ability to run things and provide needed services to its citizens. They do this by using violence and mayhem to both make the citizens feel unsafe, and to sabotage infrastructure so that people are crying out for basic services.
Once the people don’t trust the government to do that job any more, they turn to the revolutionaries to do it for them, and the revolutionaries step in and “fix” the problem that they themselves created. I think we are seeing a variation of that. The left already hates the local and state police. Now all they have to do is get the right on board.
American Greatness thinks that this is exactly what is happening to the police, and I can’t say that I disagree with them. That is no way means that I am going to support cops who stand around and arrest parents while children are being murdered, but I see what is happening.
