Police State

Laws, Redux

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.

By Divemedic, ago

I’ve Been Thinking

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.

By Divemedic, ago

They Have Chosen

The police have chosen sides. They want the left to be in control. I can no longer support the police. I know what many of you are saying: “I have a friend who is a cop, and he is a good guy.”

To that I ask you: “Imagine that you were the man who was walking down this sidewalk in front of a protest and were being harassed by these leftist idiots, just like in the video below. The cops came up to you and were plainly taking the side of the leftists. You tell those cops to get lost and one of them arrests you for stalking and assaulting the protesters. Your friend the cop then approaches. Whose side will he choose? Yours? Or his fellow officers?”

Watch this and see how the cop, who is following the guy and saw the entire incident, takes the side of the leftists. Then see how the other cops arrive and immediately defer to the first cop’s judgment. That is how it ALWAYS works.

I promise you that he will choose to support the other cops 100% of the time. He will protect his pension, his job, and support the blue wall over those who think that they are his friends. Cops do not go against other cops, mostly because they want to protect their jobs and pensions.

The only exception to this is if the aggrieved party is a part of the protected minority class, and there is a public lynching in progress by the left. (Ask Derek Chauvin how much he was supported by his “brothers in blue.”)

By Divemedic, ago

What Are They Good For?

The police didn’t save lives in Uvalde, because that isn’t their job. For those of us who are part of the Second Amendment family, that comes as no surprise. Ever since the riots of 2020, the rest of the US has been learning to face that reality.

The “thin blue line” does not, as cops would have you believe, separate society from violent chaos. The US Supreme Court has made it clear that law enforcement agencies are not required to provide protection to the citizens who are forced to pay the police for their “services.”

Still, we are told there is a “social contract” between the government on one hand, and tax paying citizens on the other. By the very nature of being a contract, we are led to believe that this is a two-way street. The taxpayers are required to submit to a virtual government monopoly on force and pay taxes.

In return, we are told, government agents will provide services. In the case of police agencies, these services are summed up by the phrase “to protect and serve,” a motto that is printed on the sides of police vehicles.

But what happens when those police agencies don’t protect and serve? That is, what happens when one party in this alleged social contract doesn’t keep up its end of the bargain? The Supreme court says, “not a damned thing.”

In the cases DeShaney vs. Winnebago and Town of Castle Rock vs. Gonzales, the supreme court ruled that police agencies are not obligated to provide protection to citizens. In other words, police are well within their rights to pick and choose when to intervene to protect the lives and property of others, even when a threat is apparent. This reality does belie the often-made claim, however, that police agencies deserve the tax money and obedience of local citizens because the agencies “keep us safe.”

As the public is discovering, we are our own protection. In school shooting after school shooting, it has been illustrated that the police are not going to do shit when someone is slaughtering children. That isn’t why the police are there.

Police spend most of their time on activities on non-criminal in nature. During each police shift, police officers spend their time thusly:

  • 27 percent on random patrol
  • 20 percent on non-criminal calls for service
  • 13 percent on administrative tasks
  • 11 percent on traffic enforcement
  • 9 percent on breaks and other personal time
  • 7 percent on property crimes
  • 6 percent on miscellaneous crime
  • 4 percent on violent crime
  • 3 percent dealing with the public, providing assistance or information, and attending community meetings.

The police rarely solve crimes. Only 11% of crimes in the US result in an arrest, and only 1 in 4 arrests result in prosecution and conviction. It’s called clearance rate, and shows that most crimes go unpunished. (pdf alert)

As you can see, police do a good job solving murders, which results in an 81% arrest rate. They do a horrible job with all other crime.

They don’t prevent crime. They don’t solve many crimes. They don’t protect you when you are a victim. This is why I won’t give up my guns. Ever.

By Divemedic, ago

National Licensing

Democrats are proposing a license issued by the DOJ in order to purchase, possess, or obtain a firearm. In order to get this license, you would need to be at least 21 years old, pass a written and practical exam, be fingerprinted, and prove your identity.

Can you imagine of Republicans initiated a similar plan for voting registration, obtaining an abortion, or receiving welfare?

Not only is this unconstitutional, but I will not obey. This merely lets the feds know where all of the firearms are for when the confiscations begin. Nope. Not now, not ever.

By Divemedic, ago

The Only Winning Move

The left is using the shooting in New York and is going to come at us with every gun control move that they have. There is nothing that they love as much as pools of blood that they can joyously dance in while they call for more control that everyone knows will not work.

  • You could counter their arguments by pointing out that the US, despite having more guns in private hands than the rest of the world combined, still has fewer homicides than half of the nations in the world.
  • You could argue that, even in nations where guns are banned, suicide rates are much higher than the US. The US has a combined suicide/homicide rate of 16.6 per 100,000 while South Korea, where firearms are virtually illegal, has a rate of 29.8. Canada, where there is severe gun control and handguns are virtually illegal: 18.3 per 100,000.
  • You could argue that the US counts all deaths where one person kills another as homicides, while some countries like Australia only counts a death as a homicide if someone is arrested and charged for the killing. Unsolved murders don’t count. Murders where the killer is already dead don’t count. This skews the statistics.
  • You could also argue that population density has a larger correlation to homicide and suicide rates than does gun ownership.

At one point or another, we have all made each of these arguments in gun control debates. They are based upon logic and facts, and backed with scores of studies and mountains of statistical evidence.

And they are always ignored.

The left bases its arguments on emotion and catchphrases. The don’t care about science, don’t care about evidence, unless it is convenient to do so in support of their position. All other facts are ignored. Arguing something like this is a waste of time. I know, because I have wasted my time like this for decades.

As they say in War Games, the only winning move is not to play. So don’t.

I will not turn in my guns. Just in case you feel that confiscating them is the answer and you send the cops over to take them, there are two outcomes of that plan.

  1. You will lose a lot of cops. Eventually, the cops will stop taking the chance.
  2. You won’t get anywhere near all of the guns

So my answer to gun laws is this: No.

Your move.

By Divemedic, ago

Poor Tactics

A SWAT team driving around in an unmarked van was taking random potshots at people on the street with rubber bullets.

Someone fires a shot or two in return, then immediately surrenders when he sees that they are cops. The cops swarm him.

It turns out that the group of people that the cops were shooting at were the business owner and some employees who were protecting the business from looters.

For over an hour, those cops had been driving around, randomly shooting at pedestrians they saw on the street. In the officer’s bodycam footage, officers armed with less-lethal launchers can be seen crowded in an unmarked, white cargo van. The van was equipped with police lights but the officers didn’t use them. As cops can be heard explaining, the van was the lead vehicle in a caravan of other, marked cars, and the cops wanted to use that stealth to their advantage. At one point an officer in the van asks for the trailing patrol cars to stay far behind “so we can… utilize 40s.”

Advance to 41 seconds. The man had already surrendered when the cops came up and began kicking, punching him, and slamming his head into the pavement. They fractured his eye socket. The officer doing the beating, Officer Stetson, wrote in his report that he struck Stallings to gain control of him, even though he was flat on the ground and not moving, and claimed Stallings wasn’t complying. The video shows that to be a lie.

The man, Jaleel Stallings, was charged with eight felonies, including attempted second degree murder of a LEO and first degree assault. Despite the large amounts of mitigating video evidence in the case, the charging attorney still wanted to throw the book at him, asking him to plead guilty to counts carrying 13 years in prison. Instead, he demanded a jury trial and was acquitted of all charges by the jury. He used self defense as his defense, and it worked.

His lawyer has since released the video showing that the cops went hunting that night. They even planned it out, and all of it was caught on their bodycams.

Discussing it while driving around, one supervisor said, “We’re going hunting. Fuck these people.”

During their “patrol” their bodycams even revealed them slashing people’s tires:

One of the officers admitted in court during the trial: “We went out that evening and concealed our presence so people wouldn’t flee and we’d be able to get close enough to shoot them… and we were actually having fun shooting them”

This behavior is indefensible. The cops here were just plain wrong, and were worse than the rioters that were burning the city.

I count no fewer than ten cops in a relatively small box. They are either engaged in beating up and cuffing the one suspect, or milling around while not really paying attention to their surroundings.

These are the actions of people who don’t really think that there is a threat.

Now imagine that the people they are abusing are mad enough to fight back. Imagine that the people who are fighting back have some military experience.

For those of you familiar with ambushes: What could a four man fire support element do if they were in an overwatch position 100 yards or so away and this was a planned ambush? How hard would it be to lure police into a kill box and then overwhelm them with large amounts of fire before disengaging and disappearing before the cops could organize an effective counter?

The police need to be very careful to stop treating the citizens they are sworn to protect as if they were the enemy, because the citizens might just eventually begin acting like it.

By Divemedic, ago

Cop Cars Have the Best Drugs

A sheriff’s office volunteer was caught selling drugs from his marked patrol vehicle.

This isn’t anything new. When I was in high school some 40 years ago, there was an Orange county deputy who used to sit in his patrol car on International Drive just south of Sand Lake Road, right there where it became a dirt road. He used to sell drugs out of his patrol car. Everyone knew he had good stuff, because it had been tested by the police drug lab.

By Divemedic, ago

TSA Agent Lies About Robbery

A TSA agent made a habit out of being late for work. To excuse her latest tardiness, 34 year old Taleta Collier concocted an elaborate story about a man with a knife who tried to rob her. Collier told her supervisor she was visiting her parents’ home when a man armed with a knife attempted to burglarize their vehicle. She said she drew her agency-issued weapon and aimed it at the suspect, causing him to flee.

It isn’t every day that a Federal law enforcement officer has to draw their weapon in the line of duty, so her supervisor requested the Polk Sheriff case number, and the TSA agent provided one. She even texted her supervisor a screenshot of a document that appeared to be a police report.  It was soon discovered that the report number was fake, and now the loser is facing criminal charges.

The TSA has been a disaster from the start. All this agency is, is a jobs program for morons who would otherwise be collecting welfare. I can’t believe that we give idiots like this a badge, a gun, and real authority.

The list goes on and on.

By Divemedic, ago