As one of the petitioners in the lawsuit, let me try to make this perfectly clear. Neither I, nor anyone else who has put their name on the lawsuit seeking to overturn Don VanMatre’s illegal appointment to the Board of Sweetwater County Commissioners, have any kind of personal agenda against Mr. VanMatre. We believe he is as much a victim of the illegal activities of Commissioners Delai-Boese and Walker as are the rest of the residents of Sweetwater County. The fact that he apparently knew before the meeting on December 30 that he was going to be appointed to replace the not yet resigned Commissioner Wonnacott in no way reflects upon either his integrity, or his judgment, regardless of the fact that as a former mayor of the County Seat he should have known that such decisions were required by Wyoming law to be made in public.

No, this lawsuit isn’t about Don VanMatre. This lawsuit is about the principle that, in our democratic republic, I absolutely refuse to be governed by someone that has no right to govern me. As the founders wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” If Don VanMatre gained his position through a violation of Wyoming law, then he does not have my consent to to govern. That is what the lawsuit it about.

When I first broke this story on December 21, nine days before it actually happened, I mistakenly wrote that the commissioners had the legal authority to make an immediate appointment and warned that it was likely to happen. I was wrong about their legal authority. While they were entitled under the loophole in W.S. §18-3-524 to make the appointment, I didn’t take into consideration Wyoming’s open meetings act, W.S. §16-4-403. Sadly, neither did they. I’m just a political hack. Commissioners Delai-Boese and Walker actually had the responsibility to govern. They are held to a higher standard and they should have known better.

The videos that I took of the December 30 meeting clearly show that both Commissioner Delai-Boese and Commissioner Walker knew beforehand that Commissioner Wonnacott was going to resign and had already made the decision to replace her with VanMatre. They both read from prepared statements. There was no discussion. The public was forbidden to comment. There was no consent of the governed.

VanMatre is way off the mark if he thinks this is all about him. That’s just arrogance. This is about us.

One of the fundamental issues that I have with today’s Republican Party is that we allow ourselves to be defined by liberals and the liberal press rather than defining ourselves. As a former county party chairman, I had to live with county and state by-laws that forbade party officials from endorsing candidates in the primaries. It never happened in my county, but the fact that I might have one day been forced to officially support a liberal candidate always festered in the back of my mind.

The problem is that the National Republican Party, together with state and local parties, spend more time, money and effort trying to include everyone in the “big tent” than they do standing by the core conservative values that should be guiding them. I can understand how easy it is to fall into the trap of believing the goal is to elect people with R’s at the end of their names. Obviously, without enough R’s the party loses majority control of government, but this ignores the reality that control by Republicans isn’t the real goal. The real goal is holding our nation true to the conservative principles by which it was created.

Talk Radio personality Andrew Wilkow likes to say, “Individual Patriot first. Conservative second. Republican third.” What he means is that it is our first duty to be individuals who support our country, that we can do that best by living and promoting our conservative principles, and that the Republican Party is the currently the best tool that we have to do it with. If the Republican Party ceases to be the best tool for that job, then we are left with a couple choices. We can throw out the tool and get a new one, or we can refurbish our current tool and make it work how it’s supposed to.

Throwing out the tool would mean abandoning the Republican Party altogether and forming or joining a third party. This is a difficult course to follow, but it isn’t unheard of. There have been several ruling political parties throughout our history including Democrat-Republicans (one party, not the same as todays), Federalists, Whigs, Democrats, Republicans and dozens of smaller parties that exist in smaller numbers around the nation. It might be rare in our national history for a new party to come out of obscurity and take power at the federal level, and it is a difficult proposition, but it’s not impossible.

Refurbishing the current tool is the more likely scenario and would mean bringing the Republican Party back into line with its historical conservative principles. In order to forward those principles, we need to elect conservative Republicans. Not liberal Republicans. Not moderate Republicans. Conservative Republicans. Conservatives must retake control of the Party at all levels — from local precincts, to the statewide parties, to the National Republican Party. To succeed, we will have to make a stand against mediocrity, and so called moderates, and refuse to vote for or fund candidates that don’t truly represent us, regardless of whether or not they registered as Republicans. The first battle we face is to get conservative candidates nominated in the primaries, and only then can we carry those candidates through to victory in the general elections. We have to make our voices be heard loud and clear, and not allow the biased liberal press agencies decide which candidates are going to win our support.

I think that conservatives will benefit most by using third parties to force change in the Republican Party. By selectively abandoning the Republican Party, conservatives can bring about enough pressure on party leaders to force them to rethink which candidates they will endorse and support in the future. By supporting independent and third party candidates that more accurately represent our conservative values and principles, as the people of New York’s 23rd Congressional district have done, we can send the GOP a message about what kind of candidates we will accept. Give us a real conservative candidate to support, and we will. Send us a wishy-washy liberal like Dede Scozzafava? We’re gone. If we do it consistently, each and every time, the Republican Party will figure out that they should only send us candidates that share our values. Anything else will be a waste of our time, their money, and an erosion of their power base.

By regaining control of our party, and only supporting candidates that we want to support, we can define the Republican Party ourselves instead of letting the liberals and the liberal press define it for us. If the Republican Party continues to allow the likes of Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe to carry our endorsement, then there is no reason for us to continue to be Republicans. We can throw our support behind a third party like New York’s State Conservative Party, or start a new one. If the Republican Party can retool, however, and show us that they can send us honest-to-goodness, conservative candidates, then we can continue to be part of the Grand Old Party. If we lose a few races in order to cement that position, then so be it. I would rather have a Democrat in office that we can challenge straight up in the next election than a sponge like Arlen Specter who sucks the party coffers dry, while voting with the Democrats anyway, and keeping the party from endorsing a real conservative candidate.

Conservatives are going to regain control of this country’s future and hold our country true to its conservative roots, regardless of the tools we use. The Republican Party just needs to decide whether it’s going to be the best tool for that job, or just a tool.

Plastic People

by Jeff Snyder
by Jeff Snyder

‘plas•tic’: . . . 5: capable of being deformed continuously and permanently in any direction without rupture” ~ mirriam.webster.com

Pierre Lemieux, a French Canadian, economist, professor, author, libertarian thorn in the flesh of the Canadian Leviathan, and a friend, has become a felon. Pierre refused to answer one of the questions on his application to renew his firearms license, and the licensing center refused to renew his license. He now faces the prospect of 10 years in prison for keeping firearms without a license.

I will tell you some of his story. At this stage you may be thinking that it’s going to be about gun control but, rest assured, it’s not. Too many see trees, only trees, everywhere they look, and never a forest. Every abuse, every injustice is singular, isolate, one more thing to be addressed, corrected or reformed – unfortunate, deplorable really, but circumscribed, in an arena separate from the rest of life, someone else’s problem, and someone else’s cause.

No, Pierre’s story is about what it means to be ruled, what it means to need permission from the state. And if you stop looking at trees and see the forest, then Pierre’s refusal to follow orders may pose a question for you: How far will you accommodate the state before you resist? Is there some limit to your ability to mold yourself to the state’s designs? At what point will the state cross a line within you, when what you are ordered to do is more than you will accept or bear, when you will say, “Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise”?

Or does no such line exist? Are you that final object of all the state’s labors, that Quintessential Being that the state expects, demands and needs you to be: a plastic person?

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In 1995 Canada passed an “Act Respecting Firearms and Other Weapons,” generally referred to simply as the “Firearms Act” or by its original bill number, C-68. At the time, Canada already had handgun registration. The Firearms Act created a long gun registry and a new firearm licensing authority, and required citizens to possess licenses to own firearms. The licenses are good for five years. Pierre registered his firearms, and submitted his first application for a firearms license in 1996, which was granted, his first application for renewal in 2001, which was granted, and his second request for renewal in 2007, which was denied.

Pierre believes that Canadians have the right to own firearms without government approval. In fact, he has written extensively on the subject to educate his fellow Canadians and to peaceably restore respect for this right. Nevertheless, like most people, Pierre complied with the registration and licensing scheme in order to keep what he loves and to live a “quiet life.” Unfortunately, despite his best efforts to comply, Pierre ran into his own personal limit with an impertinence in the license application that he simply could not abide, viz., question 6(d) of the license application, which asks:

“During the past two (2) years, have you experienced a divorce, a separation, a breakdown of a significant relationship, job loss or bankruptcy?”

The instructions to the application state that all personal history questions must be answered, and that “[I]f you answer YES to any of the questions . . . you MUST provide details on a second page. . . . If details are not provided, your application cannot be processed. A YES answer does not mean your application will be refused but it may lead to further examination.”

In each of 1996, 2001 and 2007, Pierre, waging what he describes as “a dignity battle” against the law, refused to answer this question, instead responding that “My love affairs are none of your business / Ça ne vous regarde pas.” In 2007, Pierre took the additional step of sending, by registered mail, a copy of his application, a cover letter and three pages of his book, Confessions d’un coureur des bois hors-la-loi, which chronicles his resistance against Canadian gun control laws, to the Prime Minister of Canada.

Two months after his license expired, having heard nothing from the licensing center, Pierre made a freedom of information request to find out the status of his application. Eventually, he received word that his license renewal was denied by reason of his failure to answer question 6(d). Pierre now owns firearms – registered firearms – in violation of the law, a crime punishable by 10 years in prison. On the webpage where he chronicles his resistance to the Canadian license law, Pierre wonders: ” Will I be the first Canadian to be jailed for refusing to tell the state about his love life? Not the last one, I fear.”

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If an activity is licensed by the state, then it is a privilege conferred and controlled by the state, and not a right. The conditions on which the privilege is conferred are matters of legislative or administrative grace; the person may not lawfully engage in the activity and is not affirmatively protected from state incursion simply by reason of being a person, as would be the case with an “individual right.” The Firearms Act empowered an agency with a mandate to create and administer a licensing program and vested very broad powers in the agency to establish the particulars of the program. The Act clearly establishes that ownership of firearms in Canada is a privilege conferred only upon those deemed worthy by satisfaction of conditions determined by the licensing authority.

Stop and consider for a moment this by method of “legislation.” The founding “law” simply directs a combined legislative/judicial/executive agency to create and enforce a program without bothering to prescribe the contents of the program or even any significant limits on the exercise of that “authority.” Instead, it vests the agency with very broad discretion to define and administer the program. This form of legislation is, historically, a favorite with advocates of gun control, but it is by no means atypical of modern law-making, and is often used to control all sorts of activities. For example, the act establishing the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States is in large part of this nature, being essentially a mandate to the agency to go forth and create clean air and water.

Consider what this type of “legislation” says about how truly, deeply, worried your “representatives” are about your lives. They cannot be troubled to precisely define the contents of the “laws” to which you will be subject, to define or circumscribe the conditions that may ultimately be imposed upon you or resultant burdens upon you and, therefore, do not limit how impertinent, overreaching or arbitrary they may become. Instead, the laws to which you will be subject largely or in significant part are devised by men and women who are not subject even to the minimum accountability of having to be re-elected to maintain office, who are protected from removal from office by civil service laws and who will never, ever be accountable to the innumerable citizens they harm for the harebrained regulations they impose. The legislators don’t have to make any of the difficult decisions, won’t be blamed for agency regulations that outrage the electorate, and it’s just fine with them if you have to incur significant costs in time, money and energy to bring actions in the courts to overturn the agency’s edicts, or to lobby the legislators to bring their administrative dogs to heel. There’s certainly no problem with more lobbying, it means more political contributions! The legislators dodge responsibility and accountability to the electorate, and position themselves as saviors who can remedy the abuses of the administrative agencies. An ideal system, really!

For reasons known only to it, the Canadian licensing bureau decided that it needs to know details about each applicant’s love life, job losses, and bankruptcies in order to determine whether to issue a firearms license. Doubtless many of us are dulled, if not numb, to the presumptions of wisdom and competence, and intrusiveness, of government agencies, but consider the god-like heights that the Canadian firearms licensing bureau claims as its own. The air is indeed rare there! It is going to make decisions whether to grant or deny a firearms license based on its evaluation of your love woes, job loss or bankruptcy!

“Provide details,” it commands. Assuming you can get past the monumental presumptuousness that demands that you submit, as a matter of official record, intimate details about your life to be mulled over by some police official, really, how does one respond to that? What level of detail, exactly, are they demanding? Would “My wife and I were divorced six months ago” be sufficient? Or is one required to add some salient, hopefully spicy details? “My God! For a while there, it was almost like “War of the Roses!” I refused to leave the house! She smashed some of my things and in retaliation I uprooted her beloved rose bushes! The tears! The screaming fits of rage! It was a complete nightmare! Now it’s over and, fortunately for all concerned, we live in completely different provinces!” Or does one add page after page of Henry James-like psychological detail of every gesture, facial expression and step of the breakup, the job loss, the bankruptcy?

Assuming one provides sufficient details, the agents who process the applications will then decide what significance these personal facts have for firearms ownership. This is pretty impressive! Consider that state-licensed psychiatrists, actual medical doctors who have specialized in the scientific study of mental health, cannot reliably predict, do not even claim to be able to predict, who is and is not going to commit an act of violence. Yet fear not and be ye amazed! The intrepid agents of the licensing bureau can and will determine who among those recently wounded in love, employment or credit relationships may safely own a firearm, doubtless relying upon gut instincts finely-honed through years of processing applications!

Maybe the licensing bureau isn’t going to use psychological profiling. Maybe, instead, the details it needs are the names and phone numbers of your ex-lover, your ex-boss and the creditors who lost a bundle when you filed for bankruptcy. And maybe the bureau will then contact them and make inquiries. “Hello. This is Officer Smith from the Firearms Licensing Bureau. Your [choose one] [ex-lover], [former employee] [former debtor] is asking us to renew his firearms license so that he can continue to own firearms for the next five years. Are you okay with that? Does that give you any cause for concern?” And then the bureau can decide whether to issue a license based on what these people say about you. Not quite a judicial determination of the existence of a crime, you understand, with an actual crime charged, penalties for perjury, the opportunity to confront and cross-examine your accusers and rules about what is and isn’t admissible evidence, but hey! Good enough for administrative agencies, which make their own rules and act as legislature, judge and enforcer.

Who knows how the licensing bureau will evaluate this information? They want it, and they will act upon it, and that is all the applicant needs to know. The activity for which the supplicant need a license is a privilege conferred by the state and, therefore, at bottom rests on nothing more than meeting their conditions, i.e., on pleasing the authorities, who most assuredly will do as they please.

This is what it is to be ruled, for your activities to be privileges conferred by the state, for the conditions of your life to be determined based on some legislator’s or administrator’s “good ideas” for governance. This is what it is to have your life controlled by another who has the power to fine you and throw you in jail for failing to comply with his conditions.

This is why American gun owners vehemently oppose registration of guns and licensure of firearms ownership. It doesn’t matter what the law says or whether it’s a “good idea” or what its supposed socially-worthwhile, beneficially-motivated “intent” is. It’s how the law’s power is wielded that determines the conditions of your life. This is why, when the NRA and gun owners supported “shall issue” concealed carry licensing laws, currently in place in 37 states, the laws were carefully crafted to specify precisely the procedures to be followed, to enumerate the only conditions that could be imposed, all of which were objectively determinable and none of which depended upon the exercise of agency discretion, and to impose time and cost limits for processing, so that, upon satisfaction of strictly objectively verifiable criteria, the licensing authority was required to issue the permit. This is why American gun owners demanded that state legislatures pass these new laws and repeal the old licensing laws that were enacted in the early 20^th Century, laws like the Sullivan Act, which still governs the residents of New York City. While appearing on the surface to be even-handed, those older statutes simply conferred broad, nebulous discretion on a licensing authority, with the result that they have been and, where still in effect, are, administered in a way to insure that only the “right” sort of people obtain permits. In New York City, this means that men like Donald Trump and Howard Stern get carry permits, but not the multitudes whose lives just aren’t important enough to warrant the privilege of self-protection. (For a more extensive discussion of the arbitrary nature of discretionary licensing statutes, see this policy analysis of “shall issue” concealed carry laws.)

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While Pierre is now a felon because of his nation’s gun control laws, never forget that this is how he got in trouble with the state: He acted on the basis that there are some details about his life, important to him, that are his affair and his alone.

No one who believes he has the right to control you, who believes, further, that he has the right to engineer a society according to his ideas and plans, will ever accept this. It is an affront to his arrogance, to his arrogation of power to control you as he deems fit. To have “lawful authority” – really, political power – is precisely to have a free hand to use coercion to suit your purpose, without necessity of justification. If you are simply carrying out a prescribed course, if there is no discretionary element to your “authority” that permits you to shape it and use it to your purpose, it is not power but mere processing and ministration: you are a mere servant, a functionary, a minion. In brief, you are you: a servant and whatever government requires you to be, and manifestly not a king, a sovereign, a president, a semi-divine one, a colossus bestriding the earth.

Anyone who believes they have the right to control you ultimately must act ruthlessly, because a person does not control another unless, in the absence of willing consent or consent obtained through misrepresentation or fraud, he will compel the other to act as he commands. Ask yourself why a refusal to answer a single question about your love life is accompanied by a threat of, and merits, 10 years in prison. The failure to answer this question inflicts no actual harm on any citizen. The punishment cannot, therefore, be for harm the refusal has caused any specific victim or “society” at large. No, the injured party here is the state itself. The refusal to answer the state’s question is an affront to the state’s “authority,” and its claims to operate, and manage society, as it sees fit. The real “crime” is that the subject has failed to follow the state’s orders. He has failed to submit to and participate in the state’s project to control or engineer society in accordance with the state’s plans. Possibly, for example, the licensing bureau’s motivation for asking about love woes, job losses and bankruptcies is that it hopes to be able to prevent some future crimes (with guns, at least) based on certain facts that the licensing bureau believes have some degree of predictive value for determining who will and won’t commit crimes. That is, it may be implementing a general policy directive to shape an aggregate outcome (a reduction in crime) based on the fact that a certain small percentage of ex-lovers, ex-employees and bankrupts will commit armed violence against their former lovers, former employers or creditors. In refusing to answer the question, then, the applicant thwarts the state’s plans and rebukes the state’s claim to an authority to control or engineer society in accordance with its purpose. The “crime” is not a personal crime, like murder, robbery or pollution of the air or water, but a political crime. The essence of the crime is lèse majesté. The “criminal” has refused to obey the state’s fiat, and in so doing has committed an intolerable affront to the state’s claim to an absolute “authority.” He has shown his willingness to keep and act upon his own counsel and not follow orders. The state cannot let that stand and continue to be a state. It is the ultimate crime, and that it is why it is dealt with ruthlessly, meriting the same punishment that Solzhenitsyn informed us that Stalin’s political prisoners in the Gulag received for rebukes to authority: a tenner. Evidently, like minds, each claiming a right to control and engineer both man and society, perceive like threats, and respond with a like “solution.”

In his letter to the Prime Minister, Pierre notes that he is ashamed that he has not joined the Canadian heroes who are resisting the Firearms Act by refusing to register their guns or apply for licenses. These peaceful, otherwise law-abiding men and women occasionally hold open protests in front of government buildings daring the authorities to arrest them and throw them all in jail for ten years. According to information obtained by Pierre under a freedom of information request, as of February 2009, the Royal Mounted Canadian Police estimate that there were 185,925 owners of long guns alone who are not in compliance with the firearms registration and license laws.

We know now that Pierre need not have been ashamed, for it is clear that he is no less heroic. The state pushes and pushes; too much is never enough. It demands nothing less than absolute, complete control over an avidly obedient populace. To the state, there is no difference between 99% compliance and zero compliance. If there is one thing, one thing alone that it commands that you are unwilling to do for it, you have rebuked its authority and you are a threat, and the state will take you down. Pierre tried to comply for the sake of an undisturbed, peaceful life, but there was one thing the state demanded that he was not willing to do. There is something within him, some inherent dignity, he is not willing to relinquish or alter to suit the bastards. And so he refused to act as he was commanded to act, he refused to be a plastic person, forever conforming himself to the shapes devised for him by men and women with delusions of grandeur and whose tools for creating utopia are tasers, guns, fines and prison. And for that he may get ten years in jail.

So this is how it is. If you can labor “within the system” forever to obtain the reform that will correct this abuse, and that one, and each and every other abuse that arises, now and forever; if you can labor forever to exchange your current masters for better ones, a better Congressperson, a better Senator, a better President; if, in short, your idea of “citizenship” or “activism” is playing whack-a-mole with those lording it over you; if you can wait forever for the permission that you need to live life peaceably as you envision it; if you can march forward uplifted on Hope and Change; if you can find reasons and make excuses forever why Change cannot be achieved fully, just yet; if, in short, nothing can cause you to call into question the fundamental belief that it is good and proper for some people to have a “right” to control your life and the rest of society, using, as their tools, lying, fraud, manipulation, threats, grants of legal monopolies, protection and immunities, payoffs (“subsidies”), confiscation, fines, tasers, guns and jail; and if, when their commands are finally issued directly to you and you are confronted with tasers, guns, fines and jail, everything about you is conformable, malleable; if at no point will you ever openly refuse to comply with their plans when you are ordered to do so; then relax, the state is not coming for you. You are a plastic person, deforming yourself to fit into the shape that the state designs for you. You are no threat and you can be controlled because there is no one there to offer any resistance.

But if there is some peaceful activity you care about deeply, if you invest your life in it and the state should seek to control this in a way that that truly hurts you, then you will collide with the state, and what you love will be used against you. That is how the state operates. That is how it implements its self-described mission of “protecting” and “caring” for you. And if, because of this thing you love, you have some limit, some thing or aspect of yourself you will not give up or alter, then you are a threat, then you are an affront and rebuke to your government’s assumption of complete control. You have demonstrated that you will not dance to the state’s tune, that you are an individual and not a cog in the state’s machine, and Pierre’s story may someday also be your story.

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Pierre has filed a motion of appeal before the Québec provincial court, asking that the license refusal be quashed and apologies issued. He also argues that the Firearms Act and related criminal code provisions are unconstitutional, and that he does not need any license to exercise his traditional liberty to possess firearms. The court date has been set for May 26 and 27, 2009, in room 207 of the Mont-Laurier Courthouse, Québec, starting at 9:30 a.m. each morning. Richard A. Fritze, an Alberta lawyer and well-known defender of Canadian firearms owners and their rights, is representing Pierre pro bono. In addition, several expert witnesses will testify on behalf of Pierre’s position, including Joyce Malcolm, author of To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origin of an Anglo-American Right, Colin Greenwood, a now retired senior English police officer who authored a landmark work on the history of England’s gun control laws and their failure to reduce violent crime, and Professor Gary Mauser, who co-authored an article in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy with Don Kates titled, “Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder and Suicide?

These experts have generously agreed to assist Pierre for only the cost of their travel and accommodations, but Pierre needs funds to pay for what will most likely be a long and difficult battle. Please consider supporting him. If you wish to assist Pierre’s fight by donating, please contact Paul Rogan, publisher of Canadian Access to Firearms, who is acting as a pro bono fund-raiser. Alternatively, The Canadian Constitution Foundation has established a “Pierre Lemieux Legal Fund.” to provide funds to support Pierre’s case and you may instead donate earmarked funds to the CCF. Mr. Rogan can provide details on how to make your contribution through CCF.

May 6, 2009

Jeff Snyder [send him mail] is an attorney who works in Manhattan. He is the author of Nation of Cowards – Essays on the Ethics of Gun Control, which examines the American character as revealed by the gun control debate. He occasionally blogs at The Shining Wire. Read this interview with him.

Copyright © 2009 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Jeff Snyder Archives

The founders of our country saw the need of a well regulated, and well armed militia who was able to defend themselves and their country against impending threats. If defending yourself against illegal aliens, who are growing illegal drugs, and threatening Americans citizens on public lands, isn’t what they had in mind, then I have know idea.

When I commented on the original site that this was “One more reason to always be armed,” a guy named Joe responded:

“Yeah, your single handgun/rifle is going to be real useful against pot farmers with “five high powered rifles, equipped with rifle scopes and numerous rounds of ammunition” — not to mention greater numbers and a familiarity with the area.

“Good way to get yourself shot, more like.”

Since they moderated my reply (I guess I was too extreme for them) I give the basics of it here. Yes, my “single handgun/rifle is going to be real useful against pot farmers with “five high powered rifles, equipped with rifle scopes and numerous rounds of ammunition.” In fact, that sounds a lot like what I carry in my truck, and my camper.

The fact is that criminals are lazy and unlikely to have adequate training with their weapons. I, on the other hand, took my last Elk on the run at 600 yards and can empty two 13 round magazines into the center of a target at 25 yards in under 12 seconds with my .45 ACP. I’m not braggin, because that doesn’t make me special. Many people I know can do the very same thing.

The point is, if the pot growers would have never confronted the campers had they thought they posed even the remotest threat, which is why they choose to set up shop in places like California, where they know the public has a 99.99% chance of not being armed.

As I’ve said before, being armed is about making the choice yours. If only your attacker has a weapon, he makes all the choices. If your armed, you make your own. That doesn’t even mean that you have to defend yourself. In many situations, caution would dictate that you still comply, and never attack, but even then, as long as you have a .45 tucked neatly into your waistband, the choice is yours.

the adventure life

get outside and play

Marijuana Growers Chase Campers From Natl. Forest

by steve casimiro ? April 20, 2009 ? Post a comment

This week really wasn’t planned to be an all-pot kind of week, it’s just working out that way. (Today’s the stoner new year, right? But if you’re stoned, isn’t every year basically 1976?) Regardless, in Los Padres National Forest, California, two pot farmers scared off some campers in a high-speed dirt road rally that ended with arrests and confiscation of $26 mill in herb. The Santa Barbara County sheriff’s report reads better than I could rewrite, so here it is in its entirety:

New Cuyama – On Friday, 04-17-09, at approximately 11:30 a.m., two adults, who had been camping in the Aliso Park area west of New Cuyama, came across an active marijuana garden. While in the area, the campers were approached by two Hispanic male adult subjects who were tending to the marijuana garden.

The subjects attempted to converse with the campers, however due to a language barrier, they were unsuccessful. The subjects requested that the campers remain in the area, until the arrival of the “boss” who spoke English. The campers became fearful and packed up their gear and left the area. While the campers were driving down the dirt road, they were approached by a pick up truck traveling the opposite direction. As they passed the truck, they noticed the occupants seemed very interested in them. The truck stopped and the driver exited and waived for the campers to come back. They ignored his request and kept driving, believing he was the “boss” that the two subjects had referred to earlier. The driver returned to his truck and began chasing the campers down the mountain. During the chase, the truck came dangerously close to the campers’ vehicle several times.

[Read More...]

The purpose of the ESA is to protect species that are identified as threatened or endangered and the ecosystems that they depend on. There are some examples of success among the plants and animals listed as threatened or endangered in the United States. The most notable is the American Bald Eagle, whose population of just 417 pairs in 1963 increased to an extraordinary 11,040 pairs when is was delisted in 2007. Another is the Ursus arctos horribilis, also known as the good old Grizzly Bear, whose population in the Yellowstone area more than doubled from a measely 271 bears in 1975 to more than 580 in 2005. He was also delisted in 2007. In fact, there have been 19 success stories in the nearly three decades of protection given by the ESA to 1,891 species of plants and animals around the world. Yes, you read that correctly. There have been only 19 species removed from the endangered species list because their populations have recovered. That is a success rate of about 1%. For all of the taxpayer money that has been spent on 589 distinct recovery plans, and for all of the private property owners and businesses that have been bankrupted in the name of habitat protection and restoration, there have been only 19 success stories to come out of the Endangered Species Act. It is one of the most wildly unsuccessful government programs in history.

Species can be added to the list as threatened or endangered in one of two ways under the ESA. First, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), can directly list species through their candidate assessment programs. The second is by petition. Any individual or organization can petition the USFWS or the NOAA to list a species. Both processes are long, drawn out, and nearly impossible to accomplish. Did I say that there were only two ways? I forgot one didn’t I? The ESA only lists two, but our liberal federal courts have created another, and as a result, the new and preferred way to get a species listed is to file a lawsuit. The federal courts are clogged with lawsuits against the federal government, demanding that they list one species or another.

The listing process, however, is not nearly as long and drawn out as the process of delisting, and so far, only 45 species have ever been delisted. Presently, there are only six reasons that a species can be delisted. The first is extinction. Obviously, once an animal is extinct they don’t need federal protection anymore. Thankfully, only two species are known to have gone extinct while they were listed (7 went extinct before they were listed). The second way is when new populations are discovered that increase known population levels to a number that warrants delisting. That has happened five times. The third is taxonomic reclassification, which has happened ten times (I’m not even going to try to explain what that means, because I have no idea). The fourth is because of a listing rule violation, which has happened once and the fifth is by an act of Congress, which has happened once. The last is as a result of recovery, which has happened only 19 times in the history of the ESA (as we discussed earlier).

I have to admit though, that the number 19 is probably not really indicative of the number of species that have actually recovered. Realistically many more species probably should be delisted, but lawsuits have also become the new preferred way of making sure that no species ever gets taken off the list. It doesn’t matter if the species meets the population goals set by the biologists charged with their recovery, and it doesn’t matter if their habitat size expands to reach the goals set by their recovery plans. Either way, the conservation and the environmental groups that feed off the broken legislation file lawsuit upon lawsuit, blocking the delisting of even species that have recovered beyond even the most liberal benchmarks. The constant meddling by the courts in these matters have made the ESA almost completely unmanageable, and utterly useless as a tool protect endangered wildlife.

Ultimately though, the biggest problem with the Endangered Species Act is that it has no Constitutional foundation. The United States Constitution gives the federal government very specific powers, and nowhere among their number is the power to manage wildlife. The power to raise armies and declare war? Check. The power to mint coins and print money? Check. The power to protect interstate commerce? Check. The power to bankrupt a farmer and take the private land that his family has cultivated for six generations in order to create a viable habitat for the Southeastern Dismal Swamp Shrew and force its host state to spend millions of dollars on politically motivated, non-scientifically contrived, court ordered and unattainable recovery plans? Hold the check! Since the Tenth Amendment guarantees to the States any powers not specifically granted to the federal government, the individual States are Constitutionally empowered to manage their own wildlife without interference from Washington!

The reintroduction of wolves into the greater Yellowstone area by the USFWS, and the subsequent lawsuits that have prevented their delisting in Wyoming but allowing their delisting in Idaho and Montana, on completely political instead of scientific reasons, has presented fertile ground for a challenge by the States of this unsuccessful and unmanageable legislation. This is an opportunity for the individual States to reclaim control of their own jurisdictions, and put the out of control U.S. Congressional and Executive Branches back in their places. The Governors and Legislatures of each State should direct their Attorney Generals to immediately file suit against the federal government and to challenge the constitutionality of the Endangered Species Act on the grounds that it violates the Tenth Amendment and infringes on the sovereignty of the individual States. This is a battle that should be taken all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary.

It’s time to take off the leash that the federal government has put on our States, and retake control of our lands, our wildlife, and our rights. The Endangered Species Act, as it currently exists, needs to be made extinct. Individual States, who are much more qualified to manage their own wildlife populations, must retake the command they once held over their own jurisdictions, kick the Washington bureaucrats out of our forests, our swamps,  our deserts, our rivers and our lakes, and send them scurrying back to D.C. where they belong.

“You’re not old enough!” I said sternly. He smiled and put his hand out to get his license back. “Nope,” I said, and walked over to the phone and started dialing the police.

“We’ll get that back for you,” I heard as I pushed the buttons. I looked from the phone to the person who was standing in line next to the kid, and recognized that he was a police officer I had seen many times before in the store. He was wearing a knit cap pulled down over his forehead, a clever disguise. This was a @#$%& sting. “I’m officer _________ with the police department, we’re doing compliance checks,” he said, grinning, as the kid hurried past him and out the door.

“Uh huh,” I said, as I finished dialing, and listened to the ring tone.

“Really,” he said, pulling out his badge and waving it.

I ignored him as the voice at the other end of the line answered, “Rock Springs Police Department. Can I help you?”

“I was calling to report a minor attempting to purchase alcohol,” I said with a bit of ice in my voice, “but, apparently, they just ran a ‘compliance check’ on me. Thank you, have a good night.” I hung up the phone, walked to the counter, and tossed the kid’s I.D. on to it in front of the officer, saying nothing.

“The good thing is, you have a choice,” he said, still grinning and sure of himself, pulling a couple of restaurant gift cards out of his pocket to show me.

“I don’t want your @(*#&^% coupons. And I don’t appreciate anyone coming in here and asking me to break the law,” I said pretty angrily, starting to raise my voice.

“Well, there’s uh, a lot of people in town that would uh agree with you, but we uh have to do it,” he said, starting to stammer a little bit, and falling back onto the age old excuse that he’s just doing his job.

“I also think your &%(*#$@ program is worthless. It hasn’t done one God Damn thing to reduce the number of minors drinking alcohol!” Now my voice was even louder.

“Well, that’s your opinion,” he said, not as sure of himself, starting to get a little angry, and definitely not grinning anymore.

“Bull$#*!. It’s not a #*$^@&( opinion,” I said, “I’ve seen the statistics, it hasn’t done one $%&^#* thing!” I growled as he quickly turned around and left the store without another word. He didn’t even have me sign his “compliance check” paperwork.

Obviously, the officer did the right thing by leaving before our argument could escalate, and I was probably out of line taking my anger, at being the target of what I believe is entrapment, out on him.

But. then again, maybe I wasn’t.

First of all, I’ve written before how I feel about what I call “stings” and they call “compliance checks”, but this is the first time I’ve ever personally been the target of criminal investigation by anyone, ever, and it flat out pisses me off. I have always had a very good relationship with the members of law enforcement in my community, and have the utmost respect for them. I know most of them by name, including the officer who was in charge of this sting operation, and have always done my best to make their jobs easier when I come into contact with them. Many of them shop in my stores — on duty, when they are filling up their official vehicles with fuel, and off duty, when they are filling up their own.

That’s part of why this program infuriates me so much. Retail clerks and local business owners are sometimes the police department’s best link to the community. We see large numbers of people every day, and we hear things that help the police out with their investigations. It’s not rare for the police to come visit us, asking for information, looking for leads, or hoping to look at our surveillance cameras in order to help out with a case they are working on. Many local crimes have been solved because an officer has sat down in one of my stores and had coffee with my clerks and my customers. Conversation with the public is sometimes law enforcement’s best investigative tool.

This policy, where police officers are assigned to investigate normally law abiding citizens, endangers that previously beneficial relationship. When ordinary people become the target of random criminal investigations, how willing do you think they will be, in the future, to cooperate with the police? Instead of feeling secure every time we see a police officer, should we now be suspicious? Should we be looking over our shoulders, nervously waiting for an undercover police officer, or an undercover informant, to ask us to break the law?

And what’s next? Will they be hanging out in the school yard, asking our kids if they want to buy a little meth? Are they going to wander the halls of the Holiday Inn, asking every patron if they want a buy a fun night with a hooker? Maybe they will be standing outside the pet store, asking each customer if they want to buy an orange-bellied parrot? How far is far enough, and when have the police gone to far?

I’ll tell you. Any time the police, and those working for them, ask ordinary people to break the law, they’ve gone too far. Any time the police make ordinary people the targets of criminal investigations, they are crossing the line and endangering what should be great relationship between law enforcement and the general public. This “compliance check” program has already changed what used to be a friendly relationship between this particular officer and myself. From now on, every time we see each other he will remember me being pissed off and raising my voice at him, and I will remember what it feels like to be treated like a criminal suspect.

The fact is, the police need us, ordinary people, to do their jobs. They need a working relationship with the public in order to keep the public safe. They need our support, and our cooperation.

How willing do you think we will be, though, to cooperate with the police, to help them with their investigations, and to help them make the community safer, when tomorrow… they might be investigating us?

-Wisdom

“To declare that in the administration of criminal law the end justifies the means — to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure conviction of a private criminal — would bring terrible retribution.”  -Justice Louis D. Brandeis, (1856-1941) US Supreme Court Justice

-Authors Note: I think any police officer who is asked to take on an assignment where they have to investigate ordinary people should ask themselves, “Did I join the ranks of law enforcement so I could investigate criminals, or make ordinary people into criminals?” Just saying that “it’s my job” isn’t enough. I’ve heard it from beat cops all the way to the chief of police that they don’t have a choice when it comes to whether or not they run these stings, and I don’t buy it. Wilhelm Keitel was just doing what he was told, too. It’s not an excuse. You always have a choice.

Washington Times – Border patrol agent held at gunpoint .

The other issue relevant to the post is that the business owners finances are seldom taken into consideration in the event of a natural disaster in the discussions of price gouging. A business that may typically depend on the profits garnered from 30 tanks of fuel and 4 turns of its dry inventory during a month may be forced during a disaster to make do with only 3 tanks of fuel and one turn of dry inventory to pay all of its monthly bills. By selling all of its inventory at its original price, and not being able to restock and resell, the business guarantees its financial ruin.

Is it price gouging to plan for that lost revenue and raise your prices enough to make up for it?

Wisdom

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Problem with law-breakers….

…may be knowing if you are breaking the law!I have a piece coming out on price-gouging law in NC. Sent the URL around to a few people for comments….(will post it here when embargo ends) A friend from high school writes:

Another argument to explore would be that of the convenience store owner that has plenty of ice but refuses to sell it until he determines the maximum price the government will allow him to sell it for. Ah to have a libertarian convenience store owner that would shut down in a crisis and request the attorney general to come over and determine and price his inventory for him. Would it be illegal to refuse to sell your inventory in a crisis?

One of my assignments took me to Guam where we had a few typhoons, one of which had 180 mph winds. The island was smacked very hard, we lost power island-wide for nine days (and up to 40 in some areas), and the main fuel storage tanks on the island caught fire consuming all available gas that was not already in gas station tanks. Many people had back up generators at home, myself included, but it was interesting to see al the dynamics of the situation in action.

posted by Mungowitz @ 9:09 AM

First of all, as a parent, let me get this out of the way. Teachers: Don’t ever, under any circumstance, give me homework. I’ve been to school, have a diploma, have a degree, and have my own work to do. I make more money than any two of you. I don’t ever want to come home again to an assignment given to one of my kids that says, “have your parent do,” whatever! If you’re going to grade my kids based on my performance, then I’m going to start paying you based on my kids’ performance.

Furthermore, if you’re going to give my kids homework, then teach them how to do it. I understand that sometimes homework is given to reinforce what is learned in class, but come on! My kids get homework on an almost nightly basis that they have no idea how to do! I’m happy to help them, but you’re the one getting paid to teach them, so do it.

There are some things that I never, ever want to hear from a teacher again.

First, “You’re child is probably bored in here. He already knows how to do all this so he’s not learning anything.” What?! If you can’t teach him anything, find a teacher who can!

Second, “I’m sorry your child is behind, but I just don’t have time to give her the attention she needs.” Bull! We’re required by law to hand our kids over to you for an education, and you’re required by law to provide it. Either teach, or find us someone who can.

Third, “You need to talk to your legislators and tell them we need more money.” No. No. No. You want to be a lobbyist? Go to the capital and be a lobbyist. Don’t use me to lobby for you. My customers don’t call their legislators and say, “Hey, can you see what you can do about getting Island a raise?” Furthermore, don’t use my children as lobbyists. In fact, don’t use my child as a sounding board to espouse your political agendas at all. I’ll handle that part of their lives. Don’t teach them how important you think it is to have wolves in Yellowstone National Park, or how wrong you think it is to be invading a foreign country. Don’t teach them your PETA pledge or your Earth First crap. You go ahead and teach them the structure of our form of government, who does what, and how they are elected. I’ll take care of the rest of his political training.

I expect you to spend the days with which you have my children teaching them reading, writing, arithmetic, history, economics and the like. If you are unable to do this because a lack of education on your part, or because your ability to do so is clouded by some bull crap political agenda, then get another job.

Next installment? More about teachers. Sorry, but there’s just too much to cover in one episode.

Wisdom

Consider this scenario. Officer Bill Blue is fishing today. Working an undercover sting operation, Officer Blue picks Joe Somebody out of the crowd on the street, pulls him to the side and says, “Hey man, I really need 10 bucks. Will you buy this joint off me?” This is the thirteenth person he’s tried this on today after 12 failures, but Officer Blue knows if he casts his lure enough times, someone will bite. This time Joe Somebody does. “Sure man, I’ll buy it,” Joe says as he starts digging in his pocket for $10 bill. A jerk on the pole and this fish is caught. Officer Blue reels him in and he’s charged with the illegal possession of a controlled substance, and the court date is set. Except this time, there’s a problem. The officer initiated the sale, not the “perpetrator”.

Any lawyer worth his salt would throw the word entrapment into the mix and Joe Somebody goes home a free man. Why? Because the prosecution cannot prove that he would have broken the law on his own accord without the officer encouraging him to do so. That is how our system should work. Our law enforcement officials are supposed to investigate people who are already breaking the law, using undercover officers, informants, and forensics to gather enough evidence on them for a conviction. They are not supposed to randomly select members of society and offer them a chance to break the law. That is why you never hear of the police running a sting of this kind to make a drug bust. It is simply the wrong way to get it done. The basis of our freedom relies on our legal system being a reactionary one that punishes criminals who are already criminals, not a proactive one that sifts through the population in lottery fashion tempting Joe Somebody’s with a chance to break the law.

The truth is, everyone breaks the law in some form or fashion at some point in their lives. Whether they crack the speed limit by a few miles, forget their seatbelt on a trip to the supermarket, or don’t get a building permit before they remodel their basement, there are very few Americans who haven’t pushed the envelope of the law in one way or another. Does that make it right? Of course not! But we can’t have our government putting radar detectors every 100 feet on the highway to catch speeders, sensors in every car to alert the police when you pull out of the driveway with your seatbelt not fastened and weekly inspections of every basement in town so you don’t put up a new wall without the proper permits either. If they did, I’m sure that fewer people would break the law, but it would also make this country a police state, rather than a free nation. That’s okay for “enlightened” European nations like Britain, Norway, and, Switzerland, but it is unacceptable for us. It simply would not be American. Once our law enforcement officials are given free reign to investigate people who want to obey the law, and encourage them to break it instead, the floodgates will be open, and every American will be open to become the target of entrapment.

Right now, as you read this, police officers are sending minors into grocery stores, convenience stores, gas stations and liquor stores, at the instruction of the Wyoming Legislature, to attempt to purchase tobacco and alcohol. The official purpose of these stings is to conduct “compliance checks”. They are done in the name of protecting our children from the harm of tobacco and alcohol use, but their real purpose is to write tickets out to otherwise law abiding citizens who make mistakes. The fact is, there isn’t a retailer or clerk anywhere in Wyoming who wants to sell these products to minors, and none of them would ever approach a minor and offer to sell them alcohol or tobacco, but Wyoming’s statutes have made these people suspects in the eyes of the law. Not only are the clerks in small businesses all over Wyoming now expected to parent and police the minors who are trying to buy alcohol and tobacco, they are now being treated as criminals, just like drug dealers, without the benefit of the doubt. They are being made the targets of criminal investigations on a daily basis without ever having been accused or suspected of any crime or wrongdoing.

These policies, handed down by the Legislature and carried out by law enforcement, strain the relationships between peace officers and the people they are hired to protect. Criminals should be wary of a police officer who crosses their path and they should hush to whispers and give wide berth when a deputy approaches. The average citizen should not. The average citizen should feel free to welcome law enforcement officials into their communities, their businesses, and even their homes without the underlying fear that the officer is there to catch them off guard and make a lawbreaker out of them. They shouldn’t have to wonder every time they smile and say “Howdy” to their neighborhood peace officer when that same officer is going to make them the target of his next investigation.

This new way of upholding the law just doesn’t work in America, and especially here in Wyoming. The government should always assume that the average citizen is attempting to obey the law, and our law enforcement policies should reflect that. If they want to stop minors from obtaining alcohol and tobacco, they should arrest minors who actually try to buy alcohol and tobacco, and when they find minors who already have those products in their possession, they should follow it to is source and take appropriate legal action.

So, to answer my original question, “When is it okay for a representative of a law enforcement agency to ask an otherwise law abiding citizen to break the law, knowingly or unknowingly, and then charge them with a crime?” Never! They should leave the clerks and other average law abiding citizens alone, giving them the benefit of the doubt until there is reasonable suspicion to do otherwise. Let’s keep the fishing trips focused on the real criminals and leave Joe Somebody out of it.

Wisdom