Posted on 05/04/2006 8:53:59 AM PDT by StevenB
That's debatable.
Free Republic just got a mention on the Bryan Suits show. Although the caller said the fact that "Caller Eric" did not have a gun and was held for 2.5 hours after being cleared was news to him....
From the original article:
"Caller Eric said he was the one counter protester that did not have a weapon. At that point they were cuffed and taken to the West precinct where they spent the next 2 plus hours being detained until the march was over."
Been an admirer of you for quite some time, hope to meet up some day..........
If it were me (and it definitely would have been had I not had business to attend to that night), I would be "lawyering up" as we speak. I almost wish it would have been just so I could raise the holy unmitigated Hell on the Seattle PD and media for this.
Quite telling that the media is not reporting about this nor Kirby's producer's stolen gun story. Telling, not surprising, this is the Seattle media after all.
How about taping the envlope to a brick and shipping it back???
That's right. The politburo doesn't issue those permits without the implicit understanding that the privilege shouldn't be abused by carrying a gun in a situation where you might potentially want to use it.
How do you know if they were intimidating anybody? I didn't read that anywhere. How do you know they didn't take them for self defense?
They will have after their next rally in California. They're planning on registering people to vote so they can "change the make-up of Congress."
No big deal. We've got bigger fish to fry I'm sure.
The Officers were within their authority to ask the counter protesters to see their licenses. Someone had reported that one of them was carrying a gun, carrying a concealed handgun without a license is illegal.
Terry vs Ohio gives the officers the authority to perform a stop in such a circumstance. They can however only be detained during such a stop for very limited purposes, such as verifying their identity, and freezing a situation in which there is reason to believe that a crime has been committed or was about to be committed.
Unless they didn't have drivers licenses with them, verifying identification isn't a difficult process, and they had the additional identification of their concealed pistol licenses.
We haven't heard that there were accusations that they were threatening people. They were carrying their firearms legally.
The length of a Terry Stop is limited to being able to as some questions about the situations that reasonably led them to believing that a crime had been or was about to be committed and verifying their identity. Courts have considered stops that take 20 to 30 minutes to be reasonable. They would also reasonably ask others if the counter protestors had been acting in a threatening manner.
If they didn't have complaints from other people that they were threatening others, the Terry Stop should have ended when their identities were verified, and it was determined that their possession of the concealed firearms was legal.
Their removal to the police station for hours was not a Terry Stop. What the officers did requires evidence of a crime.
My pointing out the law was so people would realize the vagueness of this law. It also leaves wiggle room for an officer to do an investigation. No it does not. The law requires some thing that legally warrants alarm.
Terry Stops also don't require laws with any wiggle room. An officer performing a Terry Stop does not even have to have a particular law in mind that he thinks may have been broken, they merely need to determining that the situation is suspicious as a whole.
They don't need any wiggle room to do a Terry Stop, but a Terry Stop is not an in depth investigation, and it cannot be a long detention.
Most importantly, outside of this case, is that an overzealous prosecutor, with a political or ideological motive, could use this vagueness in the law to prosecute someone for headlines.
I very highly doubt that. A layman might claim the law is vague, a prosecutor would have a hard time doing so. Issues such as what warrants alarm have been settled case law for a very long time though cases on things like disturbing the peace cases.
When our Supreme Court ruled that open carry was protected, and people started doing so there were a number of incidents in which the Police mistakenly thought what they were doing was illegal. Some were arrested. Some may have even been charged, but if they were, the charges were dropped. Not a single one was prosecuted.
I guess maybe some of have a different definition of "the people" than you do. To me "the people" refers to US citizens, not citizens from every other country on the earth especially illegal aliens.
I don't for one minute believe our forefathers wrote our constitution to encompass citizens from other countries unless they immigrated here legally and became US citizens.
Appears racist as well i.e. the presumption that these Mexicans would ultimately become violent.
It was common and customary for private merchant ships to be armed with cannon in order to repel pirates. There is ample evidence of wealthy men owning cannons, particularly Southern plantation owners
Civil War and Revolutionary War reenactors TODAY have privately-owned black powder cannons. They normally fire blanks, but there's nothing to stop them from being loaded with ball or cannister
When you raid a cat-house, you arrest trhe piano-player, too.
How do you know that. The Second states "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
I see no wiggle room in that statement, I don't care what some lunatic liberal judge or moronic law professor thinks.
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