Post by HiTemp on Oct 24, 2015 7:51:16 GMT -7
I get it now. The Sheriff was referring to guns being carried by convicted felons. Since the felon isn't allowed to possess one, they are certainly going to hide them if carrying on their person. He was using this scenario to justify this "show me your papers" tactic that is all too often used against people with no evidence or even suspicion that they are doing anything illegal.
The proposed new law would require the cops to have probable cause, which is a fact-based standard. Not merely suspicion or some b.s. reason to think you "might" be carrying a weapon illegally. Since the average person just walking down the street will be outside of this standard, the cops can't stop and demand to see papers, and if they do, they lose immunity normally associated with their actions as a law enforcement official. It makes them personally responsible in the event they get sued for violating an individual's constitutional rights. So naturally the LE community is dead set against it.
Aside from that protection, I don't care for this bill at all.
Before the legislature preempted all firearms laws in the state, we used to have one law in this county, another in the next county, and if there is a city in that county, another set of laws. So carrying a firearm was a dicey thing if you were traveling any distance because you could be legal one minute and illegal the next. Thankfully the state legislature took control of ALL firearm laws in order to make a single standard for carry anywhere in FL. This new bill allowing open carry as an option for anyone with a concealed firearms/weapons license has already raised the ire of business owners who are absolutely not going to allow open carry in their establishments. They already have the right to ask you to leave if you have a firearm or weapon, but what they want is a way to keep you from coming inside in the first place. The only way to do that is allow "no guns" type signs to have the effect of law, much like they do on posted federal property.
My concern is, if that happens does it mean I can't OPEN carry in there? Or does it mean I can't carry at all? If it's the former, then I have to travel around with two holsters, using one to open carry and a different one to conceal carry since I can't just throw on a jacket when it's 97°F outside. If it's the latter, it's even worse because now we'll be back to where we were years ago... where what's legal in this spot isn't legal next door, but is legal next door to that, etc.
It's just going to create a minefield of legal problems for legal carriers of firearms. For instance, in the downtown area of Pensacola, at night a lot of the restaurants put tables and chairs out on the sidewalk in front of their businesses. So, does that piece of sidewalk suddenly become a no-guns-allowed zone I am no longer able to pass through if carrying but must walk around, or not? We don't have any way to know until someone becomes the test case.
This seems like a lot of potential problems to willingly take on just to allow the small minority of people (who want to open carry) to have that ability. All of this simply because the law has no set standard of what a "brief" or "inadvertent" display of a concealed firearm is, and somewhere around a dozen or so cases exist where concealed carriers have been charged with violations. In the most famous case, a guy brand new to concealed carry went out of his house wearing garments that did not conceal the weapon. He was stopped and arrested when the cop realized what he was wearing couldn't possibly cover the firearm. This is one of the cases the proponents of this bill are holding up as a reason to have open carry. Sorry, but that guy was a dumbass and didn't follow the law to begin with. In other cases, people had shirts that covered the top of a kydex holster but the bottom half of the holster is sticking out. Those folks claim the law only requires the firearm to be concealed, not the holster, but police disagreed. What would you think somebody had on their hip if you saw the bottom half of a holster sticking out? To me, this is just a case of people trying to push the envelope when they knew full well walking around like that will almost certainly guarantee contact by LE. Now the rest of us who don't push envelopes end up caught up in the legislative backlash to their activism. I just don't like that because of the new legal minefields it may create.
Illegal cars? You never heard of them? Haven't you ever seen a story where "SUV runs over pedestrians," or "Pickup truck crashes into occupied home?" Nothing talking about the driver just the vehicle, as if they had minds and wills of their own. I think those are the illegal cars.
The proposed new law would require the cops to have probable cause, which is a fact-based standard. Not merely suspicion or some b.s. reason to think you "might" be carrying a weapon illegally. Since the average person just walking down the street will be outside of this standard, the cops can't stop and demand to see papers, and if they do, they lose immunity normally associated with their actions as a law enforcement official. It makes them personally responsible in the event they get sued for violating an individual's constitutional rights. So naturally the LE community is dead set against it.
Aside from that protection, I don't care for this bill at all.
Before the legislature preempted all firearms laws in the state, we used to have one law in this county, another in the next county, and if there is a city in that county, another set of laws. So carrying a firearm was a dicey thing if you were traveling any distance because you could be legal one minute and illegal the next. Thankfully the state legislature took control of ALL firearm laws in order to make a single standard for carry anywhere in FL. This new bill allowing open carry as an option for anyone with a concealed firearms/weapons license has already raised the ire of business owners who are absolutely not going to allow open carry in their establishments. They already have the right to ask you to leave if you have a firearm or weapon, but what they want is a way to keep you from coming inside in the first place. The only way to do that is allow "no guns" type signs to have the effect of law, much like they do on posted federal property.
My concern is, if that happens does it mean I can't OPEN carry in there? Or does it mean I can't carry at all? If it's the former, then I have to travel around with two holsters, using one to open carry and a different one to conceal carry since I can't just throw on a jacket when it's 97°F outside. If it's the latter, it's even worse because now we'll be back to where we were years ago... where what's legal in this spot isn't legal next door, but is legal next door to that, etc.
It's just going to create a minefield of legal problems for legal carriers of firearms. For instance, in the downtown area of Pensacola, at night a lot of the restaurants put tables and chairs out on the sidewalk in front of their businesses. So, does that piece of sidewalk suddenly become a no-guns-allowed zone I am no longer able to pass through if carrying but must walk around, or not? We don't have any way to know until someone becomes the test case.
This seems like a lot of potential problems to willingly take on just to allow the small minority of people (who want to open carry) to have that ability. All of this simply because the law has no set standard of what a "brief" or "inadvertent" display of a concealed firearm is, and somewhere around a dozen or so cases exist where concealed carriers have been charged with violations. In the most famous case, a guy brand new to concealed carry went out of his house wearing garments that did not conceal the weapon. He was stopped and arrested when the cop realized what he was wearing couldn't possibly cover the firearm. This is one of the cases the proponents of this bill are holding up as a reason to have open carry. Sorry, but that guy was a dumbass and didn't follow the law to begin with. In other cases, people had shirts that covered the top of a kydex holster but the bottom half of the holster is sticking out. Those folks claim the law only requires the firearm to be concealed, not the holster, but police disagreed. What would you think somebody had on their hip if you saw the bottom half of a holster sticking out? To me, this is just a case of people trying to push the envelope when they knew full well walking around like that will almost certainly guarantee contact by LE. Now the rest of us who don't push envelopes end up caught up in the legislative backlash to their activism. I just don't like that because of the new legal minefields it may create.
Illegal cars? You never heard of them? Haven't you ever seen a story where "SUV runs over pedestrians," or "Pickup truck crashes into occupied home?" Nothing talking about the driver just the vehicle, as if they had minds and wills of their own. I think those are the illegal cars.