Ok so here's the rebuttal, but honestly it's not going to matter because obviously we have very different views about LEO's.
Submission by you to my way of thinking was not the goal in the first place, as you presented in the first post of yours that I replied to whom you submit voluntarily, because as you said, you,
"...don't break any laws." That is literally an impossible assertion to substantiate here on a forum, but also to achieve in the real world, as laws have so vastly outpaced human beings' ability to fully comprehend, that neither you nor the cop you're talking to can ever know
all the laws. I first tried to just joke about it, but you asked me to explain the basis for my jokes, and then offered nothing in reply to my sincere attempt to answer that request seriously, except of course a wish for a happy Easter, which I sincerely appreciated, but had no desire to discuss in the context of our exchange to that point, and still don't, at least not here in this thread.
Otherwise, this is a *discussion* forum, where it is (or at least should be) taken for granted that people will disagree, so our obvious differences in views (which I freely acknowledge) do matter when in the process of *discussing* them. Neither you or I learn anything about the other if all we do is say "your views don't matter."
* personal experience + having good friends who are career LE, and US Marshal service is that not all cops are looking to get an excuse to jack me up on BS charges
I never said that
all cops are out to jack you up. I bristled at the notion that
"...all the cops in" your area are pure as the wind-driven snow, paraphrasing of course how you actually stated it, but that's how it came across to me in any case.
Maybe even most cops are "good people" at heart, but like I said in my last reply, it is literally impossible for
any of them to be good, constitutionally-compliant cops anywhere in this country anymore. I'd be glad to explain in detail why I say that if you're at all interested, but I gave you a way to figure it for yourself already when I suggested that you test the text of the Constitution and/or Bill of Rights against the many modern-day ubiquitous demands upon cops on the street today. Just one easy and quick example would be
Terry v. Ohio concerning "reasonable articulable suspicion" and stop-and-frisk tested against the unambiguous text concerning probable cause and search & seizure of the Fourth Amendment.
Bottom line is you don't know which cop you're going to encounter, even among those whom you count as friends - the one who presents as a "good person" or the one who will beat you to death simply because you straightened your legs when he told you to keep them crossed. It is my contention that every cop in America has some of both of those extremes in him/her, just as every human being with a working conscience still has to struggle with good and evil throughout our lifetimes. The difference is, we, as lowly citizens, are held to account many orders of magnitude more often when we lean to the "evil" side than cops are, and so leaning evil is rarely corrected with enough consequence to matter, which makes it an almost irresistible temptation to engage in with impunity for the bulk of a cop's career. Laws that are not enforced equally amongst cops are unjust laws, and cops who cannot be trusted to follow laws on the books that, in a perfect world, should apply equally to them as anybody else, are unjust government agents. Unjust government agents who enforce unjust laws, prove that government is unjust at its root.
* The examples you listed were pretty excessive in number as if you were trying to drive an "all cops are bad" agenda
Three is "excessive?" The only "excessive" numerical issue I can be accused of engaging in is the excessively incomplete number of such incidents I could post to make the points I was attempting to make. I gave exceedingly brief details about Kelly Thomas' and Keith Vidal's murders-by-cop, and left Oscar Grant's murder to be explained by Wikipedia. It is quite clear that your resistance to being exposed to truth backed up with links of real incidences of excessive force being used by cops is itself excessive. It is true that I believe that the system disallows cops being "good" from a constitutional perspective these days, but you'll not trap me into copping to believing something I never said to you or anyone else about
all cops being "bad." Never said or thought it, which is precisely why I put the complete opposite thought in my sig-line.
* The Klan, rebel flag + cop pic looked as if you'd have me think cops are bigoted towards black people.
The klan, rebel flag + Chief of Police and at least a wide majority, if not
all of his white underlings pic, was exactly what I said it was - an example of modern-day policing that is, at its highest levels of leadership, conducted in not only an unconstitutional manner, but corrupted in the most grotesque ways possible against people who, in Dothan at least, are the least able to afford defending themselves legally.
One might think the story here is that in Dothan, AL, it is a well-established fact that people who make a point of making themselves aware of what's happening in their local government(s),
should see all white
Dothan cops as bigoted towards black people. What else could that picture possibly say? It was
an example of rampant corruption from top to bottom of a modern police department. I didn't say anything to suggest that bigotry is the
only type of corruption a cop-shop might be partially or wholly infected by. I'd have you think the
truth of the Dothan, AL cop-shop, as-substantiated by any number of the 90,700 links in the search I provided for you when I first mentioned it. That's all it was intended to "have you think."
* You were indeed blunt, to the point of nauseatingly blunt
So we do agree on something! Yeah, agreement doesn't matter to me either.
* In this post you were rude telling me "You don't have jack"
I told you you replied exactly zero in response to anything I said, and that's exactly what you did do.
In just a couple of call-and-responses, you have established a nasty habit of reading into things I've said and spitting out responses to stuff I've never said, and never would say. Just because the truth hurts, which I don't know why it would in this quote's particular case, as it's clear as a bell that it
is the truth, doesn't give you the right to respond to words or thoughts that you clearly make up in your own mind, but nonetheless attribute to me. Kindly stop it.
The issue of notifying was my personal practice & I could care less what anyone thinks of what has worked for me 100% of the time.
Same 100% efficiency for my not voluntarily notifying. So?
As for comparing notifying voluntarily to requesting a tax audit, it presumes My voluntarily notifying cops as I deem prudent is somehow asking them to search me, my car, or even my house to try to find any little thing out of order so they can fine me.
While I wouldn't limit your potential adverse consequences for your own voluntarism in this regard to simply being "fined," that's exactly the implication I intended, and SCOTUS is the governmental body that has established those abstract thoughts as set-in-stone law for the entire country, so "your area" is irrelevant to the status of the law as it currently stands. Heck, since 2013, even
silence can be used against you under some circumstances, so just imagine how much more use they stand to have available to them when you start yappin' like government is your friend or some such nonsense?
In reality, at least my reality, I'm confident enough in the legality of everything i do related to firearms I would be fine with it if they did search all of that. I keep things upright and legal where it applies to my firearms, and if I did do something wrong I'd deserve to be charged for it so that's fine
As bofh tried to gently (as opposed to "nauseatingly bluntly" I suppose) warn you, your and Philando Castille's "realities" are at wide variance. I'd go a bit further and say that your reality is at diametrically-opposed variance with any actual scrutiny of the provable truth of the matter based only on the juxtaposition of your stated opinions in this quote and the facts surrounding why Philando Castille is dead now, but I'm OK with how bofh framed it just the same.
From the statements you make, it causes me to feel as if you're a person who always thinks "big brother" or "the man" or whomever is out to get you.
I commented on what I see as the
nature of government. Whether or not I choose catch-phrases or slogans to describe it as I have is irrelevant to rebutting it effectively, or in this case, at all. My position in this thread should come across much different than how you think I've stated it thus far though. You should recognize that I'm concerned that government is out to get
you, and that
you aid it in that quest whenever
you volunteer to talk to it. Any attorney worth their salt will tell you the same thing. Most "honest" cops will tell you the same thing too. The American Bar Association will tell you the same thing. The ACLU will also. I''m not particularly fond of any of those groups or .orgs, but hey, even a broken clock is right twice a day, and they all use one of their right picks whenever they correctly disseminate that well-intentioned advice. Take it or leave it, but it is intended at the bottom line to benefit
your safety and security from an ever-expanding and overreaching government.
If I'm wrong about this stuff please forgive me. My last reply was based on such perceptions, and reinforces my belief that it's rarely possible to have a conversation online that lacks voice tone, volume, or inflection, not to mention body language, all of which could change the entire meaning of words said.
Nope, no forgiveness required, and except for inserting stuff that I never said or thought, you got some stuff right this time.
I realize that this discussion is kind of off-topic to the thread OP, but I think it's important for people to hear both sides of the voluntarily-disclosed-armed-status argument. The "
you" to whom I refer above is a generic "you." It's all the you's out there who never gave voluntarily informing much thought. People get shot for innocently pulling out their phone or reaching for their wallet or glove box to get ID and other papers. If it can happen to any of the people we know it's happened to, it can happen to you. Be wary of government. Government is not your friend. This country was founded on the premise that government had
always, for time immemorial, been the enemy of the people who founded it - not in the metaphorical sense, but in a quite literal sense. I mean nothing personal towards you, SmiddySW, nor towards individual cops who strive to do as good a job as they can. I only recognize, and have the audacity to say out loud, that
you just never know who the "good" ones are, and who the bad ones are.
Blues
