Woman Arrested for Legally Open Carrying, Taxpayers Expected to Foot $7500 Civil Rights Remuneration
January 6th, 2011
A woman was unlawfully arrested and had her civil rights violated in Brookville, Wisconsin due to her desire to protect herself… in a church. Now we all know how dastardly intolerant those Unitarian Universalists can be with their interfaith learning and focus on inner peace. Can you really blame a woman for not wanting to wander into such a vile scenario unarmed? I’m itching for a fistful of boomstick myself just thinking about it.
Clearly this might not have been the most appropriate display of force, as it prompted one of the other possibly cannibalistic Unitarians into phoning the police about the armed woman in a nearby pew, or chair possibly. She must have felt legitimately threatened and worried about what drives someone into being armed in public. This isn’t in and of itself a bad intuition. I personally have been around people who have been very safe in their firearm methods and sane enough where I didn’t doubt whether I would be gunned down as a flutter in their periphery, mistaken for a cougar. However I’ve also been around people whom I’ve felt should probably not have access to items involving combustibles of any variety.
Now I won’t appeal to the Constitution for some positive legal right of all people as potential militia members who ought to be able to own any and all firearms at will. I take more of an opinion along the lines of Stirner: why do you get to wield a gun and I don’t, Mr. Police Officer? This egalitarianism toward authority is the same emotion that annoyed you as a child: “Now honey, do as I say not as I do.”
I don’t think such differences in authority can often be legitimately justified regardless of some metaphysical abstraction like Rothbardian natural rights. On a more practical level I have far more faith in a society in which individuals can choose for themselves how they would like to defend themselves rather than one in which such responsibility is delegated to coercive monopolies like the state. I typically don’t have a lot of faith in such entities and hopefully neither do you, anonymous reader.
In the future maybe the church will elect to have a more firm policy on open carrying one way or another to clear up confusion, but it won’t stop the local police from harassing you in public for exercising a legal right. In fact, the lawyer for the city has stated that “police will continue to respond in force to people with guns. And if it’s a legal open carry, then it’s the cost of doing business.”
The city has officially endorsed a policy of violate rights first, pay out later policy. This is sure to cause a chilling effect on the exercise of those 2nd Amendment rights. If you know there is a possibility of being arrested but later released but not charged you may not go through the inconvenience of attempting to protect yourself outside of your home. The rights will go unexercised and as they become more rare the policy which the state finds unwieldy will be progressively less encountered, exactly as they are aiming for.
Analysis from a couple different angles aside, if you are looking to make an easy $7500 from the taxpayers of Brookfield, Wisconsin, just hang around in public until someone notices you are armed. Disregard cooperation; acquire currency.
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