I e-mailed Charles Heller yesterday and told him about this thread. He told me he sent the Title 18 card to one of you.
I'm sure he's quite pleased that he's still being inspirational.
A little background on that... after a long battle with the City of Tucson over what they could and couldn't do to we gunnies who carried in parks (we had a state preemption law which they decided to ignore), the boys at
Brassroots.org decided to *arrange* for an arrest of FACT (Firearms Action Committe) President, Ken Rineer. Ken waited for the police to arrive. He stepped on park property and the cops dutifully wrote him a ticket.
The Magistrate through it out as unconstitutional, but the City appealed and got a favorable ruling from the Arizona Court of Appeals which said that Ken's rights were not violated because he "could have simply walked around the park." That takes juevos, don't it? The Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
The uproar caused by this series of events caused Arizona gunnies and favorable legislators to draft even clearer (two-sentence) preemption language and pass it, sending it to the Governor's desk...the day before Columbine. She vetoed it.
It was passed a bastardized version (not two sentences, but several paragraphs) and she later signed it. This new law gave cities the ability to ban carry without a CCW permit but not with a CCW permit. So, traditional open carry without a permit *could* be banned from parks if the city so desired.
Of course, the preemption law said a city could only do what was specifically allowed by ARS 13-3108, which made no mention that CCW had to be concealed. To no avail, Tucson said they would arrest anyone who open carried even if they had a CCW permit.
We told them they were wrong. They said, "If you try it we will arrest you." So for years, nobody down in Tucson wanted to call their bluff.
It took Charles Heller, with a 5,000 watt radio station to make the difference.
The result? The leftist City of Tucson has been put in their place and shown to be made up of lying bureaucrats.
Strike a chord for freedom. It's that kind of activism, at a minimum, that is required to win freedom back, an inch at a time.
I have zero patience for people who armchair quarterback somebody who decides to activate. Weenies are a dime a dozen. Activists are rare.
--edited to add-- oh, I see Charles has signed up... nevermind.
Rick