How Cops Help Rich People Get Around Gun Laws

James, Mia, and Gare sit down to to talk about the various ways police help rich people get around firearms legislation in California and all over the USA.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Garrison started talking about crimes, and so I was like, Okay,
I'm gonna I'm gonna hold off on president crime at all.
Act that's true. That's true. James said the word crimes,
and James is the one that brought up doing crimes.
I would never talk about doing crimes. Oh, welcome to
take it happen here. Yeah, if we never talk about
anything illegal. Um with us today is myself, Garrison, James Stout,

(00:27):
and mea Wong. It's right we are talking about crimes today. Actually,
but we're not doing any crimes Chrishley, because we never would. Yeah,
like for for for example, Well, actually I don't I
don't know if it's technically illegal to to to talk
about jury nullification on air. I don't. I know. I
don't think they can stop you from saying the words.
I think they can. I think I think you you

(00:50):
don't have the rights to do it, but you have
the ability. I think is a way a lawyer explained
it to me. But they also said I'm not your
lawyer before that, So take that with a great assault. Yeah, yeah,
you probably said you shouldn't be describing how to do
jury notification or googling it if that's in your future.
Stay tuned for our upcoming episode. Yeah your jury, Yeah,

(01:15):
how to nullify your jury? That will be our final episode. Okay,
so now we're not talking about jury today. We are
talking about crime. The people doing the crime in this episode,
shockingly are the cops. So I want to start on
October twenty eight, twenty sixteen. Some of you can probably
cast your mind back then, the last week of the

(01:37):
pre Trump era. Yeah yeah, So inside the captain's office
at the sheriff station in Rancho, San Diego, one of
the most expensive ZIP codes in the country, Captain Marco
Garmo was making a deal. Garmo, along with Giovanni Tilotta,
who's a licensed San Diego gun dealer, sold a glockhangun an,
a R fifteen Star rifle, and a Smith and Western

(01:58):
handgun to local defense attorney. Because inside Garmo's office, Garma
coordinated backdated paperwork to avoid the ten day waiting period
required by California law for handgun purchases and supplied Bajaj
with misappropriated San Diego Sheriff's Department issued ammunition. Oh fun, yeah, yeah,

(02:21):
so's he's really thriving in his side hustle here, Marco Garmo.
I've used the word misappropriated because that's what the DOJ used,
and guessing the more vernacular term will be stolen here.
I think I think he's so, what do you say issued?
Is this AMMO that like like was supposed to be
given to a coup or is this stuff they had

(02:41):
an impound? Uh No, I think it's supposed to be
given to a corpse. I think hell yeah, I think
he's good. I think he's gone into the armory and
just grabbed a few boxes of AMMO and stole them.
Corps are just turned into the Afghan Army. It's amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
the Ana. They've got the what's that guy who had
the like help he had their like night vision on

(03:03):
backwards or something that was that was the Taliban guy. Yeah.
Interestingly what they have and they compound me, it's another
story that maybe we should do another day. I also
p r rate that like the weapons that are impounded,
Jesus Christ. They have some shit like they have like
a full auto shotgun, like a bunch of NFA items

(03:25):
and they keep them all for like lab testing in theory,
like so they can so they can be like, oh, well,
this person was shot, what does that wound look like? Well,
let's get our armory out from the fucking end shoots
and ballistics gel and see if that helps us. And
it's like that scene from two thousand and eight The
Dark Night where Christian Bale is Batman fires a ridiculously

(03:46):
loud gun in a seals bugger, absolutely destroying both his
and Alfred's hearing for the entire rest of the movie.
That's why they make so many bad choices. Fascinating. Yeah,
I didn't know there was a character called Alfred in Batman. Yeah,
they really welshed him on the names, because like, Batman
is a cool name, the joker cool name. Do you

(04:08):
don't know who Alfred Petty? No one British character in
bead He is your culture. When people think of British people,
they think of Alfred J. Pennyworths, not a costume Garrison. Well,
so I have a bad I have bad news. They
disgusted that this is the point of reference, not one

(04:30):
of our many wonderful modern British role models. Alfred's great.
I don't know what you're talking about. Okay, yeah, no, okay.
He is a working class hero he was a he
was a wait A, Butler's our working class right? Oh God,
discourse off very quick, I would say, pett. Yeah, it's

(04:53):
kind of complicated because you're like working directly for a
billionaire and you're living in the billionaire's house and you're
living a upper class life, but you still are working.
It's kind of what is your relationship to the meda production? Though? Oh?
That this? Wow? Well, but it's all service, like I
don't know. I feel like we have to do a
divide here between because I think I think the gender
division of labor between Maide and Butler is very important.

(05:15):
I love how we're devating how if Alfred is based. Yeah, yeah,
so you can find Garrison on Twitter, I write, okay,
so we made a paragraph too everywhere. In February twenty nineteen,
federal agents executed a search warrant at the Rancho of
San Diego Cherff station. Later that year, they arrested Captain

(05:38):
Marco Gamo. In twenty twenty one, Gama pleaded guilty to
trafficking over one hundred guns, which were deemed unsafe for civilians.
His sentence, I shouldn't say civilians because cops are also
civilians right, but non cops. His sentencing, the judge said
Gama was almost becoming a mob boss of sorts. What

(06:00):
you want to strive for as a charis Captain. Garmo
admitted to engaging in straw purchases, which is buying guns
with the intent of transferring them to someone else. He
also acknowledged tipping off an illegal marijuana dispensary that was
about to be searched in order based Nothing this guy
did is inherently wrong. It's the fact that he only

(06:21):
did it to certain people, and so that was his
cousin who earned a marijuana dispensury. He was also engaged
in illegal consulting with other dispensaries, which I don't bulliant. Yeah,
I'm guessing his consulting emerged to being like, hey, the
cops are on their way tomorrow, maybe stop being a
dispensary by the time they arrive. Yeah, that seems like

(06:42):
a that that that that that that that seems like
a very classic the cops to take a cut kind
of insult. Yeah, I guess, yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot
of the things in this DJ thing are like really
fantastically phrased. So Garmo and his code a friend and
wail Will Anton also helped paying clients skip the waiting

(07:03):
list for a difficult totain concealed carry permit. As part
of this scheme, Anton took a legal cash payment to
a county clerk who ensured favorable treatment for his clients.
Garmo might have flown a little too close to some
with this one, but it's not actually that unusual for
gun laws to have carve outs for rich people. Often
those carve outs don't involve cops stealing AMMO, but it's

(07:26):
pretty easy if you're wealthy enough to work your way
around firearms legislation, which is kind of what I want
to get into today. So while Garmo did go to
jail for gun trafficking and multiple other crimes, he was doing.
The sale of so called offer us to firearms by
law involvement officers in California's relatively common and there's not

(07:46):
much that's been done to prevent it since Garmo was arrested.
So to understand this, I think you have to understand
California is incredibly complicated firearms laws, which probably requires like
an undergraduate degree. But to give a brief summary, California
introduced its gun roster in two thousand and one, and
like many of our laws, it has its roots in

(08:08):
entrenching systemic inequalities. In this case, legislatives were trying to
ban something called a Saturday Night Special and people know what.
People know what that is. No, it's it's a small, concealable,
affordable handgun. Um, It's like there were there were this,
there was this, these guns that came out in like
the eighties and nineties that were like super small, very cheap,

(08:29):
very simple, very concealable, and shit, well that's the thing, right,
So this is really fascinating. So in practice, right, these
were at least culturally associated with like black communities, right
that that's you see them in sometimes like certainly like
there was a stigmatic reference to like a disease guns

(08:50):
that is causing violence. And we're not going to fucking
look at inequality at all, right, We're just going to
ban the guns. Are they shit? Is an interesting question
because California introduces legislation which that handguns have to be
dropped safe, so that means you can drop them and
they can't go off. That is generally a desirable feature,
and a handgun able to fire six hundred rounds without

(09:11):
more than six malfunctions and have a manual safety device.
And later on they added another thing that would make
the gun only fire when it had a magazine inserted.
And they put all these rules in place, and has
said manufacturers had to submit guns for testing. All the
guns they were going after pass the testing, So I

(09:31):
guess they're not as shit as one the one has suspected,
which is kind of like that that is the intent
they are laboring under that misapprehension, But it seems like
these guns, which are very cheap, actually pass the testing
just fine. So if you look at the California roster,
so once those guns have passed that testing, right, they
go on a roster, and that roster like it's done

(09:55):
by skew, so like by the individual code that's given
to the gun. And you could look up the California roster.
It's online still and like there are hundreds of cheap
small hand guns that are on it. So they've failed
in that regard. But they created this kind of bizarre
system where most manufacturers had to make a California compliant

(10:18):
model if they wanted selling California, right, because it had
to have a magazine disconnect, which means that the gun
won't fire without the magazine in, which is not a
usual thing for semi automatic handguns to have. Like if
you are outside of California and you have like a
normal a glock, for instance, it doesn't have that, but
you would need one that did in California. So that

(10:38):
means that these guns are going to have a much
much smaller economy of scale, right, they're going to be
more expensive. Manufacturers also have to pay for the testing
and submit three models. So what de facto means is
that fewer guns are available in California, But it doesn't
really become a big issue until twenty thirteen when the
DOJ in California add a micro stamping requirement. But they

(10:59):
added it earlier actually, but in twenty thirteen they certified
it was possible for mist But so is the roster
of the list of guns are allowed to buy? Yes, okay,
And if it doesn't appear on the roster, we're going
to get into that. You can actually buy it, but
you can't buy it new from a store, so you
can buy it used. And there are two ways that

(11:21):
these used handguns can enter the state. Right. One of
them is if you move to the state. So let's
say Garrison moves to LA right, and they bring with
horrifying Yeah, just enjoy it, just just like a Vulcan
mini gun. Yeah yeah. They bring with them an m

(11:42):
one Abrams tank. It's our balloon shooting gun. Yeah. Everyone
on the West coast has to have one now, and
so it's actually different for rifles, Seddi. But they bring
with them pistols, and those pistols are not on the
California roster. They can keep them and they can sell
them right to a California resident. The other way that

(12:03):
these guns can enter and be sold is cops are
exempt from the roster, right, so yeah, boy, yeah, yeah
yeah yeah. And when I say cops, I am speaking
in the broadest possible turns because a variety of peace
officers are exempt, to include employees of the California State
Horse Racing Boards. Park rangers can do this, right. I

(12:30):
think it depends what you are within the park ranger,
within the park, and it seems to be that there
is actually a list that's in the legislation, but it
seems to be largely like at the discretion of the
gun shop. Like in practice, they could get in trouble.
But like I've heard of like firefighters and EMT's being

(12:50):
able to purchase off roster guns, which is fucking not
in the legislation, Like it is also kind of funny,
but like U, in theory, it would depend on what
unit you were in, or they could contact your like
park ranger office and be like, hey, this girl is
trying to buy a gun, Like does she use us
at work? Because the idea is that they would they

(13:10):
would have the most up to date weapons to carry
at work, right, or that they could buy themselves even
though they get issued guns. So like if you need
a gun as a cop, you get issued a gun, right.
So what it means in practice is that there's a
thriving market and offer us to firearms, but there's also
massive price premium. Right. They often self for two or

(13:31):
three times there MSRP, even though they're used. And I
did a little digging into this, and I looked at
one particular item, which was a P three sixty five,
AIG P three sixty five, which is a fairly like
a popular pistol. Right, But after twenty thirteen, California doesn't
didn't allow any new guns to be added to the

(13:53):
roster unless they micro stamp their bullets. Micro Stamping gets
a little feature where the firing pin of the gun
stamps the casing, not the bullet, with a little, kind
little tiny stamp which is unique to the gun, right,
or it stamps it with the serial number of the gun.
So in theory, this would allow you to pick up
the casings at a murder scene and be like, huh,

(14:13):
well they were fired from this gun, and this gun
is right to this person. Therefore we got someone to
talk to you, right, pick up the casings. Yeah right, yeah, absolutely,
no ways around this, well, I mean absolutely immediately that
The one thing I've learned over the years is that
people are really lazy when they're doing crimes, and so

(14:35):
so true, so true. To be slightly less lazy and
get caught so you're really less that is that is
that is my biggest my biggest advice to the illegalists
literally think five minutes before yeah yeah yeah. Also, don't
tweet your crimes. Yeah ever ever green statements. Yeah yeah,
it's one of our mottoes here. You could also just

(14:56):
use a revolver, I guess, and it would inject the casings.
But because there are no guns in twenty thirteen. Right,
the DOJ says you are not allowed to add a
gun to the roster unless it micro stamps, and we've
decided that microstamping as possible. No firearms manufacturer will make

(15:18):
a gun that micro stamps because other states will require
all guns to micro stamps once set technology is available.
So they just don't built it. So they just don't
do it. Yeah, it is, and it's very funny. It's
like the car companies just being like, fucking, you know
what if we put airbags in that bad boy, They're
going to make us put airbags in all the cars.

(15:39):
You know. This is the thing that I've run into
a lot. I think it's really interesting, which is like, Okay,
the specific combination of regulatory state and corporations being required
to do a thing gives you a bunch of really
really weird like outcomes that are like not what you
would expect when you're writing the legislation, which makes them ineffective.
Like I mean, like the most famous one is like

(15:59):
the Clean Air Act actually worse than to air quality
for a huge amount of time because they put in
this exception for like existing coal facilities under the assumption
that people would just like you know, build new coal
facilities and thus be like and thus like have better
like create that cleaner technology, and no one just no
one ever did. They just left these old coal facilities
running or the other one. Like everyone always talks about
those like those fucking like why why the giant SUVs

(16:21):
keep getting bigger? And the reason for that is actually,
I mean it kind of is sort of fascist psychosis,
but like the actual reason for that is Obama era
pollution controls on cars, right, had to have these fuel
emission standards, But the larger your car is like the
worst fuel emission standards are. So they keep so okay
in order to get around the fuel mission things, they
just keep making cars make it bigger. Amazing. Yeah, And

(16:41):
this shit just like I don't know, this is this
is I think a pretty good argument against like against
a sort of regulatory state being able to contain like
capitalism doing horror bloifying shit. Is like every single time
someone tries to make it air pollution thing, it just
makes it worse. Yeah, they just create perverse incentives to
do something which is like just stupid and polluting as
opposed to Yeah, or they just don't comply. It was

(17:04):
the microcy thing you're just like no like, yeah, simply
wrote the specific interaction of like people who elevate themselves
who make it to the California legislature on one hand
and gun companies on the other hand, just leads to
this complete intransigence, where like anytime a Laura is written,
it is like someone has found an end run or

(17:26):
a loophole before it comes into practice. Do you know
what won't illegally smuggle illegally smuggle guns into California install
them for two to three times a retail price? Mere?
Is it? All the firms that are doing child trafficking?
And that's right, the Washington State Highway Patrol. We're back

(17:56):
and we're talking about cops selling guns for a lot
of money in southern California. So big Marco Garma wasn't
the only cop who surres a life of crime. As
it turns out, yeah, yeah, shockingly enough, this practice is

(18:19):
pretty common. So a Guardina police officer in twenty twenty
one was also convicted of making forty one illegal offer
us to sales in a year, and at least six
LA officers have been found to be engaged in legal
firearms transfers according to twenty twenty one LA Times investigation,
so that that's eight in a single year if you're
keeping track. And it's pretty common to see people like

(18:41):
posting about this, like like if you go on to
like the California Guns for them, where people will be
like where they sell guns right where they don't. You
don't actually sell the guns on the internet. That's illegal,
but people will post it and then they meet me
at this gun dealer and we'll do the background check,
and you'll see people being like, oh, like m l O,
I have a friend who Elio and like happened to
be selling this gun new in package. I bought it

(19:03):
to carry it on patrol, but I decided I didn't
like it. You know, Like that's the theoretical connad here, right,
Oh god, Okay. The thing this reminds me of specifically
is is a very very weird use case of like
people will magice the gathering tournaments where you're not legally
allowed to both draw and split the prize money. So
you have to say this incredibly complicated series of sentences

(19:26):
where you're like, I want to draw, and then new conversation,
can we split the prize money? It's like I have
to I have to like say this exact series of
words in order to make it's clear that I'm not
doing exactly what I'm doing and breaking the law. Yeah,
this is how the law works, right, Like it always
ends up being some kind of like totalistic magic incantation
that you can say, and then the thing that they're

(19:47):
trying to fucking stop obviously no longer applies to you,
and you can do what you want. Like it's incredibly assinine.
So in mid twenty twenty one, I tried to I
wanted to get a sense, right and when I was
doing this of how many of these offer us to
guns there are in California, to get a sense of
like exactly how much of a fass the attempt to

(20:08):
create this roster has been. So I've been going after
this for a while. But in the middle of twenty
twenty one, there was an Assembly bill pass called Assembly
Bill two six nine nine if you're interested, and the
bill required the Department of Justice to send a letter
to owners off offer rouster weapons, which California officially calls
unsafe handguns, to remind the people who own them other

(20:31):
laws surrounding them, and to whom they could transfer them right.
I first became aware of this letter because someone decided
to post it online, and that kind of gave me
an opening where because I can't pira the names of
the people who own the guns right or even where
they live, because obviously that's protect information and it probably
should be. And I don't think that in inforation is

(20:52):
even nicteally stored by the state. But I can pira
the letters say sent out, So pira is a public
records that require it's what people might know as of Foyer.
And so I did that, and it took me more
than a year, and it cost me more than a
hundred bucks, But eventually I managed to get the doj
to to send me the information which showed that at

(21:14):
least at the time I got it, which is the
middle of twenty twenty one, four thousand and five hundred
and ten firearms have been obtained by the subsection of
the law that allows exemptions for police officers. There were
some other exemptions for like antique collectible firearms as well,
so it's not clear that all of those were cops.
They also noted that it had sent two hundred and

(21:34):
thirteen thousand, eight hundred and four notices to the owners
of off rouster weapons. Which, yeah, it suggests that, like
if we think of that, the roster became a serious
issue in twenty thirteen, right, so that suggested about ten thousand,
ten thousand weapons a year since the roster began in

(21:56):
two thousand and one have entered the state that I
offer ruster, which kind of kind of makes the point
that it's it's a rather fastical attempt at gun control, right,
but it still is that the roster, which I don't
think you're fine, right, you can you can buy a
very effective gun in California, as we have seen, they're

(22:18):
very effective at killing people. But it does kind of
make it a joke that if you have enough money
or a friend who's a cop, then this doesn't apply
to you. Right then you're over two hundred thousand of
these guns which are supposed to be like banned in circulation,
as long as you're wealthy enough to buy them. I
tried also to p r A if any of these

(22:38):
guns have been involved in crime or murder, and they
would tell me that. And what it's always worth pointing
out that like the cops themselves are issued guns which
are illegal for civilians to purchase, right, or it's not
possible for them to purchase them new I should say
that offer Ruster guns are issued to the cops, right. So,
by definition, some of these guns have been used in

(22:59):
the accidental shooting of bystanders, shooting of officers by themselves,
and shooting of officers by other officers that have occurred
in California since the ROSTA began, and so the sort
of by definition of us to gun to kill some people.
So this isn't actually the only way that being wealthy
can get you around gun laws. And I want to
go a little further east for my next example. Then

(23:22):
I want to go in factor to a little town
called Lake Arthur in New Mexico. Any if you are
you guys familiar with this part of the world. Not well,
not that I lived in New Mexico very very briefly
when I was a small child, but not there. So,
so I've been using Google street View. That's my my dive.

(23:44):
It appears to be the back arshile of nowhere, and
in Let Arthur they have one cop who it turns
out was a volunteer and was being paid a dollar
a year. Ah ha. Yeah, So this is this is
where the problem starts. This guy is called Lilliam Norwood.
And I'll issue a spoiler here that William Norwood is
no longer a cop norders the Department exist and that's

(24:09):
because Norwood was running a scam that took advantage of
something called LIOSA. LIOSA is a Law Enforcement Officers Safety
Act and what the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act does
is allow cops from any state in the Union to
conceal carry a gun in every state in the Union.
So this was a big deal. Yeah, I think you

(24:31):
might be abotuly what this is going. This is a
big deal before the Supreme Court Brewined decision. Right, the
Brewin decision was the one that significantly reduced the impediments
in between you and getting a concealed carry weapons permit.
I didn't totally remove them, and it didn't make it
any less expensive. And California seems to be going about

(24:51):
trying to make it even more expensive, which is bullshit,
Like everyone should have the same right, regardless of how
wealthy they are. But if you were covered by LEOSA right,
if you're a law enforcement officer, you could conceal carrie anywhere.
So this is very desirable for some people. One of
those people is Robert Mercer. Do you guys remember Robert Mercer? No?

(25:14):
I do not. Okay, So Murcer is a big time
Donald Trump appreciated. Oh yeah, he's that like super rich guy. Yeah,
the bright Bart guy, the Cambridge Analytica guy. Yeah, okay, yeah.
So this guy is rolling in it, and he he was.
He actually hosted like a like success party soon after

(25:36):
twenty sixteen election. This this guy is definitely pivotal to
the whole Trump scene, right, like like his his bank
rolling a bright Bart, cambrin Elytica. He As it turns out,
it's also a cop in this little New Mexico town,
which is kind of weird, right, especially when you consider
that one hundred and fifty other people are also cops

(25:57):
in this New Mexico one of these Yeah. Yeah, that's
one cop for every two point nine residents. Jesus. Yeah.
And it turns out they're probably not doing much copying,
but they are doing at least a certain amount of volunteering.
It's actually unclear how much. So the Lake Arthur Treasurer

(26:22):
with Bloomberg did some prays around this, and it turns
out that Mercer was what's called an honorary member of
the police department, but there are no records to indicate
they actually did any policing. But nonetheless, he took advantage
of Leosa right and thus carried in all fifty states.

(26:52):
So these jurisdictions, there are several of them. Another famous
person who's taken advantage of this is a friend of
the podcast, Stephen Seagal. Oh Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, Stephen Siagar,
who apparently has been a volunteer cop for a very
long time and like actually was doing some copping according
to a reality TV show he made called Steven Seagal Lawman.

(27:17):
You know the thing about that show, right is it's like,
are you gonna come out and defend the show? Are
you pro the show? Really? Here, here's why they on
this show, right, Like, obviously Seagal's doing stuff that's really
messed up, but it's also unclear how much, ye, what
he was doing is than the average cop. Like like,

(27:38):
probably what he's doing is worst than the average cop.
But I don't think it's like like I don't I
don't think it's as bad as like like a Chicago
Special Operations Unit. It's like I can't believe this came
out in defense of Steven Seagal, specifically, he has work
to do to reach like the true upper echelon of

(27:59):
like I don't know, shitty cops Like this is a
man who gave his time freely to volunteer for Joe R. Pio.
This level of apologism coming from you right now is
simply shocking. I don't know how to deal with this,
this zigol apology. Yeah, psigologismsgism. Yeah, that is that is

(28:25):
what I was working my way towards what I couldn't
finish it. Yeah, thank you for delivering the kuda grass. Yeah,
me are coming out with some cop to bastard to
take scab. Okay, So what what is Carrison's carrison to deceased?

(28:47):
They've died, Okay. So these badge factories like the ones
in Lake Arthur and generally trade influenced cash, your connections
for a badge and the right to carry a gun.
Nation White Mercer and his son in LAWD. George Wells
have reported the town generously and so the most kind
of the best investigated example of this right because Bloomberg
went after him and Bloomberg Publication not Bloomberg, the dude

(29:11):
he went down there personally, Bloomberg he formed an alliance
with apparently at one point this with this police department
did to a raid on a methhouse. And I would
love to see like Bloomberg forming alliance with the methulers
of Lake Arth to fucking take on Murcer. So if

(29:33):
Bloomberg can take on nine to eleven single handedly, surely
he can bust up whatever whatever operations going down in
New Mexico. One hundred and fifty Stephen Seagals, would you
rather fight one Bloomberg size Stephen Seagal? And yeah, don't
don't do not bother messaging me. I know he wasn't

(29:55):
the mayor during nine to eleven. That was the joke.
Don't bother messaging me. I already know, thank you, No no, no,
So I wrote, okay Garrison's Twitter again, I write a case.
He also famously dropped Staten Island Phil Bloomberg, You guys
don't know about Stannine. Staten Island. Phil is a groundhog.
This this will be in a Bastard episode as well.

(30:16):
So it's a second mentor of Staten Island film for
some people. Staatenland Phil is a groundhog similar to Puck's
attorney Phil. Yeah, but he lives in Staten Island and
that's fortunately. Yeah, well would we say that's a second
second pretty pretty disgusting take from me anti Staten Island.

(30:37):
This is this is when THEA gets canceled episode Yeah,
time and getting rid of the Yankees things of the state. Sure, yeah, yeah.
Unfortunately Build a Blasio dropped the groundhog on its head
and it died, and yeah, build really built a Blazio groundhog.
But it's reduced popularity. Everyone who's been the mayor of

(31:01):
New York is such a piece of shape, unhinged. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's true. Yeah, like fucking the current mayor just what
I liked TV to Tay and talked about how he
has this magic smudge that yes, so that he could
absorb despair and ring the despair. What the I'm so sick.

(31:27):
The only thing isolated New York was it does the
whole like there shouldn't be any separation of church and
say that is so much funnier. He's doing a sham
wow for sadness. Oh what a place, what a town?
All right, So if you're wondering how much it costs
for Mercer and his son in law to carry downs everywhere.

(31:48):
They paid at least ninety three thousand to set up
this thing called the Southeast New Mexico Police Reserve Foundation,
which you know is doing the valuable work of supporting
reserve cops in Southeast New Mexico because they are the
thin blue line between us and people not being able

(32:11):
to buy contial carry permits in all fifty states. I
guess under it's by laws of its half the foundation's
net jews were required to be paid to police departments
whose reservists were members of the foundation the time of
its founding. All of the members were Like Arthur reservists,
so just a good public public benefit, probably just money

(32:32):
going around in circles. He also paid for Lake Arthur
officers to get SWAT training in Vegas. Again, there is
only one full time cop and he's a volunteer, so
some of the lads went to Vegas, I guess, and
this was a donation that was probably tax deductible. The
way that this came out is when a quote unquote

(32:53):
firearms expert from North Carolina got drunk and shot his
brother in law in the leg, and people were why
were you carrying bro like you're a cop and yeah,
from their things began to unwind. A lot of the
other clients for this place are people like bodyguards, and
they were a client's cops volunteer officers. I should say,

(33:17):
there are people who do close protection for wealthy folks, right,
and carry guns as part of that work. And I'm
guessing it's their employers who are making these significant donations
to like Arthur that probably allowed these people to be
reserve officers, which allowed them to carry in all fifty states,
which in turn allowed them to protect these wealthy people. Right.

(33:38):
So it's another and like it's important to understand that
like New York, for instance, declined before this was before
the bruined decision. I can still carry permit applicant from
like an FBI informant who had taken down a biker gang.
They were like, no, you don't need to carry again,
Like it was almost impossible for people, even if they
were like helping the cops to get concealed carry permits

(34:02):
in some parts of United States and California was very hard.
Lots of places before Brewin Like I think, what's it.
Nancy Pelosi had a concealed carry permit or Feinstein, this
is the whole thing. Okay, so this was this was
finestein that. One of the other scamps for this is
you can get deputized as a federal marshal. There's like
a bunch like I like Finstein's rumored who have done

(34:23):
There's like a bunch of like every like a bunch
of sort of like California like Congress people have done this.
They're like they get they get deputizes marshals and so
they can do this shit. Yeah, incredible stuff. Yeah, it's
so I guess what I want to come back to
is like all of these laws, right, all of these
gun control laws and are circumventable if you have enough money. Right, So,

(34:48):
if you want a nice, brand new gun that doesn't
mic ris damp, it doesn't have the it doesn't have
the magazine disconnect, and like modern the modern carry guns especially,
you're a lot nicer than they were in twenty thirteen. Right,
They're smaller, they have a higher capacity. You can put
a little red dot site on them if you want to.
And if you want one of those things, you can

(35:08):
have it in California as long as you're rich and
if you're if you're not, then you can't. The same
applies with this fifty state carry right if you want
to carry a gun all around the country, and even
now with Bruin, states are not required to recognize each
other's concealed carry permits. Right. So I have a concealed
harry permit in California. It's not recognized by any other

(35:30):
states because California doesn't recognize any other states carry permits.
So I can apply for one Arizona. That costs me
more money. But if you want to carry in all
fifty states, you can just make this donation to the corps, right,
And you can almost all of these things, right. These
are the only examples mere cited the federal marshal thing.

(35:51):
Another one is the NFA right, the National Firearms Act,
Yeah Act, which like, essentially it's not illegal to have
a suppressor, it's not illegal to have a short barreled rifle.
It's not illegal to have a machine gun. Actually, you
just have to spend a shit ton of money to
get one, which a mercer has a collection of machine guns.

(36:11):
I guess, So all of these things. Yeah, it's great,
it's fine. It's it's great that we live in a
country with with two tiers of rights for people. Those
are those those machine guns are totally going to be
used for normal, completely normal things in twenty years. Yeah. Yeah,
a totally normal guy who will use them for normal
stuff and just I'm sure like to make holes in

(36:32):
paper with his friends. And it's not problematic at all
that to be as rich as this guy is, you
have to be a problematic dude. And it maybe those
are the people who shouldn't be having guns, yeah, But
instead it's it's it's going to be poor people who
can't be having guns. And I think, regardless of what
you and it's perfectly reasonable to think that there should

(36:53):
be fewer guns in this country. It's perfectly reasonable to
leave that. And I think, like it's perfectly reasonable to
think what the fuck should we do about the fact
that kids get shot in schools. That's not an unreasonable
starts at all. But if the way around it is saying, well,
only rich people get to shoot people, then that that's
not really a solution. It's just kind of the the

(37:14):
appearance of one. And I don't think any of us suddenly,
if we were on the left, should should really support that. Yeah,
that's where we are in California, which is great. Yeah.
So that's about all we've got on this. If people
are interested in seeing more about either the Mercer case
or the public records I have, we'll put them all

(37:36):
up on our sources page. You can find our sources
page on there could Happen Here website, and we put
all our sorts out there for all our episodes. So yeah,
go check that out. Anything else to finish off with? Guys?
The cops having guns, bad cops being cops, bad cops? Yeah?
Oh well, what about Stephen Cigar the may This is

(37:58):
a dramatic change of from your earlier stones. I only
ever argued that he would slightly violent than a normal cop.
That was the extent of my argument. He is only
slightly more violent than a regular cop. She is flip
flopping on the some some cops of issue. Again. You

(38:19):
can send me your opinions on the police. She's on
Twitter at I write Okay, it could happen here as
a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from
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(38:41):
for It could happen here. Updated monthly at cool Zone
media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.