Dickson City council meeting wrap-up

[Mike]

Folks - thanks so much for the 30+ folks who came last night and stood up for freedom and the Constitution - we did this on only about 36 hours of notice. Just think what kind of turn out we could do with 96 hours notice!

The message I sent to national and PA gun rights leaders today is below, and summarizes what happenned and what needs to happen next - see talking points.

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May 14, 2008


MEMO FOR: National and PA gun rights POCs:


SUBJECT: Update re Dickson City, PA Borough Council Meeting last night - Dickson City PA council obeys law, allows open carry, takes public comment


1. About 30 OpenCarry.org and PAFOA.org members converged on Dickson City last night to testify against police state style roundups of gun owners peaceably eating dinner last Friday. The City Council was told in no uncertain terms that they had better take action to get their police procedures up to date.

2. Gun owners open and concealed carry, based upon preference. No harassment by the City on this matter, despite veiled references to this by the police chief on radio/TV interviews during the day. At the meeting, the City solicitor confirmed that the Borough had no power to ban guns at Borough Hall, unless perhaps they bootstrapped its 'holding cell" as a lawful basis to do so - he did not look too confident on this.

3. Afterwards, about 8 of us retired to a local restaurant (Charlie Brown's) without any problem, except for the free desert the manager made us eat. All but one person was openly carrying.

4. Subsequent news coverage below.

5. Key talking points:

1. Police had no reasonable articulable suspicion to seize the gun owners, let alone demand IDs, search them, seize their guns, "run" their serial numbers, and in one case, refuse to return a gun to Rich Banks, a federal firearms dealer, because his gun's serial number was not found by police in any database. Again, this was a group of men, women, and small children eating dinner - all rousted by unlawful police action.

2. There is no gun registration in PA. But the police in Dickson City remain in confusion/denial over this issue of checking guns' serial numbers and seems to still think this should be done with an eye toward seizing guns if things don't "match." Hence, Katrina style gun confiscations may continue where police take your gun 'till you can prove you own it. Therefore, the PSP handgun transfer database should be destroyed as it just causes problems for law abiding gun owners.

3. Rich Banks still does not have his gun back. Rich is not just a federal gun dealer - he is also a right to carry permit holder and he did show his PA License to Carry Firearm permit to the police - but the police could not "verify" that he owned the gun thru their computer checks and demanded that Rich bring proof of ownership to the police before he could get his gun back.

4. Bad police procedure is good for criminals! As the seizures of persons and guns violated the Fourth Amendment, the police bumbled the encounter because had any of the guns or people turned up to be "bad," the evidence would have been suppressed. See e.g., Florida. v. TL; Arizona v. Hicks; Commonwealth v. Hawkins (Pa.).

5. Litigation possible. Litigation for violations for Fourth Amendment and other rights may be pending by folks who were seized by police and one gun owner's unarmed wife threatened with arrest if she did not stop filming. As I was not there, I am not a Plaintiff nor have any inside knowledge.

Mike Stollenwerk
OpenCarry.org
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News coverage:

1. http://pahomepage.com/content/fulltext/?cid=25398 - video link embedded with me on the air yesterday.

SNIP

Organizations such as opencarry.org say these law abiding citizens were pulled from their dinner, asked for their "papers" and that personal property was confiscated.

[NOTE: on the video, the police chief is very confused - like almost states, there is no gun registration and so seizing gun owners to run ID checks and gun serial number checks made no practical, and even less legal sense - I got in a cite to Arizona v. Hicks.]

2. http://www.wnep.com/Global/story.asp?S=8320639

3. http://www.thetimes-tribune.com/site...d=590572&rfi=8 w/video
SNIP

Contacted by The Times-Tribune, Lackawanna County District Attorney Andy Jarbola declined to comment on this specific case, but said people have a right to openly carry a weapon without having to show identification or a permit.

“Police can ask, but if they don’t want to give it, they don’t have to,” he said. “It’s going to be surprising to the public, but that’s the current state of law.”

4. http://pahomepage.com/media_player.php?media_id=15731 w/ 911 call played and ID refusal/arrest/gun seizure discussed.

[Pa. Patriot]

Nice write up, Mike.
Thanks for all your work in this.

Also, to everyone that came out last night, I got to personally thank some of you after the meeting but I would like to again publicly thank the others. And of course a big thank you as well to everyone who has shown support in the many other different ways they continue to do so in this matter.

[ChamberedRound]

5. Litigation possible. Litigation for violations for Fourth Amendment and other rights may be pending by folks who were seized by police and one gun owner's unarmed wife threatened with arrest if she did stop filming. As I was not there, I am not a Plaintiff nor have any inside knowledge.

Mike, shouldn't this read as:

"...one gun owner's unarmed wife threatened with arrest if she didn't stop filming..." ?

[Damage control]

It makes me wonder if they took the 911 call from Sunday and played it as it was Fridays?


DC

[knighthawk06699]

Mike very well done and thank you so very much for your effort on this one. Second I would like to say that there was no "publicity" until the police showed up. For people to be afraid of a gun an inanimate object hell they might as well be scared of the spare tire of their car, cars kill!!!!

[tdyoung58]

Sometimes being a responsible adult sucks . . . LOL

Was working out of state or I'd have been there.

[headcase]

I'll tell you what, that Eric Scheiner does a great job moderating the interactive segments on WYOU, despite his employers' anti-gun agenda.

[SFMarine]

Nice write-up. All the facts are there and easy to interpret.

[Petalpusher]

Mike, Due to my crazy work hours and those of my husband. We are unable to attend meetings and get togethers. Hopefully soon one will coordinate with my schedule so that I can show my support and commend the people who so diligently fights for our rights. I really got an inside view of the things I missed because of this post and I Thank You!