EDITORIAL Feedback
By Donald L. Cline
“DUCEY FLIP-FLOPS ON RED FLAG LAWS” is the headline of the front page article, Payson News, February 14th. The article then notes that Governor Ducey’s spokesman, Patrick Ptak, asserts just the opposite, revealing a bait-and-switch effort by the Governor: He still wants Red Flag Laws, but claims his version, called “Severe Threat Order of Protection” (STOP) adds “due process” to the process.
No, it does not. One wonders who is selling him this nonsense? There must be a con-artist on the Ninth Floor of the Capital Building scamming our governor and attempting to get him to scam us. Whoever it is needs to be fired and permanently banned from government offices for malfeasance.
Governor Ducey’s STOP legislation, HB2321, is co-sponsored exclusively by Democrats. He is beginning to sound more like a Democrat than a Republican.
HB2321 is not criminal law. The victim of this tyrannical piece of legislative garbage is not a defendant in a prosecution. He is a “respondent” in a civil proceeding.
Our rights exist at law, not at equity (civil). Any proceeding that purports to deprive us of our right to keep and bear arms, or our rights to property, or any other right without criminal prosecution and conviction by a court of law is by definition a failure of due process. Merely having the victim of this government thuggery show up at an equity court hearing where his claim to fundamental rights will fall on deaf ears is not due process!
Our rights, and all of them, including our right to keep and bear arms, are rights at LAW, not at “Equity.” There are no “rights” available in Equity other than those agreed to by contract. Any attempt to claim “rights” at a civil hearing will be ignored or, if pursued adamantly, are likely to result in citation for contempt of court. And the hapless victim of this “jackbootery” won’t even know why his rights are being ignored.
Government, State or federal, has no authority, administratively, civilly, or lawfully, over our RIGHTS so long as our exercise of rights do not infringe upon the rights of anyone else. Being armed is not an infringement. Being armed and angry is not an infringement. Threatening anyone’s safety, on the other hand, is an infringement, but it can only be dealt with criminally. The person issuing the threat can be arrested and prosecuted, but neither his rights nor his property can be taken from him without conviction of criminal conduct.
Arizona Revised Statutes already provide more than adequate means to deal with someone who shows signs of being dangerous to himself or others. This STOP scam, and its sibling Red Flag scam, is nothing but an effort to further entrench the European government model in which government lists a bunch of privileges and calls them “rights,” but they are not rights, for government can revoke them or ignore them at its whim.
THIS IS AMERICA, Governor Ducey, founded on the premise that our RIGHTS are Gifts from God and beyond the reach of government at any level. Your proposed STOP order is a jackbooted tyranny not available to lawful government.
Totalitarian government cannot exist where the people are armed. Totalitarian government cannot be prevented where the people are disarmed.
