Steven Croskey (Lawyer) American's Constitutional Freedoms at a Crossroad

 Our liberties hang in the balance as our government officials boldly ignore the limitations of their positions as it pertains to the powers provide in our Constitutional framework.  In this episode I am joined by lawyer Steven Croskey so we dissect such examples such as the FISA Act's warrantless spying on Americans.  As we delve into the historical bedrock laid down by our Founding Fathers, it's clear that understanding these principles is not just academic—it's a shield against the encroachment of an overpowering elite. This episode is a wake-up call, urging every citizen to become well-versed defenders of our freedoms and scrutineers of government actions that may threaten the sanctuaries of our rights. This is a controversial topic, but one that is necessary to address!

Check out the previous episodes of the Full Spectrum Warriors Podcast with Steven Croskey on E33 & E38 

This episode is sponsored by Grunt Style, a lifestyle brand whose mission is to bring patriotic apparel to every home in America. Use code RICH15 when you order and receive 15% off!

Transcript

Rich : 0:12

Welcome to the Full Spectrum Warriors podcast. My name is Rich Graham and today's episode is brought to you by Grunt Style, the American Patriot Apparel brand. Today, we're joined by Steve Kroski as we dive into the legal side of what if you thought you were fighting to uphold freedom, but instead you're protecting those who are advancing tyranny? It's a Hot Topic podcast episode, so stay tuned and let's check it out. All right, steve, welcome back to the Full Spectrum Warriors podcast. Great to have you back. Good to be back, thank you.

Rich : 0:48

So today we want to talk about some hot items that are currently taking place in our federal government. We have the reauthorization of the FISA Act, which is supposed to be used for surveilling foreign terrorist cells, but, as we'll get into discussion here, this is being used to use warrantless surveillance over US citizens, holding citizens in custody indefinitely, waiving rights to speedy trials all sorts of things like that that are completely unconstitutional and were reserved for foreign actors being used inside the US, and how our government is currently weaponizing different parts of the government that possibly aren't even constitutional to begin with possibly aren't even constitutional to begin with. So we brought in constitutional law expert lawyer, steve Krosky, who is here to chime in and weigh in and give us some real thorough background on how can we dissect the laws that are on the books and the government agencies and the law enforcement agencies that they're utilizing to enforce. These will quote, quote, unquote laws which are actually more of regulations at best, but we're going to get into that today. So lots to talk about and if you haven't heard the two previous episodes with Steve Kroski, where we're talking about the inception of the Constitution, what the Founding Fathers truly meant, what was the intention and where do our rights stem from within those conversations and within those documents, I highly suggest you go back and listen to the first two episodes with Steve. I'll leave those episode numbers in the description below so you can get access to those. I just don't remember them off the top of my head.

Rich : 2:50

But yeah, this is going to be a very important episode and it's going to be very important that we educate ourselves on this stuff. Otherwise, we're going to walk ourselves straight into a communist China style dictatorship where dictatorship, where everything, we lose all our rights and it's if you're not doing anything wrong. What do you have to hide? But that's not what our constitution said. Our constitution gave us rights to freedoms and liberties and separation from the government. The government was there to uh, to uphold very specific things and micromanaging every aspect of our life and treating us like we're criminals, you know, was not one of them. So, steve, welcome back to the podcast. We're excited to talk with you today.

Steven: 3:34

Yeah, thanks, and I appreciate that you brought up a lot of good pointers, right, especially the first two podcasts. We dove into a lot of other subjects there. First two podcasts. We dove into a lot of other subjects there, laying the framework for how the Constitution was formed, why it was formed, the things going on in society at the time that that happened obviously the Revolutionary War and whatnot.

Steven: 3:57

But you know, just like with anything, this stuff takes time. There's a lot of information that goes into this and just to get through law school, we were required to take two semesters of just constitutional law, right, two semesters being a full year. And then we had to take the bar and pass the bar, with constitutional law being fair game on that and even still, right. I mean, that was just barely scratching the surface, you know. So this is our third podcast together. I think the other two were about two hours each, plus or minus, right. You know I don't know how long this one's going to go, but you know you're looking at four to six hours worth of material. We can only get into so much here, but it's really interesting because you know you brought up a good point about the like the elitist in the society. I've never heard this, I've never seen this, or no one's actually ever come out and said this. But one of the things I found fascinating I was down in Mexico the other year and we were visiting the Mayan ruins and one of the things they kept bringing up was that they're elitists in that society and you see this, not just in the Mayan society but any society. They had, like this secretive form of government that you unless you're in the government and born into it that their secrets were taught within their little club and everyone else the peasants had to follow their orders, right, and there's repercussions for it. We're not there yet, right, but we're certainly heading that direction and it's complete opposite of we, the people. It's complete opposite of we're a free society and the government isn't there to micromanage our daily lives.

Steven: 5:41

Right, constitutional law is kind of the same thing.

Steven: 5:44

It's open to anybody. Anyone can go to a library, or at least a legal library, dive into the constitution where the cases have been, you know, nothing's stopping anyone from doing that, um, but it's. It's interesting because I see a lot of the times, um, you know, whether it's on TV or a news article, or a snippet, or a meme or whatever. I see a lot of elitists telling us what the Constitution says or telling us how the Constitution applies, and a lot of people take it for granted. A lot of people look at it and just run with it and they don't question it. And that applies to law enforcement too. I see that happening all the time with law enforcement, which we'll get into here in a little bit. But I think it's really important for us as a society to be able to go out and critically think about these issues ourselves and come to our own decisions about what the Constitution says, what it means, how it should be applied and how it is being applied today, differently than when it was first framed.

Rich : 6:57

I think one of the challenges with that is and you hear this being discussed from the World Economic Forum and the whole thing with the pandemic and all that stuff.

Rich : 7:08

You saw these billionaires sitting up there on stage having these conversations.

Rich : 7:13

If you've been listening to what the World Economic Forum has been saying, you've obviously heard us talk about this before on the podcast.

Rich : 7:19

But they were all talking about we need to force behavior change, right. Were all talking about we need to force behavior change, right. And one of them was talking about we have the illusion of freedom, we have the illusion of free thought and free decision making, but in reality, when these big companies or governments get together and they only allow you to have certain options to choose from, when they provide you what the options are to choose from, then you have an illusion of free choice, but you're not really choosing. And that's one of the things I feel like a lot of people are running into with our elections, where it's like you know, are these really the people who are the most competent people to run our country, or are the elite class just providing us a few options to choose from? But the two sides of the same coin, this big, you know, government monstrosity is just going to push through and do exactly what it wants to do anyway, right?

Steven: 8:21

um, on that point too right and and I think we touched on this briefly on the second podcast you know, on in in Biden's one of his addresses to Congress. I think it was in 2021. He specifically stood up there and this isn't an exact quote, but essentially the message he said was that we, the people, does not mean the population of America. We, the people, means you and me, you, congress and myself, the president of the United States, right, and you know the whole Congress stood up and clapped and applauded that.

Rich : 8:56

Right, I mean what you know which that is not what it means.

Steven: 9:00

Exactly.

Rich : 9:01

Exactly, that's not what the founding fathers meant when they said we, the people, when you see people reading the constitution and the bill of rights, when it says we, the people, that that wasn't representing the president and Congress and all that stuff. They didn't have that yet. Exactly that was the, you know, in the declaration of independence they were saying we, the people, find these truths to be self-evident right, that all men were created equal and endowed with certain liberties from the creator. That wasn't the president, that wasn't the Congress. That was saying us, the people of this community, the people of this nation, right, people as individuals. You know, and they've now taken that and reinterpreted it right To fit their own, you know, goals and agenda which kind of begs to fit their own you know goals and agenda.

Steven: 9:46

Which kind of begs the question right now, you know what, if you know? This applies to law enforcement, this applies to the military, this applies to really anybody enforcing laws, be it code enforcers, whoever. You know what, if you thought you were fighting to uphold freedom but instead were actually protecting those who are advancing tyranny?

Rich : 10:07

yeah, I mean that is a hard pill to swallow for a lot of people because there is so many things happening right now that are completely unconstitutional but just like our children waking up every morning now into a world that is filled with cameras, you are surveilled on everything you do. You have a conversation. You get an ad on your phone about that conversation. You just had trying to market you a product. You go to town. There's video cameras in stores. There's video cameras on traffic lights. There's video cameras on people's refrigerators. Now, for Christ's sake, you know. There's video cameras in stores. There's video cameras on traffic lights. There's video cameras on people's refrigerators. Now, for Christ's sake, you know, there, there's, there's. There's cameras on everything, and everything's listening, watching and monitoring you Right.

Rich : 10:54

And that's just normal, like, like the kids. If you ask the kids, that's not weird. But some of us, who are you know, grew up in the eighties and earlier, the 90s and earlier. You're like nothing was videotaped. Right.

Rich : 11:08

You might have someone bring a camera with, like a little, like the little spiral thing you like, wind on the back. You know what I mean, right, and maybe you get a couple of photos, but everything wasn't documented. When you go into some of the constitution, some of the amendments in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, they specifically give us the freedom to where they don't have the authority to monitor every single thing you do, right right, and you know we'll really dive into FISA here in a little bit.

Steven: 11:37

But it's interesting because almost everything we were given protections against is as of 2024, has completely flipped on its head, right. I mean, you look at it and there's so much to get into we can't even possibly cover it on this or even 10 more podcasts after this, right.

Steven: 11:56

But, what's any more as far as the Constitution is, what's up is down and what's down is up, and what's left, left is right and what's right is now left, and it's all over the place, like it'll say one thing, but completely be enforced and now mean something totally different than what it started out as, and it was never amended right? These particular provisions were never amended, they've just been changed and manipulated over time.

Rich : 12:23

So let's recap that, let's outline that more specifically of what you're talking about. So walk through us the process of how it's supposed to be versus what's actually happening.

Steven: 12:34

Okay, so, all right. So you got the constitution and you got the bill of rights. Okay, this, let me preface it with this Okay, a lot of what was originally made or drafted or passed is not how it's enforced today, right? If you came to me for legal advice, right, I would give you completely different legal advice because I know how it's enforced today. Right, but the Constitution in order to change it and this is important, right, and there's some case law that we're going to get to in a second, and I keep going back to this case in every single other podcast. It's Marbury versus Madison.

Steven: 13:11

But the Constitution, when it was made, that was a super majority of the delegates in Congress that voted to approve the words, yes, the words in the Constitution, but, more importantly, the words that they left out. Words in the constitution. But, more importantly, the words that they left out of a lot of amendments, too. Right, just like if, if you were pressure testing gear right on the range, right, it may sound great on paper, but if you get it out there and it starts raining and your flashlight dies, is that, is that a waterproof flashlight? Well, no, we just found out that it died in the rain. Right, same with the, with the Constitution or any statute right, it's got to be pressure tested. So when you're drafting these things what you should be doing, what the litigate it You'd hear counter arguments as to okay, these words and phrases were left out. Therefore it means this or it doesn't mean that, right. And you see all these things, how they're pushed, they're pulled, they're stretched, they're compressed, metaphorically speaking, and you kind of are able to apply that on how you look at other different things.

Steven: 14:23

If you look at the Constitution, the only way to change it, or the only original way to change it, was you can amend it, but you need to get a supermajority vote of Congress to do that, supermajority vote being two-thirds of the states to be able to change or amend the Constitution. If we look right, this is this. Is this pressure test an amendment? Let's look at the second amendment for a second. Let me pull this out. Okay, second amendment a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state. The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed okay, let's just focus on the. And bear arms shall not be infringed. Okay, let's just focus on the last little part. Shall not be infringed Makes relatively simple sense, shall not be infringed.

Rich : 15:20

Let's look at not just what's written, but let's also look at what's not there. Yeah, it doesn't say common sense gun control.

Steven: 15:34

It doesn't say common sense measures or what is socially acceptable for the times. Sorts of descriptionary words are left out. So if the word material is left out, or if the word substantial is left out, well, that means whoever drafted that and passed that purposely left those out. Or if they're not in there, you can't read those in there. So if you're looking at this from a pure originalist standpoint, shall not be infringed means, even the slightest. Any slight infringement on there technically is an infringement on the right to keep and bear arms. And if you look and I'm going to jump to Marbury v Madison Again, I know we really dived into it on the other podcast but the gist of that is that if a law is passed and this was a law in the early 1800s it's longer the law.

Steven: 16:28

Now I get it, I understand that. But if you go back to the start or near the start, the law was that if a law conflicted with the constitution, the law was void on its face. It could not even be enforced from the start. Okay, so I'm going to throw some softball questions out there. If the government says that you're not allowed to have a short-barreled rifle, right, short-barreled rifle, I believe, is under 16 inches. Yes.

Steven: 17:01

The barrel length has to be under 16 inches to be qualified as short-barreled rifle in today's lens. If you will through the atf um, unless you apply for a tax stamp, pay a 200 fee or the tax stamp for it and also get approved right and also provide additional things above and beyond what a normal background check would okay would have, considering that you would also have to provide fingerprints right, yeah

Rich : 17:32

a full set of fingerprints, you have to go to your local sheriff or police chief and have, uh, them give approval for your request. Um, so they're gonna look into and they can just deny that, like. If they're like, yeah, man, we think you're a jerk, uh, or you know, whatever it is, if there's anything political going on, that's up to the, the local law enforcement officer can deny you, even if you haven't broken a law, right, they can deny you that if they feel fit, right.

Rich : 18:03

So there's other things in there, aside from the background check. And uh, just paying the tax stamp, it's um, and now you're on a database and now the federal government can come to your home at any point in time and inspect that you still have that weapon there and that you have it in your custody. Uh, so you forfeit those rights that you would have with owning a normal firearm when you have any class two or three item.

Steven: 18:29

And if you don't go through that process and don't get a tax stamp, presumably if you were found with it you could be arrested and charged right there on the spot and it'd be confiscated from you and if you want to travel across state lines, you have to notify the ATF and get approval for your travel.

Rich : 18:46

A lot of times they just say you have to notify them. You know what I mean.

Steven: 18:50

So is that an infringement on the right to keep and bear arms?

Rich : 18:54

I would say yeah.

Steven: 18:55

Yeah, I would agree with that. I would agree with that. Is it a material infringement? I don't care if it's a material infringement at this point, because we don't have to go into that test from the Second Amendment, the way it's written. Yeah, all we're looking for is an infringement.

Steven: 19:12

Right, if we looked at this from a different standpoint. Right, like this whole constitutional carry Right. You know, before again, I was born into a system where you had to apply for a permit to be able to conceal a firearm on your person and you had to keep it concealed. Right Now, florida and other states have changed that, where you no longer have to get a permit and they call it constitutional carry Right. Why is it called constitutional carry? Probably it's a, it's a, it's a ploy. It's a, it's a marketing ploy to sound like they're, you know, going back to originalist times. But if you had to apply for a permit to first be able to keep a firearm on you, is that an infringement? Yeah, right, yeah, if, if, before that, if you didn't have a permit and you found what? If you were found with a pistol in your waistband, you'd probably be arrested and charged for illegally concealing a firearm. At that point, is that not an infringement?

Rich : 20:13

Yeah, so then it begs the difference. How many people with the thing with New York City. New York City banned firearms and this got overturned. You weren't allowed to own a gun in the city or a pistol in the city, for it's like 108, like 108 years, and then finally it got challenged and, like it made its way and they finally agreed to hear it and it went to the supreme court and it got found to be unconstitutional yep so and and, but now you have eight years of people who had been victim of crimes that could have, could have demonstrated self-defense but were denied the right and the ability right under the duress of being prosecuted and convicted as a felon right for carrying a gun to protect themselves.

Rich : 21:17

Right. Then you have all the other people who you know came across the bridge and maybe they're not from New York and they didn't know, like, oh, I didn't know you couldn't have a gun in new york city. I got a concealed carry permit, or I'm a law enforcement officer in another state and that means I can carry in all 50 states. Well, let's look at coming to new york city and they're like.

Rich : 21:35

They're like the one judge who just said the second amendment doesn't apply here right so if you're a law enforcement officer and you were carrying and you came into one of these things like you go, like for me what happened one time? I almost got arrested in new york city. I went to go to the freaking world trade center memorial right the museum there, and I had a pocket knife on me and it was one of those auto auto assist, not a switchblade, but like one like has, like a spring assist when you open it yeah and then it had, uh, you know, they were like all the police officers were like, has like a spring assist when you open it?

Rich : 22:05

Yeah, and then it had. You know, they were like all the police officers were like whoa, like we got him, like we got the dude. And I was there with a group and they found out that a bunch of us were like SEAL veterans or whatever and they hooked us up Right and they just held on to it till I left and they gave it back to me and they were like pull me aside. Like dude, you can't come into New York City with this thing. If this was anyone else, you'd be in jail right now. You can't have a spring assist, you can't have a pocket knife. But a spring assisted pocket knife is like this is a felony man, wow. And you can't bring weapons in New York City. And I'm like dude, it's a freaking pocket knife yeah, you know, but they did me, they did me a favor.

Rich : 22:46

Right cool finger quotes yeah I mean, and I appreciate them not arresting me, but the fact that that was even on the table is bullshit yeah, well, look at, I mean, this is going to be a tough pill to swallow.

Steven: 22:55

But, like, look at, um, you know there's laws on the book now that felons are not allowed to have firearms. All right, that's, that's. That's, that's from 1968. Right, so again, being born into a system that you're used to and accustomed to. Well, back in the day, back in the late 1700s, early 1800s, it didn't matter. You couldn't have any law that infringed on anyone's ability to have a firearm to keep and bear arms.

Steven: 23:23

So now in today's society, if somebody has a, if they have a felony conviction and they also have a felony or a firearm and a felony conviction, and if law enforcement goes and arrest that person is is, is law enforcement upholding the constitution as originally written? Are they upholding laws now that currently don't mesh with the constitution as originally written? Or are they upholding laws now that currently don't mesh with the constitution but are still out there anyways, like there's a whole complex web of you know that we can get into. But it's interesting because if you have a law that says felons are not allowed to have firearms, I'm not asking if you agree if felons can have firearms or not. I'm not asking if you think they should or shouldn't. I'm just saying that that is an infringement on someone's right to keep and bear arms and the law itself, if you follow Marbury v Madison, doesn't mesh with the Second Amendment as it's written. Therefore, under the Marbury-Madison rules it's dead on arrival. That law should never be enforced.

Rich : 24:32

So let's look at this too. So all right if you were a felon. So there was a teenage kid who went for a joyride and took his parents' car car out, crashed into a mailbox um, he might even been drunk driving, right, I'm not saying the kid did a smart thing. He got jail time. They convicted him as on the federal court because he hit a mailbox. So they used the mailbox to charge him federally and then they gave him a charge for each account of mail that was in the mailbox, right?

Steven: 25:11

As well.

Rich : 25:12

And the kid got hammered. He got like he got really hammered, right, but that with that felony conviction he can no longer own guns. So now that takes into the consideration of okay, so now this dude who went on a joyride, yeah, he's an idiot, but so does that mean he shouldn't be able to defend himself for the rest of his life? And if he gets married and he has kids, right, he can't protect his home, his wife, can his wife now own a gun? Well, if they're in the same house and he has access, what's that term called? Again, constructive possession, constructive possession. So now, not only can he not have a gun because of constructive possession, I don't even know if his wife can have a gun because they live in the same house and he would have access to it, which would now make her a felon, or you know, uh, uh, enabling, or what's the term for that.

Rich : 26:07

Uh, like an accomplice aiding and abetting a felon right With access, you know, um to a, to a firearm. So now, all of a sudden, this, this one thing of like okay, well, felons shouldn't be carrying guns, okay, well. Well, that's a pretty broad. There's a lot of things you can be convicted of. A felony for right, not all of them are violent. And to say that for the rest of your life, now, you can't um protect yourself or your family, or your family can't even protect themselves in your behalf, right, that seems like a uh now.

Steven: 27:08

In your behalf. Right, that seems like a now. Did that ever go before the Congress and get voted on and overturned or appealed for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights? Did that go through the process or is that just like an executive order? Yeah, going back to, how is the constitution worded and does the law conflict with it? And if it does conflict with it, it's unenforceable, it's dead on its face, right? So if we go back to the second amendment shall not be infringed. If we take it the guns away from the felons, then that is a technical infringement. I don't. That's really not debatable right Now whether or not.

Steven: 27:44

If we as a society think that's an appropriate thing to do, then we need to go about the right way to affect that law and affect that change. And the only way to do that right, because the Constitution is the supreme law of the land. It's at the top. Any other law or ordinance or county code or regulation or state law or whatever in theory comes below the Constitution of the United States. So this is a federal law. The ATF enforces it. Again, the ATF was created in 1972.

Rich : 28:19

If we look at this, none of this was voted on in congress as an amendment to the constitution so the so the thing of a felon not being able to own a gun, that never actually got amended to the constitution you can.

Steven: 28:32

You can look through every single amendment in the constitution.

Rich : 28:35

So that's just some made up. Someone decided that this is what we're going to do, and they just pushed it through right and maybe that's the right thing to do.

Steven: 28:42

I don't know, maybe a portion of that's the right thing to do.

Steven: 28:44

I don't know, maybe a portion of it's the right thing to do, right If you're.

Steven: 28:46

If you're a serial killer and you prey on people and you want to kill people and you got convicted and somehow made parole and you're out on the streets again, maybe you shouldn't have a firearm, right. Maybe maybe you're. Just, we all agree that that probably shouldn't be case. That's probably not a safe situation. So maybe we should let them or not let them have firearms, right. But if you committed tax evasion or tax fraud because your accountant may have messed up a few numbers and they came after you hard for it and somehow you got convicted of felony tax, or maybe you accepted a plea offer or whatever, and now you got this tax evasion, does that mean you can't have a firearm and be able to protect your family? If we're not having debates like this in the manner that we should and and go about amending the constitution via a super majority vote, then anything that that comes from that, anything short of that, is dead on its face it doesn't even get, it shouldn't be enforced according to the original ways this country was found.

Rich : 29:48

I mean, look what they're doing with, uh, president Trump right now. They took a law, they took a, a thing that was a misdemeanor that had expired, right? Um, what's the term for? The? Uh, the timeframe where you can litigate something? Statute, the? Uh, the time frame where you can litigate something. Statute of limitations, thank you.

Rich : 30:08

So statute of limitations had passed, the the issue was a misdemeanor and the court, the prosecutors in new york city, decided to change just out of the blue.

Rich : 30:20

It didn't go through the, all the chains and processes and voting and all that stuff. They just went in and changed what the statute of limitation was on that item and changed what it was going to be ruled as. Now. They changed it to a felony and they brought charges upon him. Should be being charged with felony crimes like breaking into buildings, assaulting people and all these kind of things with illegal immigrants and all sorts of other stuff that now would have been felony crimes. And they go and just rewrite those and say these are all now misdemeanors and those people get arrested and let back out on the same day. And meanwhile, you know so again you have people implementing forms of lawfare, where now, because they're not being held accountable to how the system's supposed to be and what our actual rights are. They can just go change the laws on a on the fly, and now you are the victim of uh, you know the legal system which is being used as a weapon.

Steven: 31:31

Right, exactly, and you got you know. You look back through a lot of this right, like the creation of the ATF, the creation of the FBI, the creation of the NSA, the CIA, the Social Security Act, Medicare, medicaid, all these different sorts of things. A lot of them, or pretty much everything I just listed, was created in the 1900s, right Like 1972, the ATF was created, fbi was 1908. Nsa 1952. Cia 1947. By a small body of people that, like the ATF, for instance, right enforcing all these laws that violate the Second Amendment of the Constitution. When was a supermajority vote ever held on that? It never occurred. It never happened.

Rich : 32:17

Yeah, now the ATF's trying to write their own laws and they've been getting challenged on this. But like you saw it, with the bump stock ban and stuff like that, High-capacity magazine ban and they've been getting challenged on this.

Steven: 32:25

But like you saw it, with the bump stock ban and stuff like that, they high capacity magazine.

Rich : 32:26

Yeah, so they've. Basically laws have not gone before Congress. Atf has now been making up their own definitions of the laws.

Steven: 32:38

And well it's even it's even different Right Like even if a law goes before Congress, a lot of laws just need a simple majority to pass. Right, so Congress can pass, so Congress can. If we go back to the originalist, the originalistic standpoint, congress can pass a law that they can try to pass, a law that says you're not allowed to have in your possession a rifle with a barrel less than 16 inches Right, and they just need a simple majority to pass that law. Barrel less than 16 inches right, and they just need a simple majority to pass that law. Well, okay, if we look at Marbury versus Madison, does that line up with the Second Amendment? No, it infringes it, right. So if it infringes it, it's automatically dead on its face. Well, okay, how do we? If you want to change that as a society, how do you go about doing that? Again, you got to get the supermajority vote of Congress. You got to get two thirds of Congress to go and amend the Constitution, amend the Second Amendment and then any new law they want to pass, so long as it meshes up with the new hypothetical amendment, then it could be a valid law, right? But why aren't they going and trying to get these supermajority votes? Probably because they know they can't get them, so they go about other ways of doing it right again.

Steven: 33:46

I was born into a system where the atf was already here. I think you were too right. We just grew up with it and I've always thought it was normal. But you go in and again, I, I, I've I've been grappling with this stuff for well over a decade now and the more and more you get into this, you're just like well, why, why is it that way? Well, how is that the case? And you're just like, well, okay. Well, if this is how they taught us the way about how to amend the constitution, and we know what the law was back in the day whenever the constitution was created, how did we get so far away from that? Yeah, well, if the only way to get away from it was through the supermajority vote. But the supermajority vote didn't happen, but we still got away from it. How the fuck did?

Rich : 34:33

we get away from it. Yeah, you hear this term a lot like common sense gun control, common sense laws, common sense regulations. You know common sense practices, and they use that basically to freaking gaslight you into going. Oh yeah, I guess that makes sense. And it's one of those things, though, where if you're not a criminal, then you have nothing to hide, where, if you're not a criminal, then you have nothing to hide. So let us oversee and micromanage your actions. Right, and one of the things that happened with the ATF recently was they tried to change without going before Congress or anything like that, and I get. What your point is is like this shouldn't even matter if they did go before congress, because it's all bs to begin with, because they don't have like technically the super majority vote yeah, this, this agency in general shouldn't even exist, but they went or it should, but on a much more limited scale

Steven: 35:40

yeah right is probably the more appropriate way.

Rich : 35:42

So they basically said that prior. Let's go back to these class two and three items. So these are the things that fall under the assault weapons ban, right? So if you want to have a suppressor, a fully automatic weapon, a short barreled rifle or a short barreled shotgun, something of that nature, and you have to go through this process and get your fingerprints done and go talk to the police chief and do the background check, pay your tax, allow them to have access to your home at any point in time if they want to come and inspect whether that weapon is still in your possession, right?

Rich : 36:14

It used to be that you would just have to be in possession of this. So if I wanted to go to the range and let one of my friends shoot my rifle that's a short bowed rifle, but I'm there with them that they could shoot it. We have a lot of companies who'd sell, send us suppressors or different rifles that would fall in this category and we have the licensing to do so. But now they changed it. What was that term you just used again about constructive?

Steven: 36:43

possession constructive possession constructive possession.

Rich : 36:46

So now they changed it into you have to be in possession of a class two or three item at all times. This means that if you went to the gun range and you put the gun on the table, you took your hands off of it, took a couple steps back to load your next magazine and there's other people standing around the table and they could reach that gun and touch it right and you didn't have access because you weren't physically in control of it, because it was sitting on the table. You guys are standing around the table. Everyone at that table is now committing a felony due to constructive possession, right.

Steven: 37:28

So now textbook standpoint. Yes, from a textbook standpoint.

Rich : 37:31

Right. So what this means is, if you have a company, you can't do a range day and let people try to shoot these things so you can then sell them. That means, if you have a training company, like me, I can't allow our students and the people attending to try to use this stuff. That means that if I'm married, right, or I have a roommate you know, maybe I'm not married, maybe I have a roommate If that weapon is in the house and someone else knows the code to the safe maybe my wife knows the code to the safe or whatever we are both committing a felony due to the constructive possession.

Rich : 38:08

Now we've called the ATF five times on this topic to try to get a definitive answer and basically what they said was um, yeah, I know that's how it's written, but it's not like we're going to actually enforce it like that, you know? Um, you know we have the ability to use discretion and I don't worry about it. Like, no, no one cares, right. But now here's the deal you have something like again going back to I'm using this as an example because everyone sees it and it's in the news. With Trump, they've basically been shifting through all of his emails, sifting through his his finances, sifting through his tax records. They're looking for something he did wrong. They're. They're looking for a crime, and any crime will do, because they want to stop him from running for reelection.

Steven: 39:04

And I believe they got all that through the FISA program.

Rich : 39:07

And we're going to talk about that in a second. So let's say I'm sorry, just finish this thought.

Steven: 39:13

I want to just emphasize this. I know I keep saying FISA. The actual is Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, foreign yeah, let's talk about that next. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Good, sorry, yeah, which. Let's talk about that next Foreign intelligence surveillance.

Rich : 39:26

That good, sorry, yeah, so, but the thing with this is is that the ATF might say like, hey, we're not going to do that until you piss someone off. Maybe you want to do, maybe you have a company or there's some kind of politics going on, or something like that. Or they come to your house for one thing and now they take this, and now they have the ability to utilize this against you, right, and they say they won't until they do it seems to always happen that way, right Like.

Steven: 39:57

Let's look at the federal income tax, right, that was never a thing prior to 1909. Well, at least they tried it and it failed multiple times prior to 1909.

Steven: 40:06

The federal government had no income tax from the citizens, right? President Lincoln tried it during the Civil War, but ultimately it was deemed unconstitutional, saying that you can't do that. The United States Supreme Court said you cannot do that, right, right. But President Taft, in 1909, was able to convince Congress at that time to pass an amendment to the Constitution that allowed for a federal income tax, and their reasoning for it was we're not going to use it always, we only need it in the cases of national emergencies or if we're at a foreign war. That's the only time we need it, guys. So just pass it now. Well, as we know, now fast forward to 2024, everything is taxed federally and I guarantee you, if you don't pay the right amount, or whatever they deem the right amount is, they will come after you to get their money.

Rich : 40:53

Oh yeah, and that's a felony, exactly, and they'll seize your accounts. They'll seize your assets.

Steven: 40:58

Exactly Right. So it's like you know they pass it under. We'll play nice with it terms. We're only going to use it in certain context. But skip a generation, fast forward a little bit. It gets in the wrong hands and you get what you got today.

Rich : 41:17

Yeah, and it's not just. I mean we were using the ATF as an example because a lot of people who listen to our podcast are in the shooting community but even with, like the environmental stuff, with fishing, wildlife and things of that nature technically, you know, florida is a big state for fishing and all that kind of stuff If I went out into my yard, right, and this is how these laws, just again like you're supposed to, originally it was the life, liberty and property. It wasn't life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it was life, liberty and property. So one of the things with property tax that's such BS is that you were supposed to own your land and now you don't. Because if you don't pay your property taxes which basically paying rent to the government right through the excuse of federal education, which again is another bullshit thing, right but if you don't pay those taxes, they're going to come and confiscate your land. So you can never truly own your land because you're always paying rent. So once you can't pay that rent check, they come in and confiscate it.

Rich : 42:19

But like the fish and wildlife and these conservation things, let's say, you know, here I have this big ranch out here, 55 acres, and if I wanted to go dig a hole in the ground and put a liner in it, fill it with fish. Right, I put the fish in the ground. They're not wild fish. I want to go put fish in the ground and then go fishing in my yard, have a couple of friends over and while we're hanging out, you know just, uh, yeah, man, I got a little fishing hole I made. You want to go throw a pole in there and catch one of these stocked fish in this pond.

Rich : 42:56

They would have to register with the state of Florida and get a fishing license to fish in my manmade pond in my, my yard, or we're committing a felony right and they can come in and confiscate everything on my property, right, because we're illegally fishing, poaching, almost right. And um, the uh. The thing with that is they'll say like, oh, we'd never enforce that. You know, yeah, it says that, but we're like no one's coming to do that. But the fact of the matter is it's on the books and they can, right, and they're not doing it and they're not going to until they do. And if they get you for one small little thing, they can just throw everything at you and basically take all of your property and turn your world upside down through authority that they never actually had to begin with. Right.

Steven: 43:52

That's wild, man. I mean, look back in the day before 1776, where the colonists were experiencing similar types of things, right, not necessarily identical where it's like you couldn't have your buddy come over and fish without a license without getting in trouble. God forbid, you catch some fish that's undersized, that you had no idea was an issue. Right, a lot of these colonists were just like you know what? We're just, we're done listening to you. We're just not going to listen to the judges, we're not going to listen to the governor who's appointed by the king. We're just, we're going to pay them. No, accord, we're not going to. We're not. We're just not going to follow your shit anymore. Right, like we're just, we're just done right. Well now, obviously, I don't recommend, I can't recommend doing that. I don't recommend doing that. Because if you do that, right, just like back in the day, what did they do? What did the king do? Well, he sent. He sent troops to enforce it. Okay, you're not going to tell me you can't listen to me, so I'm going to send my guys in to force you to listen to me.

Steven: 44:51

Right, today's equivalent is if you don't listen to a judge, if you don't come to court when you're supposed to come to court. Well, a warrant goes out for your arrest. Well, where does that warrant go? It goes to the sheriff's office. Sheriff's office then assigns it to a task force or maybe to a deputy, depending on your threat level and they say go get this person and bring him here. Go arrest this person and bring him before the court. He's going to answer for that right. So it's interesting. A lot of people keep saying that we want to go back to 1776. No-transcript.

Steven: 45:37

I don't know what they truly believe, but it would be political suicide if they came out and they were just like yeah, we want to give all the felons guns again, you know. I mean, well, do they? Do they believe that? I don't know. I don't know if they want to do that, right. But if they said that that's damn near political suicide these days, right. But the Constitution as written, it was never changed by a supermajority vote. So if we're playing by the original rules, that's the original rules?

Rich : 46:05

yeah, and it's. It is really interesting, um, how these things have kind of come into play and then they just stay and then it's like someone makes an executive order and then you just kind of leave it. And you had mentioned to me when we were talking about how the government is really just being lazy. That's a good point, yeah, and give us talk to us real quick about how the process happens to where something like let's go back to the fish and game thing about the size change of a fish or whatever, and it seems like it's it makes sense. But then at a lot of times you know there's adverse side effects for allowing an agency like fish and game or the ATF or the FBI to just have free reign to create laws or regulations and penalties for those regulations without it ever going before Congress for official oversight.

Steven: 47:06

I see. Okay, so I see a few patterns, right, if you look back and if you chronologically put this together, from the start of America all the way up to the present, and there's a few different patterns that you see, and not necessarily one always is present with the other patterns. Sometimes they're all present, sometimes it's more one pattern than the other couple that are present. But one of the patterns I see is that the government will try and pass certain laws, like the federal income tax. That that wasn't some new concept that just started in 1909. That had been tried before for the last 50, 60 years prior to that. It kept getting shot down and a major super majority they can never get it, they could just never pass it. So for the longest time, for 50, 60 years, that's an entire generation-ish, right? I don't know what categorizes a generation, but that's pretty much an entire lifespan for most people, or at least their meaningful life or productive life, if you will 1909.

Steven: 48:17

And then it became normal at that point, right, but it was passed under the guise of we're only going to use this in rare circumstances, like a national emergency, or if we're at a huge war and we got to fund this war. Right, we know that's not how it's used today, right? So you see it, they keep poking at it and chiseling away at what is acceptable. You see that with the Second Amendment they keep passing all these rules and regulations. And then now, right, if you get born into that New York law, that was on the books for 108 years, that was just normal. Right. If you go to New Jersey now and I've lived in New Jersey for quite a few years like God help you. If you're caught with a firearm, everything's illegal in New Jersey.

Steven: 49:02

Right right and New York's the same right and that's just how it is Like. That's just their mentality, that's what they're used to, that's what they were born into. Same with the federal income tax. The other thing that you see is right, that chiseling away at things. Another pattern that you see is a lot of radical changes radical for the time tend to happen. They tend to correspond with major international conflicts, be it World War II, be it World War I, be it the Civil War. I know the Civil War is not an international conflict, but it was a huge deal for our country at the time. Obviously, 9-11, right, a lot of these, whatever trajectory we were on legally at that time, pivots pretty substantial right around major world events.

Rich : 49:56

Give us a few examples of those.

Steven: 49:58

Sure so the Patriot Act right that was passed in 2001.

Rich : 50:03

They were trying to get that passed for years prior to that and it kept getting deemed unconstitutional and they couldn't get it passed Right.

Steven: 50:08

Perfect example, right. So they kept trying to chisel away with it. They were planting these seeds. It failed. They kept planting, they kept trying to pass it. It failed. And then September 11th happened and they used that as the perfect pretext to say well one. They named it the Patriots Act, right? Who's going to go against that? You're unpatriotic if you're against the Patriot Act.

Rich : 50:30

Yeah, and it was sold to the American people that this is so we can find the terrorists overseas.

Steven: 50:35

Right, yeah, so that. And also, I know 2008 isn't exactly 2001 when September 11th happened, but if we're, you know, touching on FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that was modified in 2008 pretty significantly to be able to target foreign subjects without warrants and, without you know, without first having to obtain a warrant, and that was a major pivoting point. That was first right. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that was created in 1978. Prior to 2008, it was utilized in a whole different context.

Rich : 51:14

Yeah, and it was probably used very strategically. Very strategically and when they needed it because they had to go and get a warrant they had to provide evidence and all that kind of stuff.

Steven: 51:29

I don't know right. I mean, I don't know what was said to Congress in 1978 to pass it, but I'm pretty darn certain that in 1978 the message wasn't we're going to use this on our own citizens and we're going to spy on on our own citizens and we're going to spy on our own citizens without warrants.

Rich : 51:44

Yeah, was that having anything to do with the Cuban Missile Crisis?

Steven: 51:47

Possibly, it's very possible. I mean I don't know. I mean what was going on in 1978? I don't know off the top of my head, but I would right. I mean possibly.

Rich : 51:56

I think that's what it was. Yeah, but now, looking into that, tell us about some of the numbers that were coming up when you were digging into this a little bit.

Steven: 52:06

Yeah, so OK. So the, the, the Pfizer program right, started in 1978, modified substantially in 2008. And again recently, in 2024, a couple of weeks ago it was set to and then it got extended for a couple more years. The data so it's self-reporting data, from what I was able to gather, where the federal agencies who have access to be able to do this have to report on how many subjects they surveyed and whether they were outside of America or inside of America. And in 2022, that was the most recent data I was able to find they prefaced it.

Rich : 52:49

This is just the FBI.

Steven: 52:51

Okay, yeah. So yeah, this is just the FBI that reported the data.

Rich : 52:56

Okay.

Steven: 52:56

The CIA didn't report their data. The NSA didn't report their data.

Rich : 53:00

Although they have to.

Steven: 53:01

Although they're required to. Yes, they're required to, but they didn't report their data.

Rich : 53:02

The NSA didn't report their data, although they have to. Although they're required to? Yes, they're required to, but they don't report it. And then who holds them?

Steven: 53:05

accountable Good question.

Steven: 53:07

Good question right, right, so all right, so in 2022,. It was reported. I'm going to say it how I uncovered it. So first they started from a defensive posture in their reporting, and their defensive posture was in an address to Congress where they were concerned that it was going to be used against Americans inside of America without obtaining a warrant first. And they said, well, we only used it on three million three hundred ninety four thousand and fifty three americans only. Only. Wow, that was their response. Right, that's just the fbi. It's just the fbi in one year. In one year, three million three hundred ninety four thousand fifty three. And this is found. Uh, I didn't write the website down, but it's found. You can just Google this.

Rich : 54:06

Now, normally if you wanted to surveil a US citizen, you'd have to go through a proper warrant application. You'd have to show probable cause and go before a judge and submit that.

Steven: 54:19

The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution speaks exactly to that right. So I'm going to read that. And specifically what the Fourth Amendment states is that the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated and no warrant shall issue but upon probable cause. So they would have to say I want to search their phone.

Rich : 54:56

I want to follow their car. I want to look in their house. I want to check their email. I want to follow their car. I want to look in their house. I want to check their email.

Steven: 55:08

They'd have to be specific about what they wanted, and they have to tell the judge what crime they believed you were committing before doing that and also what facts they have that are they're able to establish that you probably are committing that crime which is Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Rich : 55:26

They're allowed to circumnavigate all of that and just do a warrantless search and seizure of your items. And these are the numbers coming out of just the well, how many people did they? All right? So the argument's gonna be yeah, but you know that was only three point, almost four million, almost 3.4 million americans, but you have no idea how many terrorists that they stopped uh overseas by utilizing this. So how many terrorists, suspected terrorists, did they get to surveil with this uh outside of the country?

Rich : 56:01

they reported surveilling 232 432 outside of the country so 232 000 outside of the country, 3 million 394 000 inside the country correct and those the that's the numbers reported by the FBI Okay 2022. So I wonder how many of those people were the people who were in Washington DC in January?

Steven: 56:29

I don't know, yeah, I don't know. Interesting.

Rich : 56:33

So, again, this is one of those things where you're like, okay, well, maybe the FBI, they're supposed to be looking inside the country, not outside the country, so that's why the number would be bigger and the CIAs or the NSAs might be bigger as far as people outside the country going inside the country, Right.

Rich : 56:52

But I want to be very delicate about talking about this next part of it, because we had got some insider information Again. Because we had got some insider information Again this is from a trusted source, but I don't know, I haven't read the documentation, but it's from a trusted source that this recent attack that happened with the US Marshals in North Carolina, right, that there was a guy who was a felon, he had been arrested multiple times and with this stupid catch and release thing that they're doing around the country right now, guy gets arrested multiple times, they just let him go, he's back out. So the information that we got is they utilize the US Marshals, utilize the FISA program, right, that FISA system, to monitor this dude and basically get a tip that he had a gun. How did they get the tip? Because they were watching them, utilizing this warrantless uh searches through the through the FISA system, through the, through the fisa system and we could argue that, okay, uh, he shouldn't have had a gun. He was a criminal like you. Got to let law enforcement use every tool at their disposal to to keep the guns off the street and get the bad guys right.

Rich : 58:15

But this is again. All these things start with good intention, right, correct?

Steven: 58:21

and look like right, right.

Steven: 58:24

Unfortunately, I think four or five us marshals lost their lives that day, right yeah and and I don't wish or pray for that, for for anybody right, it doesn't matter. You know, to me I'm I'm much, I'm much more of the opinion. Why can't just everyone get along? I know that's not how the world operates, I get it. So it's sad that that happened Again.

Steven: 58:44

You know, if back to an earlier point and this is edgy, I get it, this is a tough pill to swallow. If, structurally, the law that doesn't allow to have felons to carry firearms, if that wasn't passed in the correct manner, but we still have law enforcement enforcing it, even though it wasn't passed through the only manner that it could be passed, through a supermajority vote of the Constitution, and if we're collecting and surveilling Americans through the FISA program without warrants, without applying for a warrant or going through that whole process, what's the point of having a constitution in the first place? Right, are we really advancing freedom? Are we protecting freedom? At that point? Are we helping protect tyrants and thinking that we're actually enforcing freedom and correct laws that are on the books? If they're never correct laws, how can you enforce correct laws?

Rich : 59:50

So what's happening right now on all these college campuses? With the Palestine protests right, the anti-israel, free palestine protests you'll hear the people, uh, from the colleges and universities, like the teachers and the staff, saying, look, you know, these are mostly peaceful protests. We've heard that term before. Uh, you know, the ends justify the means, right? So, yeah, you know, they're uh taking over the campus and the jewish students can't walk freely, right? Regardless of what your opinion on the israel and palestinian conflict is right, I'm not here to talk about or debate, though, the validity of either. Let's just talk about the fact that these people are not doing peaceful protests. If you're obstructing people's movement on a campus, if you're blocking people in buildings, taking over buildings and all this kind of stuff, if the attitude is, yeah, but the ends justify the means, we need to let them do this because it's for a righteous cause, right? Well, now you're picking and choosing which laws you want to force when and where.

Rich : 1:01:09

And the same thing goes on the other side, where, if we're using these measures right through our legal system to basically monitor the American people, right, because the ends justify the means, even if we're doing it in an illegal fashion, right, it's the same shit just on the other side of the coin. You know what I mean. And that's how the Patriot Act started, when it did get approved. I remember all of us in the military, I remember when the Patriot Act I'm 19, 21 years old, something like that, when it went through. Patriot Act I'm 19, 21 years old, something like that, when it went through and I remember arguing with some of my friends from high school who were at college and they were liberals and they were like the Patriot Act, this is our against our constitutional rights, this is big government. And I remember being there like no dude. This is, this is good, this is giving us the tools we need to. We can go fight these bad guys.

Rich : 1:02:05

We're going to go find these dudes. We're going to use these tools, right. We can't slow down, we can't wait for the system to do what it needs to do, right? You know what I mean. So so, from the military standpoint, you even heard a lot of military guys we most of us were in support of it, right, because we thought it was going to empower us to go get the bad guys. Little did we know that a few years later, right, people like uh snowden and the other dude right, would start coming out like hey, man, this thing that was supposed to be targeting terrorists in other countries, like they're using this against the american people and they're spying on all of you inside the country through your phone, through your tv, through your computer. Right, like we have access to your cameras and all this stuff. And then that the dudes who called them out on on that, now they're the bad guy right you know what I mean.

Rich : 1:03:00

Like, wait, wait. So you guys were doing exactly what everyone was afraid you were gonna do with. Called them out on that. Now they're the bad guy, right? You know what I mean. Like wait, wait, wait. So you guys were doing exactly what everyone was afraid you were going to do with it, and the people who called you out on it, they're the ones who are the bad guys now, right, not the ones who are actually implementing the illegal usage of those systems, right?

Steven: 1:03:15

And to me right like back to the debate thing about you debating with your college friends when you were in the military. Like you were in favor of it at the time, they were opposed to it at the time. That debate needs to happen. If you're looking at the way the Constitution is set up, that debate needs to happen on a congressional level and it needs to. You need to have a supermajority vote in favor of one way or the other. Right, I'm not necessarily for or against any of that. I just want the system to work the way it's designed to work, and right now it's not working anywhere close to the way it's designed to work.

Steven: 1:03:52

Right now you have back to the fish analogy. If you dug a hole on your yard, here you have the Florida Fish and Wildlife. I know a lot of great dudes. I have plenty of officers in the Florida Fish and Wildlife that I work with absolutely fantastic dudes to work with. They get to make their own rules, they get to promulgate their own rules. Right, and then they get to go out and enforce their own rules.

Steven: 1:04:18

Was that the way that law enforcement and the executive branch and the legislative branch and the judicial branch were set up? Absolutely not. But we're doing it because, back to what you were trying to get out earlier, it's the laziness of the system. It's okay.

Steven: 1:04:30

We as Congress, we have a lot on our plate right now and we don't have the time have a week or two weeks or a month to sit here and talk about fish eggs or the size of an alligator or the size of a red fish, of whether or not it should be thrown back into the water, or whether or not you get to keep it, or what does this do into the effect, or what effect does this have on the habitat in that environment and how can we mitigate against that? What they do you see a lot of times this is another pattern that you see throughout the history of america is they'll go and just be like we don't got time for this. We delegate that authority to the florida fish and wildlife to go ahead and figure it out themselves but now you can never vote on that because congress just delegated to so.

Rich : 1:05:17

Again, like I was saying, okay, so if the nsa or the cia does not put out those numbers and share those numbers, and even if you didn't like them, well, what do you do about it? Exactly what can?

Steven: 1:05:29

you do about it.

Rich : 1:05:30

It's an agency that's now been created underneath of congress, but then, when you talk to congress, congress is like, oh well, we don't actually control the agency and this is where you get into all this stuff with the bureaucrats, right, these people who were. When you talk to Congress, congress is like, oh well, we don't actually control the agency and this is where you get into all this stuff with the bureaucrats, right, these people who were never elected, who it's extremely hard to hold accountable when they abuse their powers or anything like that. You know what I mean? Or push the countries in the way that the American people aren't voting for.

Steven: 1:06:00

If you look at the FISA, the extension that just happened a couple of weeks ago perfect example of this. This was brought up as a actual point that got voted on. It wasn't just delegated, but the specific point was okay. Well, if there's concern that this is going to be used against American citizens to spy on them without first obtaining a warrant, and again, right, specifically describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized, if you're not going to go to a judge to get a warrant, we would like that. They tried to specifically put a provision in the extension that says if you're going to use it against an American citizen, you have to first obtain a warrant. Well, that failed. That actually there was. It was a tie from my recollection and I believe the Speaker of the House voted against it. Is that a supermajority? No, that's 50-50 plus one in the wrong direction. That super majority amend the fourth amendment to the constitution? Not at all.

Rich : 1:07:04

They just did it yeah, so that whole thing is completely unconstitutional, right absolutely and this tells you what it's not even to know too it's not even.

Steven: 1:07:14

Let's back up. It's not even that it's unconstitutional. It's unconstitutional and they don't care that it's unconstitutional. It's unconstitutional and they don't care that it's unconstitutional because the rationale was that takes too much time to get that many warrants.

Rich : 1:07:27

Yeah, that's ridiculous. So, even with that, so let's, let's take that for a second. I know people have been asking me like I have the answers to this stuff, but rich, how is it that the people from january 6th are still sitting in prison and have not had the opportunity to go before a judge? How is it that they did not have right to their lawyers, speed, speedy trial and all this kind of stuff held on the highest account that anyone's held on is like criminal trespassing right. None of them actually been charged with insurrection or anything like that. How are they still sitting in a jail cell, you know, two to three to four years later, whatever it is, three years later, how are they still there?

Steven: 1:08:20

Yeah, so. So again, and this isn't, this isn't. I'm not going to go into whether or not I agree they should be there. I agree they shouldn't be there or anything like that If we look at the mechanisms the mechanisms themselves are are scary on how they're set up or how they're currently being utilized not how they originally set up, but how it's circumnavigated and morphed into this really slimy situation. And really this is how it works. I'm going to compare Florida law to the way federal law works, and there's a clear distinction here.

Steven: 1:08:53

So, in Florida, if you get pulled over on the side of the road and it's a reasonableness test, right. Well, what does reasonable mean? Uh, as far as detention, right, your rights to it, you are deemed to have been legally arrested. If you're held for an unreasonable amount of time, okay, what does that mean? Well, that's what the courts are for. The courts tell us what an unreasonable amount of time is. We know that, generally, if you're pulled over for about 20 minutes on the side of the road and they ask you questions about where you've been tonight, what you get into, as long as they had a valid reason for the stop, they're allowed to seize you, right, they're able to like. This goes to the Fourth Amendment searches and seizures. Right, can they seize you and talk to you. That's deemed to be a reasonable seizure so long as they let you go if they haven't found more evidence of a crime that's going on. Well, what happens if they seize you for four hours and then they let you go and they think something's going on but they can't prove it? Well, florida is pretty clear.

Steven: 1:10:02

Florida is saying Florida case law is like well, that is a de facto arrest, even though they didn't actually put you in handcuffs, even though they didn't actually take you to the jail, even though they didn't actually book you in and finger, you know, take your mugshot and everything like that. That actually triggers your right to speedy trial. And the state at that point, the state of Florida, has 90 days to formally charge you and bring you to trial and if they don't, they have then violated the speedy trial provision of the Constitution and they're forever barred from bringing that case against you. Whatever it is they think you were doing, it's done. That's different than the statute of limitations. It's done. That's different than the statute of limitations. Statute of limitations is you may have two years to bring this charge unless you arrest them. If you arrest them, the two years is out the window. Now speedy trial kicks in. You've got 90 days to move it or lose it, so long as you arrest them. Right, that's how Florida law operates.

Steven: 1:11:03

Federal law is completely different. Federal law as it has the dust has settled since 1776. And this is the, the, the, the, the really slimy part, the scary part, however you want to look at it, um, or the tyrannical part, right, if you're down to actually enforce this I don't know how else to view it, but you are not. You are. Speedy trial does not kick in until you are actually charged and actually brought before a judge and arraigned and read your charges. So, if you are arrested and put into a jail cell, under federal law and this is exactly what you see happen with the January 6th people is they'll just never charge you. Therefore, you're never going to be arraigned. Therefore, your right to speedy trial never kicks in.

Rich : 1:11:55

So the federal government can just grab any person now and just hold them indefinitely, for whatever reason but they're only gonna, we're not gonna do.

Steven: 1:12:05

We're not gonna do it that way, rich we're.

Rich : 1:12:08

We're not gonna do that I mean, that's the same crap that we're talking about with the atf going yeah, you know. I mean, if you have one of those and you have a family member, it's not like we're going to enforce that. Or with the thing of well, if there's a pond and you dug it and you want to fish on your own property, no one's watching, no one cares if you're doing that until they do so, in this case, oh, we're never. We're never going to just hold someone indefinitely and never charge them until they do so. Then, once you actually speak out and go to a protest and do, there's nothing that's happening with. That happened in Washington DC. That did not happen with BLM Antifa. You don't see happening on college campuses all around the country right now, in all these cities. Right, but because of a political difference, these people have been held without a trial, without actually getting official charges, without going before a judge, and this little loophole, right, that they say, oh, you know, you're reading between the lines, it's not like we're ever going to do that. Well, here it is. They are doing it and you see this happening and and the.

Rich : 1:13:31

The dangerous part about this is and you know, I trained law enforcement officers, I work with the police all the time. You know what I mean. So it's not like I'm in opposition, I'm not. I'm not promoting, you know, anarchy and that we shouldn't have a government and all this kind of stuff. But it's a very slippery slope when we start utilizing, when you see how the government is taking over more and more control in real estate within our lives not real estate like property, but just overall expansion of government. Right, it's one of those things where it's like if you're not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to fear. That's not how the founding fathers that's the government talking to us like subjects versus the founders had set up our constitution. As you guys are here to work for us, we are not your property, right. But this is what is directly walking us into as we've talked about on previous episodes of the social credit score system that China has, this authoritarian type of government that the World Economic Forum and the United Nations wants to oppose with this globalism movement. Right, the idea is, if you have nothing to hide, then you shouldn't fear this. But just like we saw with the truckers up in Canada, they didn't like what you said. Cool, we're freezing your bank accounts, we're coming for you, those guys who went and protested in January 6th up in Washington DC being held indefinitely, and they weren't all arrested. This is the thing they weren't all arrested in Washington DC.

Rich : 1:15:21

The US S government, through these different things, I would be interested in how many of these FISA searches through the FBI, that 3.4, almost, that 3.394 million. I wonder how many of those people were January Sixers that they used and they pulled the credit cards. The credit cards ratted them out. Social media ratted them out. Right Hotels did they? Basically just pulled statements, cell phone records, right? They went in and they said who is in Washington DC? I have, I know, a friend who is in Washington DC. He was a. He was also a SEAL. They came to his house because he wasn't even at the Capitol. He was just in Washington DC seal. They came to his house because he wasn't even at the capital, he was just in washington dc and they came to his house.

Rich : 1:16:04

The fbi interrogated him for over four hours yeah not like waterboarding him, but like they came to his house, came into his. He didn't have a choice. And here he is. He's talking to them for over four hours and they're asking him a whole string of questions about why he was there, what he he was doing, who is he with? You know all this kind of stuff and it's like. I live here.

Rich : 1:16:25

Yeah, but the thing is is are they doing that to any of these people protesting on the uh on the college campuses? Are they doing that to any of these people coming across the border right now? Are they doing that to black lives, matter and Tifa or whatever? They're picking and choosing which laws they want to enforce and how they want to enforce them, instead of it being an even thing across the board.

Steven: 1:16:47

Right, and even just using the way it's designed to be used, they're not even using it in that fashion. So it's like again what's the point of even having a constitution if we're not even going to follow it?

Rich : 1:16:59

Well, that goes right back to what's happening in Washington or New York City right now.

Steven: 1:17:03

And we need a constitution. I'm not suggesting we don't have a constitution. It's just like guys. This is the system that was designed. We're not using that system at all.

Rich : 1:17:12

This is what they warned us about.

Steven: 1:17:16

And when they're like, oh, you know, capitalism, free enterprise, doesn't work, the constitution doesn't work, it's like, well, yeah, it doesn't work when you guys don't follow how the laws were set up and this is another edgy thing that I'm going to say if a super majority, part or super majority of the country want it to operate this way, well then it can be amended to operate this way, but why are we letting one or two or 10 or 20 people decide how it's going to operate?

Rich : 1:17:43

Yeah, I mean New York City. Right now, as we speak, trump is on trial for campaign finance fraud. Yeah, right, he's being charged by a local judge for a federal crime. So this whole thing is just again, he's not on the campaign trail, he's in a courtroom for something that every single professional who's watching this trial go down says this will lose an appeal because the local judge, the state judge, does not have the authority, due to jurisdictional issues, to oversee and litigate a federal crime.

Rich : 1:18:31

So, again, going back into this, you have people that are utilizing something that's meant for foreign actors and then just utilizing it to go after people within the country that have no ties to foreign governments or foreign actors whatsoever. Right. And again, okay. Well, if he's found guilty and he has to go to jail, right, okay. So now he wrongfully goes to jail until he can appeal it and go before another job. You know what I mean. So it's just like the, the, but, like you said, how does that actually get enforced? That gets enforced by them issuing law enforcement officers to go do the.

Steven: 1:19:19

the execution of Right, If you comply with the judge, then it gets enforced that way, voluntarily. Right? That's you submitting to the jurisdiction of the court. As we know, people go run away and they try not to listen to the judge. That's when they issue the warrant. That's when they hand it over to law enforcement. That's when they hand it over to law enforcement. That's when law enforcement chases that person down and brings them back before the judge to then have them mandatorily get enforced.

Steven: 1:19:51

Yeah. So I'm going to ask this With all these things including, like, the Patriot Act, right since September 11th are we safer now than we were before September 11th, or are we living in a more dangerous society now, even with all these things implemented, right? A lot of the reasons why these things are getting passed is because this is the patriotic thing to do. This will keep us safe. We're going to catch the terrorists before they come and attack us here. We're going to figure this stuff out overseas and keep it there. That was that. That through most of my life, that was always the message that was being portrayed from all this stuff. Are we actually safer now, or are we living in a more dangerous society right now?

Rich : 1:20:38

I would say most people feel like it's more dangerous. And and part of that goes to, you know, law enforcement is doing their job and arresting people, but the people running the courts and the legal system like, for example, let's take California, robbery, theft, all that that used to be illegal and now it's. Well, it's not going to be necessarily. It doesn't count if it's under $900. Right, you know what I mean. So now, where you might've had a few people stealing, now you have waves of like 50 to 100 people doing mass assaults into stores and just taking everything out of the store because everyone's like, well, no one's going to enforce this. Right, you know what I mean.

Rich : 1:21:25

And now, because crime is going through the roof in California, now they're using that as an argument to increase gun control because it's too dangerous. These people are doing all these crimes. We need to get tough on crime and the best way to do that is to put in more gun rules so that way we can you know, you know put pressure on the criminals, which really is. They're creating a problem, allowing a problem to happen, to just implement more government authority and grow the size of government.

Steven: 1:22:06

I'd be really curious to know and this is a hypothetical, but I'd be really curious to know if, somehow, if you could bring the founding fathers back to life right now and explain what's going on to them. You know one, I think it would be like cultural shock to them, right, uh. And then, once they get over that, maybe they'd start analyzing it and being like, okay, when did we change the constitution? Like I thought this was pretty clear, when did we what? Who changed this? You know, if we decided as a country to change this, okay, cool, but when, like, show me how that happened. We there is. No, it didn't happen that way. It's just. It's just now out of thin air. The atf was created and now they get to make their own, they get to promulgate their own rules, and it's just the way it is and that's just how the way they would tell us that we're a bunch of bitches.

Rich : 1:23:00

They would literally say you guys are a bunch of morons and bitches. Right, you guys are idiots. Yeah.

Rich : 1:23:07

The first hundred years of the United States. You can fact check this for exact numbers, but it was something that the highest tax bracket was like 7% and that was a big deal. Remember they did the tea party over, like a couple percent tax on on the exports and imports of of tea, right, it was like a one or 3% tax on on that and they revolted, among other reasons. But again, you know, and coming into the tax on the country, it was like 7%. Now most of us are paying well over 35 to 45% tax from federal state. You know, your Medicare, medicaid stuff, your social security, right, when you're just the baseline, not even getting into sales tax and all the other fees. They stopped calling things taxes, they started calling them fees. You know what I mean.

Rich : 1:24:12

Which? You get a rental car here in Florida. One third of the price is going to taxes. It's literally like a 35% to 40% tax with the different things. One of them's Homeland Security. You know what I mean. So there's all these taxes in there. We're getting taxed well over 50% and every time you move your money, they now want to monitor it. That's one of the reasons why they want that digital currency. But also the banks are getting a cut.

Steven: 1:24:44

The banks are getting their little four percent sliver you bring up a good point right where, uh, uh, being taxed over 50. When you add it all up, right, and you take out, you know, you add up all these little chunks that are coming out of everyone's paychecks or being paid at the end of the year, what have you? You, I think it's like from biblical times, right, like in the Bible. They talk about slavery and everything like that, and from my understanding, a lot of the slaves back in the biblical times were only taxed 20% maximum. That was deemed to be like enough, be like enough. You know, like this is other if, if, if the kings or emperors or whoever else was in charge took more than 20 right, because 10 was a tithe, so 30 of that person's household or goods yeah, 10 went to like the church right and then 20 to their master.

Steven: 1:25:37

Yeah, so they got 70 left over. That was considered to be the most you could push it yeah, if you're getting taxed that much. You were called a slave yeah, and now we're being taxed effectively over 50 and it's they want to find ways to increase that even more yeah, it's insanity.

Rich : 1:25:57

So I think the founding fathers would look us in the face and be like you guys fell asleep at the wheel. You're a bunch of bitches with no spine right, and I'm I mean, I'm in the same position as everybody else right but I'm just saying like if, if the judges who are pulling the stuff now tried to pull that with the dudes who founded the country, they would be tarred and feathered out in front of the building. It lucky if that was it, if not drug down the street by a horse.

Steven: 1:26:23

Well, you know it's wild, Like you know, I know this is an edgy topic, but like you, look at what's considered a far right politician right now, like Trump or DeSantis, or insert whoever you want as a far right politician, Again, I'm pretty darn certain none of those guys are going to come out and say we need to arm all the convicted felons now because of the second amendment, because we're going back to the way things were going to be right. So it's like even the far right now is still way far out to the left from where we originally started.

Rich : 1:26:59

Well, you look at the argument that's happening. Um, you know, Trump was like what do you want to do with abortion? I want to give it back to the States. Let the States decide. What do you want to do with with the school systems? Let's get rid of the federal education. Put it back to the States. And then people are so naive to this and they don't understand the starting point of the country to the point where they're like no, this should be held up by the federal government. And it's like don't you realize? When the federal government is in charge of this stuff, you don't have a say in it. Right, at least you have a say when it's a local thing.

Steven: 1:27:40

But even that's tough, but you know even the local stuff yeah, and and now with the federal thing?

Rich : 1:27:46

the federal government was never, uh, established to dictate school or health care or anything. The one thing it was established was to was to control the border and to protect from foreign invasion, which they've decided not to do right you know what I mean.

Steven: 1:28:06

So, like the one thing that they were actually tasked with doing, they're not doing it I think the most recent number they put out was like 160 000 military age male have crossed the southern border in the last year and a half or two easily, easily. Yeah, I, I was there actually back in november. I was close to eagle pass, texas, and we were on a. We were hunting for hog and um I I literally like I went out there on a vacation. I mean, you know, if hunting's your thing, cool, if it's not, you know, that's one of my ways to just get out and unplug. I wasn't even thinking about politics, but on the property we were hunting. I was there for three nights, I believe, and the first night we went out, did our thing.

Steven: 1:28:46

Second night we went out and there was a truck there that wasn't there the night before and we are like 400 square miles of a remote farm. Nobody's supposed to be coming from the southern direction, like it butts up on the mexican border and um, close to eagle pass and uh turns out that truck was a cartel truck that had smashed through the area. Uh got in as far as it could, abandoned the. The driver and presumably passengers abandoned it, took whatever cargo they were carrying, got picked up by their local guys inside and gone into the country. That was the second night. Third night we saw lights from different caravans of of uh, migrant presumably migrants coming across, because in the direction they were coming from there was no. There was nobody supposed to be there for a lot for 60 miles right.

Steven: 1:29:36

And then another truck we found on the property too that had smashed through the border. It was right there in your face. I wasn't even looking for it and you couldn't avoid it.

Rich : 1:29:47

Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. So they're just giving more authority to parts of the government that should have no authority over those topics and just allowing the dereliction of duty on the things that they're supposed to actually be doing.

Steven: 1:30:08

Yeah, and it's like again, right, there was an Arizona landowner, I think he shot and killed a migrant that was on his property. I don't know the exact circumstances, but he was charged, arrested, brought to trial and I think he was recently found not guilty of whatever it is he's charged with. But again, if the federal government is taking over a task to secure that particular border and stop it from a foreign invasion, and if they're not doing their job, but they won't let you do part of the job to protect your property from a foreign invasion, but they're failing to do their own job, even though they tried to assume and take that power from you anyways, it's like what are we doing here?

Rich : 1:30:55

Yeah, it's nuts.

Steven: 1:30:56

It's nuts, it's nuts.

Rich : 1:30:59

So what do you think the people listening to this need to understand? Or, with this type of information, uh, what do you think we should do? Or what, what should we be? You know what should be the follow-through to listening to this podcast?

Steven: 1:31:16

yeah, I. So I really think that, again, knowing the Constitution and really grappling with it is a lost art, and I would really encourage every listener to try to get up to speed on what it is. It means to go back to what the founders originally intended for, and the way to do that is exactly kind of how we started this out Pressure, testing the language in the Constitution right, what is written, but, more importantly, what is not written and critically think about what is not written. If we're going to contract drafting, right, one of the ways you can tell a good contract drafter from the next is simply based off of what they leave out of a contract. Now, did they leave it out of a contract because they simply just don't know which? That it could be a topic you address. Right, just like the Constitution. There's a lot of key phrases in the law, for instance, if, if, if. If I have a contract with somebody and they're supposed to do something within 10 days, right, they're supposed to do the task within 10 days. What does that mean? 10? What days? 10 calendar days, 10 business days, 10 holidays and 10 Saturdays from now, right, why did we leave out a specification for what days are right? Or, or more importantly, why did we put something in just like in the constitution, right, a well-regulated the second amendment a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state.

Steven: 1:32:58

The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, shall not unreasonably infringed no, they left that word out. Shall not materially be infringed Okay, well, they left that word out. Okay, well, is a $200 tax stamp a material infringement? Doesn't matter, it's an infringement, even the slightest bit. Okay, well, do we agree with that as a society? Maybe you do, maybe you don't, maybe you want the ATF.

Steven: 1:33:25

Well, did we do a super majority vote to allow an amendment to the Second Amendment, which would then allow the ATF to mesh up well with it and not contradict the Second Amendment? No, we never did that intended. We need to understand how it works and how to go about making these changes. More importantly, if we don't want these changes right Like, for instance, congress with this having to apply for a warrant to be able to use the FISA program to spy on its own citizens it was a tie, and the Speaker of the House broke the tie by voting against it and saying we don't need warrants. Okay, well, again. Let's break that down. Is that a super majority vote? Absolutely not. So why are we doing that? Why are we enforcing that?

Rich : 1:34:14

Well, that would be the question a lot of people have. Like, what are we supposed to do the people that we voted for? They're going to go do it anyway. And you know what am I supposed to do? Go to jail. And the police officers are going to be like well, what am I supposed to do? Lose my job, you know.

Rich : 1:34:31

And same thing with all the COVID stuff that happened. You have people in the hospitals, go. Well, you know, it's an interesting thing. We're talking about it like the America Disabilities Act, right, you don't have to disclose anything about your medical history. That is completely private until COVID happened and they just decided that all of a sudden, your personal rights don't count anymore. Even California has made it that if you have AIDS, and you know you have AIDS, you don't have to disclose it to your partner because you have a right to privacy about your medical conditions. Right, and losing jobs, not being able to go to church, not being able to go to sporting events, not being able to play on a team uh, losing, losing, uh, business opportunities, you know, not being able to go visit a loved one at the hospital, all this kind of stuff that everyone knew was completely bullshit. But everyone's like oh well, I don't want to lose my job, yeah, but everyone just went along to get along right and look where, look where it got us right.

Rich : 1:35:49

going back to that whole thing of forcing behavior changes forcing, uh, behavior modification, and and that's what the people at the world economic forum are talking about people can be hacked, right, they can give you only a few options to choose from, but they control what the options are. So do you truly have a choice? And to choose from, but they control what the options are. So do you truly have a choice? And the more we go along with this stuff, the worse it's going to get, until we have the exact lifestyle that you see in China, where everyone is monitored 24 hours a day and you have zero freedoms, right, because everything you do is based on well, the government's watching and they're going to restrict my travel, they're going to restrict my travel, they're going to take my money, you're going to do this or that. So you really don't have any. You have an illusion of freedom, but everything you do is calculated to not get in trouble by the people who are watching and monitoring every single movement you make.

Steven: 1:36:41

So to that point, right, only if you've been. If the World Economic Forum, if they're saying that we're giving you your only options, right? Well, if you don't understand the Constitution, if we don't understand the mechanisms of how laws are created and what, in a constitutional manner, is the mechanism to go about creating these laws, we don't know what our other options are yeah, because they're using business.

Rich : 1:37:08

They're using business to circumnavigate the constitution in the areas that the government won't right or where the government can't get away with getting that those things voted, like you're talking about.

Steven: 1:37:17

They're using giant companies, uh, that we've become reliant on, like these social media companies and banks and stuff like that or before fisa, right before the the most recent changes, the fisa, they had the united kingdom spy on american citizens and then they had america spy on the united kingdom citizens, and then they just swapped information exactly you know so they've always are looking for ways around it, but now they don't even look for a way around it. They're just like we're gonna do it and and you can't do anything about it.

Rich : 1:37:47

Yeah, it's a full court press that all this stuff that they're doing is not even hidden anymore. It's out in plain sight. They're doing it even like the thing where we've been talking for years about, uh, chemtrails and now, all of a sudden, everyone's talking about cloud seeding. Oh yeah, we've been doing cloud seeding for 20 years. This is a common practice for ski resorts to increase the snowfall. This is common practice in california for our farmers, and all this like whoa. For the last 20 years, you've been telling all of us and calling alex jones a conspiracy theorist for talking about chemtrails, and all you did was change the name to cloud seeding because it sounds cool, right, you know, and making it like oh yeah, we've been doing this all the time. Meanwhile, dubai, or whoever it was, just flooded their entire thing, screwing around with the program. You know what I mean? Um, but they're not even hiding it anymore. It's just like right in your face, like right and, and it's like you guys won't do shit about it but again because you're too far dug in this.

Steven: 1:38:45

They only get away with it if people actually enforce it right. So if you have law enforcement or agencies or whoever security personnel that they hire in to be the strong arm of it, to actually go out and enforce it, that's the only way this works right. Just like back in 1776 or right before the, the american revolution, you know, a lot of the citizens were just like we're not going to listen to your shit, we're not going to listen to the judges, you know whoever's enforcing these laws, whoever's making these laws, we're just not going to listen to them right now. If you did that again they're going to send the law enforcement after you. Right, and and and if law enforcement. For instance, there's a county, local. I'm not going to name the county, not to call it out, but there's a particular county that's local. It's north of here, south of the Georgia border. That limits a few. That kind of narrows it down a little bit.

Steven: 1:39:37

But I know for a fact that they're doing lie detector tests to their new recruits and one of the questions that they ask them is— Is it for police? Is it for police? Yeah, one of the questions that they asked them is for police. Is for police. Yeah, uh, one of the questions that they ask them is uh, are you, are you good Like, will you follow orders and just not question them? And I know a few recruits that, uh, that what? I don't know how the lie detector test works, but they're they're. The reading of it basically indicated that they would question unlawful orders. If they knew it was an unlawful order or an unlawful law, they would question it, and none of them got accepted.

Rich : 1:40:16

Interesting. I just. I actually, a few months ago, was working with a police department and one of the guys is also in the national guard and they did a big training thing and part of that training was like a scenario and one of the scenarios was you had elements of like American towns and clearing through this stuff and basically going against and disarming the American population, and that was one of the things that they were training. And he was like dude, this is super weird, why are we doing this? That's wild.

Rich : 1:41:04

As far as the role-playing goes, yeah, why are we doing this? That's wild. As far as like the role playing goes.

Rich : 1:41:08

Yeah, you know, and but yeah, it's. I mean, part of that is, is they go? Hey, you know, let's find out who's actually here. Right, and when they tried to push that vaccine thing on the, on the military and guys who wanted the religious exemption, they're like no, and then they'd give them other than honorable or dishonorable discharges. Right, you know, like dudes can't get their compensation or whatever because they didn't want to get the vaccine. And now they just like not only did they just get out, but like some of those guys got dishonorable or other than honorable discharges, which puts them in a very bad light as far as trying to get work, and there's certain jobs they don't qualify for anymore because of their discharge status.

Steven: 1:41:50

It's super concerning, though like to see that and to see the trajectory that that is currently on, you know, because that's a very it's a pretty good indicator that whoever's pulling the strings in that particular circumstances, they don't want people to push back against them. Yeah, they want free thinkers.

Steven: 1:42:11

They don't want free thinkers. They want, they want puppets, they want dogs. You know, I don't. I don't know how dogs work. I don't, I don't work with dogs, but from my understanding, if you give it a command, it's going to follow that command until you give it the command to stop doing whatever it is you just told it to, at least in theory. That's how it should work, right? Yeah, um, so with that being the case, you know, if they have trained law enforcement, that's not going to question it and they go out and enforce things. Even if it's unconstitutional, they get away with it, right? What they don't want is they don't want, they don't want to give a specific order and then they don't want law enforcement to go and say wait a second, what are we supposed to do?

Steven: 1:42:50

Like? What do they want us to do? Like? I don't feel comfortable with that. That just strips that person in authority given that order. That just strips away all their power at that point?

Steven: 1:43:00

What power do they have? What teeth do they have? At that point? Yeah, right point, yeah right. So if they get rid of that element, if they get rid of that critical thinking element, and if they just have puppets going out and enforcing these laws or stripping away guns from the citizens, then that that's, that's. That's that's the cleanest way to do whatever you want and get away with it yeah, and they're, they definitely are trying to disarm the like.

Rich : 1:43:28

We're one of the few countries that's still armed, and every country that has disarmed themselves canada, australia, the uk, all these countries um down in central and south america, you know what I mean like every, every country that I have talked to people from that has basically disarmed her population at all. Like, dude, do not let them do that to you guys. Like, because what happens is the government gets bigger and so do the, so do the criminals.

Rich : 1:44:01

The government gets bigger because now you need them to protect you, which is a position they love to be in, right, and the criminals get bigger and more bold because they know no one's doing anything about it. Right you don't see the stuff happening that's happening in some of these states that are disarmed right or not allowed to carry. You don't see the same type of crime in those states as you do in states where everyone can carry Right.

Steven: 1:44:28

It just doesn't happen. It's something like I I I don't even want to say this the statistic, because I'll be, I'll be guessing at it, but it's close to the ballpark of an overwhelming majority of the gun crimes that are committed in america happen in the cities that don't allow firearms yeah.

Rich : 1:44:46

Well, you see the difference. Right now, canada is telling people hey, if there's a home evasion, just leave your key fob by the front door. Yeah, let them kick the door in, let them take the key, just let them take the car, don't worry about it, let us handle the police part of it. That's what they're telling people. Then you have some of these sheriffs here in Florida and Texas or whatever they're like. If you someone breaks in your house, shoot them and kill them, and then you know we're on your side. That's less paperwork for us to do.

Rich : 1:45:16

We don't have to go find this guy, you know, and uh, and then people will be like, oh well, you and this and that, right, but um, again, it's just, we're not trying to attack law enforcement officers, obviously, like I have tons of friends who are police officers, right, and we're not trying to attack or bring shame to the guys in north carolina. That was a horrible incident. You know what I mean. But at the same time and that's not a but like I don't mean what I just said uh, but it's but it's a but because it's a.

Rich : 1:45:52

It's a touchy subject because we know most of the guys are in it for the right reasons, right, but the government has been manipulating and changing things, right, and a lot of us have been pressured into positions where we're like we want to go along with it because we don't want to lose what we have. At the same time, we know it's not right and I think this whole thing that has now passed, with COVID and hindsight being 2020, with all the side effects and all of the all the small business owners who lost right, the middle class shrunk by, like it was something like $3.4 trillion, and then the billionaire class rose. They shrunk by $3.7 trillion, while the billionaire class rose by $.4 trillion. So there's this huge shift of wealth. During that time, black rock has now taken over like 40 of our homes, right, bill gates has bought up the majority of the farmland, all the privately owned farmland in the states. Now they're trying to change what we eat.

Rich : 1:47:04

You know Like, uh, you look at how? This, how, by us just going along because we're afraid of losing a little right, we basically forfeited a majority of our rights over through this stuff, like we just saw happen in Congress through the ability for us to grow and manufacture our own food. Meanwhile, all the food supply plants that are in the competition with these guys are burning down across the country Like oh, it just happened to be burning down, you know what I mean? And so on and so forth. And I just look at it and it's just like it's such a shame.

Steven: 1:47:46

You really appreciate when you see big movements happen in the right direction. For instance, after January 6th happened, regardless of what you think happened or whether or not you agreed with it or don't agree with it what I'm referring to specifically is when all of the state's nationalards went to surround the Capitol and secure it. After a while some of the governors were like, okay, this is getting ridiculous, we're calling our guys home, like the Santas called back the Florida National Guard. Who's one of the first governors to do that. Right, when you see big movements like that I think a lot of people are they support that but they don't want like they're too afraid to come out and do it because they don't have the influence or the power or the right strings at their fingertips to be able to pull and do it. So when you see these larger movements of Florida pulling back its National Guard from the Capitol and being like this is out of control, this is getting ridiculous. You guys are trying to essentially confiscate the National Guard and make it federal. We're not going to let you do that. That's reassuring to see that and again, it's not.

Steven: 1:49:07

I'm not necessarily trying to push any particular political agenda over the next. It's more of it's obvious. The Constitution is not being used in the manner that it was designed to be used. In it's being. It's completely disregarded. If you look at where we are now with the FISA program and you look at the Fourth Amendment and you look at what was discussed on the Congress floor, why they were deciding whether or not to extend it, they didn't basically did it. They they didn't basically did it. They discussed the violations to the Fourth Amendment and they said we don't care because it's too burdensome to go through this process for these amount of people. That's a scary place to get to.

Rich : 1:49:59

Yeah, that reminds me of when Nancy Pelosi pushed to pass the Affordable Care Act and she goes it's like 3000 something pages and they had less than 24 hours to read it. And she's like we just need to pass it to see what's in it. And it's like so the bill that was deemed unconstitutional multiple times in a row. They shifted a few words around, from it being a tax to a fee or whatever it was. It was one word that they changed. And then they're like we just need to pass it, and we just need to pass it fast before they change their mind on it or before it goes before the supreme court again and gets you know uh, voted down as unconstitutional once again yep and they're like we just got to pass it to see what's in it and then all of a sudden there's all this extra stuff in there.

Rich : 1:50:51

You know what I mean, and it has not turned out to be what they told us it was going to be. Yep. You know what I mean. And it's just, it's crazy that that we just allow this stuff to keep happening. Exactly, you know what I mean.

Steven: 1:51:08

And it's again not to knock on law enforcement, but, like you know, I don't feel like I have sufficient training and education in the Constitution and I spent damn near a year and a half having to dive into it.

Steven: 1:51:24

Law enforcement, I believe in. Most academies get about three to four weeks of training on the laws they're supposed to enforce and then they're you know they have other training too but then they're sent out to the streets to enforce it right. Well, if everything they did was perfect, we wouldn't have the need for a court system, we wouldn't have the need for defense attorneys, we wouldn't have the need for juries, because if everything they did was perfect, then why do we need to question it? Why do we need to vet it through that entire process at that point, right? So again, I think a lot of this is this message is being pushed of you know patriotism and being an American and doing what's right and everything like that. But if you step back and look at a lot of the laws that are asked to be enforced and if you look at how those laws came about, are you really upholding freedom or are you helping advance tyranny?

Rich : 1:52:17

at that point, yeah, and for the people who are voting when you're voting, are you voting to uphold the Constitution or are you voting to further the tyrannical takeover of all the bodies and all the facets of your life? You know what I mean, because they've already told us where this is going. Right. They want to take us to 15-minute style cities. They want to restrict our movement. Um, you know, you have. We're a couple steps behind this and other in other places, but they're already talking, dude.

Rich : 1:52:59

They're talking about building one of these 15 minute cities right here south of orlando yeah like right there, right on the edge of Orlando, and it's going to take them projected 50 years to build it, but everything you'll need will be within that right. And some people are like, well, yeah, man, that's super convenient right. But every single one of these things is a trap At the end of the day, like when you were saying, are you safer now than you were in 2000, I would say, are you more free now than you were in 2000?

Steven: 1:53:36

are you more free now than you were from our last podcast?

Rich : 1:53:39

yeah, yeah, I mean each time you know um each session that goes through. More and more laws get put on the books. Yeah. Meanwhile, more and more laws aren't taking off, while the new ones come on.

Steven: 1:53:54

Which is a whole, not to go down this rabbit hole but, like what says, Congress needs to pass laws on a regular basis anyways.

Rich : 1:54:02

Yeah, there's nothing that says that A lot of these people just pass laws just for resume building Exactly, and they justify laws just for resume building Exactly and they justify the means for their paycheck. Yeah.

Steven: 1:54:10

Well, we need to meet. We're discussing these laws now.

Rich : 1:54:16

Yeah.

Steven: 1:54:16

So we got to get back in the session and our job is necessary. Therefore, I need a pay raise because it's taking up all this time and we're going to give ourselves a pay raise because I'm spending 80 hours a week.

Rich : 1:54:33

Who says you got to?

Steven: 1:54:33

pass laws. Yeah, who said who like what?

Rich : 1:54:34

if it ain't broke, don't fix it isn't a tax code like 3 000 plus pages some tax code, yeah, and if you screw it up you're you screw it up, then god forbid.

Steven: 1:54:39

Uh, you're going to jail, or you're now a felon or whatever yeah, I mean and and I I don't know tax law and and I've never taken a class on tax law. I I almost did, but I never did. But, like, my understanding is is, if you follow that to a T, you're still going to violate something.

Rich : 1:54:52

Yeah, even accountants don't know what it says because it changes every year, right, and they change it and they change it and you don't know. But again, like, are you guys voting to create more of this in your life or are you trying to create more freedom in your life? Right, you know, and I think that's one of those things that we really got to get honest with ourselves. And you know, this episode wasn't a pick on police. It's just that these people use the police to enforce Exactly.

Rich : 1:55:29

They make up shit that they don't have the authority to make up yeah, and then they want someone else to go enforce it. You know what I mean. And I and it's great when you see the, the, uh, those sheriffs, you know, calling them out sometimes on this bs and they're like dude, we are not you, you're not coming to do that here and we're not going to do that for you.

Steven: 1:55:47

Yeah, that's literally. That's the modern day equivalent of we'll pay that no accord. You know, look at, look at Texas.

Rich : 1:55:54

Texas took over the control of the, the the the border crossing there Right I just said it a while ago on the podcast.

Steven: 1:56:04

Whatever that the, the Eagle Pass border Right. That was an interesting situation because the federal government was like no, no, we're going to control this, this is our job to do this. And Texas is like you're not doing it effectively, we're being invaded, we're going to take this by force. And they just went and took it by force. And then it was kind of interesting because there was a big showdown for almost four or five weeks where the federal government was puffing their chest and saying we're going to come back and take this by force, blah, blah, blah. You can't do this.

Steven: 1:56:31

The United States Supreme Court even chimed in and was like you can't do that, Texas, we're not going to let you do that. And what did Texas do? They said come, take it back, we're not moving. What did the federal government do? Essentially, they backed down and were like oh, we're just joking, okay, we'll figure this out. You know, again We'll go focus on Arizona. Let's take a look at that for a second. Because the Supreme Court specifically said Texas cannot do that. Texas said we're not going to listen to you, supreme Court. And the federal government didn't send anyone to enforce it. Or maybe they tried and maybe they said we're not going to go and have a gunfight with the Texas National Guard. I don't know what happened behind the scenes, but it didn't happen and Texas still controls it.

Rich : 1:57:17

Yeah, so again, if there's no teeth to it and if it doesn't get enforced, Texas wins. The thing with that is the federal government Was basically it's dereliction of duty. You know You're saying that we can't do this, but if we step back you have no plans on doing One of the few jobs that you actually have been designated to do. You know what I mean. The federal government originally had very few jobs. One of them was to protect foreign invasion.

Rich : 1:57:50

Yeah, to protect the borders and that was the whole point of all the states coming together and to protect the states in general Right From the outside. That was their role and they're not doing it. You know what I mean. So, because of the dereliction of duty, texas stepped, stepped in and said fine, if you're not going to do it, we will. You know what I mean? Because you are not protecting our border and the supreme court's like yeah, well, you, that's the federal, that's the federal responsibility. You, you can't do that, that's their responsibility. But they're like yeah, but they're not doing it right, and if we step off the our, our state is continue going to continue to be invaded.

Steven: 1:58:27

so, because they are not doing it, it in in, not to knock on judges, because there's there's plenty of good judges out there and there's, I know, plenty of good judges that do the right thing. Uh, you know. But again same, just like with law enforcement. This isn't a knock on law enforcement, it's there are bad apples in every single branch. There are bad apples in every single agency. And again, what is it? Go along, the get along. You see a lot of that going on too. I don't want to lose my job, so I'm going to go and arrest this guy because he's not wearing a face mask. You know, you saw a lot of that with.

Steven: 1:59:03

COVID or there was a dude. I forget what beach it was Maybe it was Virginia Beach or or outer banks or wherever where this dude was swimming. During the height of the covid lockdowns, they went and pulled this dude out of the ocean and arrested him and made a big scene out of it yeah why, just doing my job, just doing my job. I dude, I dude. I've been on the force for 17 years. I retire in three more years. I don't want to lose my pension I don't want to create waves yeah that is and it's and it's.

Rich : 1:59:36

It's easy for us to say because we're not in that position, but you know that's? We had ian smith on the podcast and he refused to close his gym when New Jersey told him he had to shut his gym down and he became like a national story because he didn't shut down his gym. You know what I mean. Like, and they did everything possible to tear his life apart and most people don't want that kind of heat in their life. You know what I mean. But now on the on the on the tail end of that, you know he's doing great and a lot of these people who did stand up, they won different lawsuits or whatever and came out on top right because all this stuff that was being pushed was not legal right. But the problem is, everyone goes along with it.

Steven: 2:00:27

Look how pissed they got, though. Like the people in charge. Oh yeah, they're so pissed. The governor came Disobey them.

Rich : 2:00:33

Yeah, the governor's like how dare you not do what I say? Right, while I go and go to parties and do all this stuff that no one else is allowed to do but I'm allowed to do Right, you know what I mean. Like a dude in California going to like wineries and doing all his stuff.

Steven: 2:00:50

Newsome. Yeah, do you think Newsome? Do you think Newsome is going to go out and actually start arresting people? He no, he's not. He's going to delegate that to law enforcement. Yeah, but Newsome's definitely not living the lifestyle that he's telling everyone else they need to live rules for thee, not for me.

Rich : 2:01:06

Yep, so well. I'm glad you came back. There's just so much to unpack with all this stuff I feel like we're just getting started on this.

Rich : 2:01:14

I know, I know but, um, we'll have to come back and continue talking because there's there's so many things going on. Uh, that again, the next time we I think we come back on, let's talk about lawfare, because that seems to be a vastly growing practice. Unfortunately, we're seeing more and more and more of it of where people are just finding ways to use the legal system, where before, when we talked in those previous episodes, it was like they were kind of doing it on a grand scheme. Yeah.

Rich : 2:01:49

But now it seems like they're doing it very much more. Instead of just like pushing through laws that they know are illegal, they're now like attacking individuals and specific people who are in opposition to them use, utilizing these specific practices, and I think that would be a great thing to talk about yeah, no, fair enough, I agree.

Steven: 2:02:09

So so on that point real quick yeah uh, let's just do a hypothetical and I'm going to illustrate this point, uh, because this was illustrated to me, uh, back in law school. So let's just pretend I I don't think this is a statute, anywhere it could be, but let's pretend this is a statute for a second. Let's just say the statute specifically reads that it is illegal to have red on your shirt. It is illegal to wear red on your shirt out in public. Okay, okay, and let's just say they. For this hypothetical, let's just say they passed that law in 1960. Okay, well, fast forward to 2024.

Steven: 2:02:50

No one's been charged with that, except for people who are wearing red shirts. Okay, now, all of a sudden, you have a politician who is extremely controversial and now they use lawfare against that politician and he's wearing a black shirt. Okay, and their argument to be able to bring these charges is that black is the presence of all colors. Red needs to be present in order for black to manifest itself on your shirt. Needs to be present in order for black to manifest itself on your shirt. Therefore, you have red on that shirt because black is manifesting itself and they bring charges against that person because they're using a statute that says it's illegal to have red on your shirt.

Steven: 2:03:41

It's a true statement that red is a part of black, otherwise you wouldn't have black manifest itself on that shirt, right? If you go to the color spectrum, right, if you combine red and yellow, I believe you get purple. Same thing If that person was wearing a purple shirt, if they wanted to use lawfare if that manifests itself as purple. It's impossible to get purple without having red present on that shirt, even though it's not manifesting itself. And you see that a lot in today's society, where they'll take what is written and what we thought was pretty clear and they'll twist it and do some sort of mental gymnastics and now prosecute you for wearing a black shirt because it's impossible to have the color black without having red on it. Do you think in that hypothetical, back in 1960, they would have ever thought somebody would have been prosecuted for having a black shirt on?

Rich : 2:04:38

No.

Steven: 2:04:38

Exactly, and you see that happening today in a lot of circumstances, including against the former President Trump right Now. This is statute construction and we can get into this more in the next one. But specifically if that statute said it's illegal to have a shirt on that manifests itself in the color of red, now that's a much more specifically tailored statute that if they try to go ahead and prosecute somebody that's wearing a black shirt, black is obviously not the manifestation of red. Therefore they wouldn't be able to extend it to that. So, to have lawfare, they go back and use vague statutes that were on the books and figure out a way to philosophically make it a correct argument to go after somebody. Hence, if you wear a black shirt, they're going to prosecute you for a crime that's illegal to have a red shirt on, or red on the shirt from back in 1960, even though it was never intended for that. It's exactly what you're getting with the FISA program right now. I guarantee you I wasn't present for it, but I I'd be willing to bet.

Rich : 2:05:46

In 1978 they certainly did not debate the the idea of surveilling domestic individuals with the foreign intelligence act yeah, yeah, you're right, you're right, and and this really goes into a form of spiritual warfare too and what they're doing is the work of the devil and it is sin. You go right into the commandments Thou shall not bear false witness that the person, if you know that that person is not wearing a red shirt, but you try to articulate and find any way possible, even though that you know that they're not wearing a red shirt, but you don't even care that they're not wearing a red shirt. You're going to execute these practices just because the ends justify the means. That's you working in deception, that's you working through a form of sin and there's a spiritual attack going on there which brings us into a whole nother topic. But that's truly what that is. You mean you're working for the evil one when you're doing that stuff, and the thing of it is is that a lot of these people who are doing that, they think they're really fucking clever, exactly.

Steven: 2:07:10

And they think they're really fucking clever, exactly, and they think they're real smart, exactly. You know what I mean. And that goes into that human mentality of like I want to win, I have to win, I have to find a way to win in this circumstance yeah and that's the wrong mentality to bring. If you're applying the constitution, yeah, the the correct mentality to bring. The original mentality to bring is is why should I even get involved in the first place?

Rich : 2:07:28

Yeah, we're supposed to be free men.

Steven: 2:07:30

We're supposed to be free men, why should I even get involved in the first place?

Rich : 2:07:34

Yep, yep, interesting stuff. I appreciate your perspective and insight on all this. Um, it's always great having you on and, uh, yeah, let's, let's go deeper into that, because I know that's a hot topic right now and a lot of people are sitting back going how is this happening? And the word lawfare is like a new catchphrase that you know. It's probably been around, but it hasn't never, it's never been as obvious as it has been. Watching what's been going on with all these cases, these charges against Trump, in, in, uh, new York and Georgia and other things like that you know where everyone's looking at and going like dude, you're literally changing the rules and you're bending the rules. You're. You know there, there is no there. This was never a problem for the last 15 years and all of a sudden now you want to bring this up right eight years and now it's all of a sudden an issue right, you know what I mean.

Rich : 2:08:29

So, um, but what I don't think people understand is a lot of the legal system works on case law.

Rich : 2:08:38

So if they do this now for trump, now they've just set the precedent where you know, well, you, if it was good enough to do on the ex president of the United States, well, why can't we use this for whoever we want?

Rich : 2:08:52

Yep, can you imagine if just any judge now like, okay, like we're talking about Trump is being charged for a federal crime in a local jurisdiction? That means like, if jurisdiction doesn't matter, then if someone in some court in some other place around the country decides that they think you did something wrong and they didn't like the fact, someone breaks into my house, like we were talking about, someone breaks into my house and in California, new Jersey, you're not allowed to defend yourself. You have to run in Florida, you have to stand your ground. So if someone breaks in my house and I stand my ground and defend my home, do I now get charged in another state or in another County? Do I get charged in Orlando, even though I don't live in the city? Right, because that judge thinks that I should have tried to get away, right? That's what they're setting precedent for and they don't think they realize like everyone's like yeah, yeah, get Trump. Like it's not about Trump.

Steven: 2:09:48

Dude, you guys are setting the stage right for the government to come in and attack you however they want, unless you play ball just like with with with the bad guys, with terrorists, right, yeah, you know, it's like any way to get a terrorist is fair, like that's like how it's been established over the last 20, 30 years. It like the the ends justify the means, right. But now it's completely now that they've done it, it's crept its way into being reversed and now the same surveillance program is being used against american citizens yeah on a on a disproportionate share.

Steven: 2:10:21

An overwhelming number of americans were surveyed in 2022 versus who was surveyed outside of the country with the same program. Based off the data we're seeing, yeah, so all right.

Rich : 2:10:33

Well, that's a lot to break down yeah and it's a lot to digest, and the frustrating part is there's no right answer yeah on how to. It's a big ship to turn. Yeah.

Rich : 2:10:48

You know what I mean. And there's no one person to vote out or there's no one little thing to make the change Right. It's just one of those things that I think we just really need to be aware of. And then, every option, every opportunity that we have to push back against it, I think we need to not allow it to move into position smoothly.

Steven: 2:11:11

I don't know why I just thought of this, but it's kind of like the, the movie, the matrix, you know where it's. Like, you know you get unplugged from the matrix and then you're just like, oh my god, like this is the actual reality of what's going on in the world, like yeah, you know, you got that one character. He's like dude, just plug me back in.

Steven: 2:11:27

You know just plug me back in. You know, it's like our perception of what is normal today is so far from where we started. So far from where we started and how we got here today certainly was not in the manner that was originally intended for us to have gotten here in the first place. The system's not being used and it wasn't used, Not in the manner it was supposed to be.

Rich : 2:11:53

Very true. Well, Steve, thank you for joining us once again, and we're excited to have you back out. We'll do another one here soon.

Steven: 2:11:59

Awesome. Thank you for having me.

Rich : 2:12:08

All right, guys. As always, we appreciate you tuning in to the Full Spectrum Warriors podcast. I hope you enjoyed that episode. Again, check the details below and revisit the previous two episodes that we've had with Steve to get the baseline information for what we were talking about today. Get the baseline information for what we were talking about today.

Rich : 2:12:28

Additionally, this episode was brought to you by Grunt Style, one of our great supporters. They are an all-American Patriot apparel brand and check them out. You can always use code RICH15 for 15% off your orders in supporting them and their organization, their charity, the grunstall foundation, which helps the families of active duty, uh military members, first responders and the veteran community. So check them out and get your patriotic apparel on their website using our code rich 15 for 15 off your orders. If you guys like the episode, please uh like and leave a review. Share this with your friends. Help us get the word out. Obviously, like everyone else relaying this type of information, we are constantly battling the algorithm, so any support we can get from you guys to spread the word of our podcast and spread the word of this episode is greatly appreciated and we'll see you guys on the next one. Thanks for tuning in.