‘Your husband or your guns’ (jpfo.org)
Florida’s powerful preemption statute prohibits any state, county, city or other public entity from regulating firearms by “enacting or causing to be enforced any local ordinance or administrative rule or regulation” that regulates arms. Only the state legislature has such regulatory authority, the statute mandates. Any public official who violates the preemption statute can face removal from office and up to $5,000 in fines, which the statute requires them to pay personally.
As the agency head and chief administrative officer, Charlotte County Sheriff Prummell is personally responsible for any illegal rules or policies that violate preemption. Sheriff Prummell did not respond to calls or emails seeking an interview for this story.
This is not the first time Prummell has been accused of violating the civil rights of his constituents.
In 2019, it was learned his office had been compiling an illegal registry of gun owners by using a pawn shop database, which is a felony. Florida state law prohibits any government agency from “knowingly and willfully keep or cause to be kept any list, record, or registry of privately owned firearms or any list, record, or registry of the owners of those firearms.” The database Prummell’s deputies created contained the names of people who pawned guns and a description of the firearms, which included their serial numbers.
At the time, neither State Attorney Fox nor Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody chose to prosecute or even investigate these allegations.
This doesn’t even bring the federal laws 18 USC 241 and 242 into play. These crimes would stop very rapidly if they would just enforce the existing laws.
They are criminals
Criminals don’t obey the law
Therefore the law is helpless to stop criminals
Therefore more effective means are required to prevent recidivism.
I have some ideas.
Maybe a law that allows private individuals sue public officials to collect fines on behalf of the public if the DA declines to prosecute within a year of the offence. Any successful case filer is awarded half the fine as a bounty, the other half goes to the charity of choice, and the government coffers forgo that sweet, sweet lucre.
And why am I being punished for the actions of someone else? Is the real question that should have been put to the judge.
If your spouse gets drunk and shots up the neighborhood. They belong in jail. Not you.
What would the judge say if he was drunk and ran over a bunch of people on the street?
She couldn’t own anymore cars or drive ever again?
And such is jurisprudence?
Holy crap, this civilization is breeding intellectual cave dwellers!