USA – -(Ammoland.com)- “A Central Florida tax collector says a new policy will allow his employees to openly carry firearms while they work,” The Associated Press reports. “Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg told the Orlando Sentinel that according to Florida law, he and his employees are considered ‘revenue officers’ and are exempt from the state’s ban on the open carrying of firearms while performing their duties.”
The rationale behind the move is to save taxpayers money by eliminating the need to hire private security.
“Tax collector Joel Greenberg says he is a ‘big believer in the Second Amendment,’” letter to the editor writer Gordon Crawford points out in the Orlando Sentinel. “If that is truly the case, he would know that this constitutional amendment was put in place to protect the public from government tyranny, not to arm the government.”
Not that the courts have incentive to provide for that. As noted by the Sun Sentinel in March, “The Florida Supreme Court found the state’s ban on openly carrying handguns constitutional, raising the stakes for open carry laws under consideration in the Legislature this year.”
But per Florida Carry’s latest legislative update for SB 140, “Open Carry and Prohibited Places Reform,” Sponsor- Sen. Greg Steube”:
“This bill has been held by Sen. Steube in favor of placing its provisions individually into separate bills.”
“I ask, sir, what is the militia?” founder George Mason asked and then answered. “It is the whole people, except for few public officials.”
That public officials will open carry while the practice has been criminalized for the whole people is exactly opposite of what was intended. It also makes a mockery of what has to be the most ignored mandate in the world: “shall not be infringed.”
And while gun owner rights advocates will properly recognize that bearing arms is an individual right not dependent on active militia deployment, and oppose restrictions on the right as a condition of employment, Greenberg’s policy of assuming the status of “Only Ones” opens his team up to a dilemma created by assumptions of elitism. If they’re not in uniform, how will cops know they’re “authorized”?
What’s to stop a person whose knowledge about guns is limited to being spooked by the media from dialing 911? Or some evil-minded anti-gun troll from doing it for the express purpose of “swatting” what he perceives to be a “mere” armed citizen…?
That’s the problem when you have two sets of “laws” that undermine equal protection. It’s also a pretty good example of how a gun owner control law justified under the banner of “public safety” can make things more dangerous.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating / defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament.
In addition to being a field editor/columnist at GUNS Magazine and associate editor for Oath Keepers, he blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
TYRANNY ABOUNDS!