all right looks like we're live thanks for joining me i'm john bryan check out the website the civil rights lawyer dot com or you can subscribe to email updates with no spam to hear about various and miscellaneous civil rights issues including cases that i personally litigate and other sorts of issues that i take a an interest in and this is freedom is scary because freedom is scary episode number 61 and i like to frequently hit the topic of gun rights issues and the gun owners of of america association really is has been fighting hard in the area of gun rights and we have a special guest here tonight and that is louis valdez who is the florida director of the goa and i'm excited to have him here today and uh you know he's well i'll introduce him here in a second um let me get to um what i first wanted to introduce and that's some important news just from today and that's that west virginia's second amendment sanctuary bill was just signed into into law by our governor maybe the only good thing that he's done in the foreseeable uh um past here in west virginia i don't know how long it's been since he's done anything good but west virginia is now a basically a sanctuary from the enforcement of federal law and that was the bill was called hb 2694 and so that's big news it was sponsored by representative brandon steele and again signed i believe it was today or maybe last night by the governor and here are the basic things before we get to our guests i just want people to understand what we did here in west virginia this bill now for west virginians only affirms the right to keep and bear arms as a fundamental right under both the state and federal constitutions it asserts and cites the crucial prince versus united states a supreme court case that provides that congress can't compel the states to enforce federal regulatory programs it explicitly and statutorily prohibits the commandeering of state and local law enforcement by the federal government it prohibits state and local cops from participating in federal search warrants when the property that they're looking to seize is lawful i.e guns to possess under west virginia law this new law prohibits state and local police from enforcing any sort of federal red flag law legislation or even state red flag law legislation i don't know how that would happen at this point it also expressly prohibits and denies any west virginia court from any authority or jurisdiction to issue a red flag order so lots of good stuff in there it prohibits state and local police engaged in traffic stops or even noise complaints from detaining you and handing over to federal agencies anything that could be lawfully owned as of january 1st 2021 such as ar-15 style rifles full capacity magazines pistol braces etc it also permits the continued cooperation of state local and federal law enforcement from for non-firearm related activities such as drug task forces and you you know uh i have experience with those or task forces that have some primary purpose other than prohibiting firearms lawfully owned under west virginia law it authorizes and directs the attorney general to challenge any future federal federal firearm infringements in the courts it authorizes and directs the attorney general to publish model policies for our west virginia law enforcement as to how to avoid being commandeered by the federal government and lastly it provides good state and local police immunity for refusing to carry out federal firearm infringement infringements including a right not to be fired for refusing to enforce these federal infringements on our right to keep and bear arms so that is the new sanctuary legislation that is now signed into law in west virginia so with that let me go ahead and bring on our guest again luis valdez or it could be luis valdez uh whichever you prefer he is the florida director of the goa the gun owners of america he is a miami native he's a first generation born american of cuban parents he grew up around shooting hunting and collecting firearms he's a as a veteran police officer he burnt his own vacation time fighting for better gun rights at the capitol um he's passionate about second amendment and believes that it's this century's civil rights issue and and um you know i think it's every century's civil rights issue so he's the now the florida state director for the gunners of america and he's fighting this fight full-time so i'll go ahead and bring him on um thanks for joining me louis louis or louise seriously which one do you prefer louis is fine thanks for having me on yeah so so this is this is my first time having you on i i knew who you were ahead of time i know that you've been very outspoken in the state of florida where i'm from in in your second amendment in gun rights activism thank you um for folks that don't know i'm the florida state director for gun owners of america prior to that i was a 15-year veteran law enforcement officer and john hit a square on the head i literally burnt my own vacation time to lobby lawmakers at the capitol at the state capitol in tallahassee for better gun rights and sadly in doing so i basically blacklisted and burnt my own bridges as a cop but i think my oath as a law enforcement officer in defending the constitution is more important than simply having the badge on me so if i burnt those bridges so be it now as the state director i literally direct my every waking hour at fighting for the second amendment other than when it comes to my family it's it's my passion i truly believe that it is this century's civil rights issue specifically because it is one of the civil rights that we have left that have been trampled and completely destroyed in the last two centuries due to segregation due to slavery due to jim crow due to bigotry and simple government authoritarianism it's if you have a disarmed population then everything else goes out the window yeah in fact i somewhere i had i skipped over a one of my favorite quotes from george washington and that's there's nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet an enemy that's right and i think that's for a country and also for individuals it's it it really does apply to the individual and it applies to the country as a whole the the fact that you have lawmakers constantly passing legislation to create gun-free zones for their own benefit for their own safety is a sign that they truly do fear the unarmed population i mean here in florida alone just to give you a quick synopsis in florida it's legal to carry your firearm in the state capitol if you have a concealed carry permit i don't know if you can see it very well but when you go into the capitol one of the first things they do is they hand you the capitol police hands you this little pamphlet and it says welcome to florida's capital under florida law even though you possess a concealed carry license you may not carry your firearm into any meeting of the legislature or a committee therefore willful violation of this provision is a second degree misdemeanor so and and that's a big issue that this is this right here is just the tip of the iceberg of what's going on here in florida especially in florida but in a number of other states like in georgia and uh the carolinas and elsewhere florida is a republican super majority state we have 102 lawmakers that are republicans we have a republican governor and we've had it that way for the last 20 years yet florida is only one of five states that doesn't have open carry for the most part you can only open care if you're actively hunting fishing or or camping that's it we don't we you can't open carry down the street as a normal civilian as a normal law-abiding citizen we don't have unpermitted carry in any form or fashion outside of our homes but we have republicans that constantly campaign as if they're pro-gun and yet this right here they passed the law within the last 10 years to say oh you could carry at the capitol except you can't carry out the capital when it's actually worth the damn when they're in session why'd they do that because they want to throw crumbs to gun owners and make it look like they care when in reality they don't this session alone we had a second amendment sanctuary bill that was uh introduced by representative kaylee tuck and it was very similar to your west virginia bill and it died in committee our legislative session ends in two days so april 30th but it was assigned to the criminal justice uh subcommittee in the house which is chaired by representative cord byrd and he's a republican and when i asked him back in february before uh before our session officially kicked off when it was still committee meetings i said hey what's the uh what are you gonna bring up the constitutional carry in the set and the second amendment sanctuary laws or bills for debate in committee and he said oh i'll do it around the middle of march so halfway through our session when the halfway point through our session came up i again asked him and i said when are you going to bring up these bills and he told me straighten my face he says well i'm not going to bring up these bills because they don't have a senate companion bill they're only house bills and i'm not going to waste my time on that because they're not going to go anywhere mind you and i think you know about this florida governor ron desantis he just signed the anti-riot bill into law because that made national news right yeah and that's where you can what you can defend your yourself your property against uh rioters something like that right it's it's less than what what that is all it does is it makes what was a misdemeanor in some cases a felony and it allows the state to call any mass gathering a riot um and also they're claiming that you could now legally defend yourself from your vehicle even though you could originally do that under our standard ground laws but the reason why i bring that bill up is that was hb1 and that bill didn't have a senate companion bill but that bill was assigned to representative cord's committee and represent or i'm sorry not representative court representative byrd's committee and byrd brought that bill up for debate and a vote and it passed his committee even though it didn't have a senate companion bill but he wouldn't bring up constitutional carry he wouldn't bring up campus carry and he wouldn't bring up the bill to repeal the gun control laws passed after the parkland shooting in 2018 and he wouldn't bring up the sanctuary bill because he claimed those didn't have senate companion bills so how is it that the governor's pet project was rushed through all the committees in the house and the senate and is now on his desk and was signed into law but constitutional carry campus carry and a sanctuary bill can't when we have republicans that specifically campaign on being pro-gun yeah and that you know that's really the easy issue for them i mean the problem we have here is that the so-called conservatives or republicans they find it easy to to vote in favor of of any sort of gun rights bill but any other freedom it's like they they want to you know they won't even go against the governor like you know you got to wear a mask absolutely everywhere you go including in the capitol and uh you know we're not going to touch those in individual rights but gun rights yes but your capital is open to the public correct no no it's not been open to the public not here here in florida the governor has been championing florida as being open for business yet the capital has been closed this entire legislative session the public cannot go into the capital they cannot petition their lawmakers they cannot uh petition them for grievances or for bills that they want to pass or be opposed they can't do that and the worst thing is the senate president another republican a guy by the name of senator wilton simpson on our public uh access channel uh the florida channel he was caught in january on an open mic calling the public leeches and laughing about the closure of the capitol how it would make it the easiest legislative session for him in history have they closed you out of the capitol they have tried um as a registered lobbyist i have to have a scheduled appointment with a lawmaker or i have to be scheduled to speak at a committee meeting for a bill and uh in prior sessions as a as a private citizen not even as a registered lobbyist it used to be in florida that you could walk up to the capitol go through the magnetometers and you have free access to every office in the building now i would have to schedule in advance and they the capitol police wouldn't even let me pass the front doors unless someone from whoever's office i'm scheduled to meet with escorts me up and as soon as that meeting is done i have to be escorted out of the building i'm not allowed to door knock i'm not allowed to visit any other representatives office the senate side is completely closed to the public with signage that says no one may pass may go beyond the signs and they have the sergeant-at-arms office literally patrolling the hallways and if you are on the senate side they will trespass you from the building they will kick you out wow yeah they you know they've let my understanding is i haven't really been in there during our sessions over it was shorter than yours but you could get in from my understanding because i looked at filing a lawsuit here and the funny thing is is i was me and chris wiest who's a civil rights lawyer in kentucky who had to file a lawsuit against his governor for for closing down the capital we were going to file a suit against our governor for closing our capital and we were going to win because there's there's a good legal basis for it at least we thought when we looked into it there actually wasn't an executive order closing the capital that we could find anywhere turns out these coward legislators had kind of secretly closed it themselves through whatever internal rules that they have so they closed their own and at the same time we're at making it look like it was the governor so what ended up happening is you could get in anybody could get in not just a lobbyist so long as you had a meeting yeah that's something it works for the public too but 90 of your lawmakers this session weren't even going to schedule meeting with a private citizen because they're not a registered lobbyist they they the the majority of the lawmakers were extremely happy that the capital was closed because they don't have to deal with as the senate president put it the leech is coming in and dealing and disturbing them you know these lawmakers sit in their ivory tower as if it's as if the mass is as if the people that put them into office are are a pestilence on them when in reality it's the other way around the damn lawmakers they're not our representatives they're reprehensibles yeah i like what you're saying there that's um you're speaking my language that that's that's not just a problem in florida believe me no no we we have it even worse up here unfortunately yeah the problem go ahead no i'm sorry you were going to say well i i wasn't going to say anything probably that that intelligent i was just going to rag on our governor and say that you know still i'll still trade you governors you know we had here in goa we had a very good working relationship with uh ron desantis when he was in congress and we want to continue that good relationship we have we have with him as governor and in 2018 when he was uh running for the gubernatorial primary here in florida he was at the state republican convention and he was directly asked where he stands on gun rights and he said if he was governor at the time in 2018 he would have vetoed the parkland gun control bill now it's 2021 and he has not spent a single red cent of political capital in using his office as a bully pulpit to support constitutional carry or campus carry or open carry or any sanctuary bill and i understand we are the third largest state in population where we have 22 million people we deal with hurricanes we have a massive economy i get it running florida is not a simple thing part of my job when i was in law enforcement was i was actually assigned to uh protective operations at the capitol and part of that was being assisting with the protective detail of governor rick scott at the time and i get it hey running the state as governor isn't an easy job but simply saying in 2018 that he would have vetoed a gun control bill and he would support pro-gun legislation but not do anything between now and then i'm not saying he's he is directly smacking gun owners in the face but if it continues down this path it's going to look like it especially when there's a republican super majority and there's good bills that are being killed in the very committees that are passing his pre pet projects he needs to call for a special legislative session specifically for constitutional carry and second amendment sanctuary laws i think that would go very it would be very beneficial not just for florida gun owners but for him politically if he wants to run in 2024 for the white house he's going to actually have to produce a good second amendment stance because other republicans in the republican primary will clean his clock look at greg abbott in texas whether abbott is really pro-gun or not he is spending the political capital he's going on the media and he's saying i'm going to make texas a sanctuary bill a sanctuary state for guns if i'm going to make sure that it when constitutional carry reaches my desk i'm going to sign it desantis hasn't said a single thing about that and i don't say it negatively to him i just say it as a floridian why now does he ever meet with you the governor you know as far as reaching out to the the goa i reached out to his staff and i had a meeting with them earlier in the beginning of march and i specifically brought up these issues and they said that they would take it under advisement and they would bring it to his attention so far i have not heard anything back from his office i am going to reach out to his office again and more importantly i want florida gun owners and even gun owners that aren't in florida to reach out to his office because like you know you currently live in west virginia but i know there's plenty of folks all across the country that they spend their hard-earned money in florida for vacation if you're not a florida resident you could still call the governor's office and you can say i ain't going to your state to spend my vacation money i'm going to go elsewhere because your gun laws they're not that great compared to somewhere else yeah this guy says every politician needs to wear body cams 24 7. i think that's a great idea i haven't heard that yet but i'm i'm all for that um i wouldn't be against that but but yeah i mean hell i i still spend i still spend money in florida and and honestly with you going down there right now is like leaving the soviet union and entering america it's like it's like defecting the freedom i mean oh i know that you you you're you're on different issues but but i don't know hey i completely understand it i mean i i've had people literally come into florida um you know our our other state directors and and our staff from goa coming to florida and they literally tell me it's like crossing the berlin wall from east berlin into west berlin that the the fact that from where they're coming from it's a big sigh of relief but as a floridian it's it's really not because while the governor hasn't done a statewide mass mandate he's left it up to the counties and while the counties through his executive order can't find you the counties are still putting putting pressure heavily on businesses to have masks so and it depends like here in leon county in the in the capital you have to be with a mask in every business if not you can't basically go in because the businesses will have you will have you leave yeah well you're you're in one of the liberal areas of florida because you got the you got the damn university there so you got commies running around all over the place we have two universities we have fsc we have fsu and famu so yeah it's it's especially liberal but like um in the melbourne area in brevard county there's no mass mandate there we i was down there recently for uh a speaking engagement for protect the second brevard county good group of guys they're local but they're very passionate and literally every place i went to down there there was like no mask there wasn't even a sign that says the mask is required it was just no one wore a mask no one cared it was freedom in that in that regard but here in tallahassee everywhere is a mask and like i said the state capital is still closed even though the governor's proclaiming the state open yeah that's where that's where i last was in florida and i i grew up in brevard county and we we went down there here i don't know a few months back and and visited my parents and i think it was it was pretty it was it was pretty shocking like the first gas station off i-95 that we stopped at it was like all of a sudden for the first time in i don't know how many states there was no like mask nazi sign on the outside of the gas station and and everywhere else like it was it was just so strictly enforced even up and down the interstates and it was nice even in brevard county like going into dick's sporting goods like not only did they have dumbbells in stock there was no mask sign i mean there wasn't even a sign on the door this isn't like just a big chain franchise store and it it it was just such a vast difference and it's so tangible you can see like the difference between between you know freedom and tyranny at least as as far as the the masks go yeah and oh it was it was it was wonderful which you know i wish we had freedom when it comes to gun rights issues it's it's yeah that's true we have constitutional carry and you don't so i mean we don't even have open carry if right now if i went out if i walked down my sidewalk in front of my house with my glock on my hip i'd be arrested but you know it i i got my first concealed carry permit in the state of florida when i was in college i was going to ucf in orlando and i can remember it being a concern well i i can remember getting one and i wasn't even really carrying at that time i just wanted to be able to have a pistol in my truck yeah and not get arrested if if i if it got discovered by the cops but and you had to have a carry permit just to have a a pistol in your truck i don't recall specifically with those the law then and now when it comes to having a firearm in the vehicle is it has to be securely encased in state law literally defines securely encased as being in a shoe box with the top on being in a zippered case with the zipper engaged or being in your center console closed or your glove box closed so that's all securely in case now you if you don't have a concealed carry permit you can't have it on you in the car but you could have it securely encased so that's where a lot of the issue where having a permit comes and also the mythology of the three-step rule and all that jazz because i remember specifically when i was a uniform patrol cop down in south florida another officer he made an arrest for a guy on um down here we call them dui bikes you know the little 50cc'd uh uh they're not motorcycles but little 50cc powered mopeds that must have come about after i left florida i've never seen that i i saw him on the damn bicycles though at ucf yeah well the dui bike you know it's typically what a guy gets when he has his license provoked for a dui but guy just was driving one of those oh you're talking about the driver i thought you're talking about the cops no no no running around on scooters oh yeah yeah no the driver the driver got it got it yeah dui bikes okay yeah yeah little those little 50cc bikes so he gets stopped traffic infraction of some sort um and the uh traffic guy arrests him for unlicensed concealed carry now when he brings him into the station i was working on my own arrest form and i asked him hey what do you got he tells me what happened and i say you you can't book him on this man he's you you need to unarrest him all you got to do is write him a citation for whatever traffic infraction needed he goes oh no he doesn't have a concealed carry permit i could let him i could arrest him i said i'm telling you the fact where did he have the fire he goes oh well he had the firemen a book bag and i'm like was the book bag zippered up he goes yeah i'm like where was the book bag he goes oh it was under the seat i'm like ain't gonna fly call the state attorney's office so the state attorney's office tells them the same thing uncuff them right now immediately or you're going to have problems and that was just one of the myriad of issues as a law enforcement offer i've experienced here in florida because cops don't even know the laws when it comes to florida firearm laws yeah there's a good gun rights case and a lot of the a lot of the gun rights cases are fourth amendment cases because you know as as you know the the u.s supreme court has not as of yet extended the second amendment outside the home correct so really any protections we've had have been through just regular fourth amendment cases and there there was a really good gun rights case out of ohio out of the sixth circuit where these guys were stopped following a a informant tip or a third party tip that was credible that these guys were acting suspicious and they were walking towards a school and in fact they hadn't done anything wrong at all it was perfectly explainable but it did look suspicious from like you know grandma's point of view peeking through the blinds and to make a long story short they stopped these guys and one of them had a pistol in his backpack and he ends up getting arrested for being a felon in possession of a firearm but it was all struck down because it was closed in his backpack and therefore there had to be probable cause to search that backpack and and there's more to it but but that's sort of similar to what you're telling me there and and uh and i can't remember what that case is called but it was it was out of ohio i've i vaguely remember it i mean there's so many cases i've looked at over the years so i i vaguely remember it but um yeah there was that incident that i remember personally as a cop there was another incident where i remember at the state capitol of all things the capitol police they were doing a training and they were saying oh you could only let people in in the capital that have a concealed carry permit if they have a florida driver's license and i had to correct them on that i said no florida issues permits to non-residents it doesn't matter if they have a florida driver's license or florida id or not as long as they have a florida concealed carry permit they're good to carry and if they have a permit from a state that we have reciprocity with they're good to carry but their entire training because this was a joint training with them but their entire training was focusing on no they had to be a florida resident with a florida ccw with a florida dl or id and i was like no you guys are wrong on that too there's a culture in law enforcement where they they don't know the full extent of the law and because most cops don't deal with specific related laws you know your average beat cop they're gonna deal with your your common cause they're gonna deal with your domestic violence they're gonna deal with your strong armed robbery they're gonna deal with your shoplifting that type of stuff but when it comes to the very specifics of firing laws and this goes across all the states but since i'm here in florida and i was a florida cop i know specifically about florida issues a lot of them don't know florida law florida carry a state level organization they do a lot of open carry protests and the way they do it is they have active fishing licenses and they go to piers and they go fishing and under florida law as long as you are actively fishing hunting or camping you could open carry so that's their only way around to go to open carry in florida and they do these as a sign of protest uh miami beach uh they uh tried to apprehend some florida carry members at gunpoint for like 45 minutes until they cut them loose and they literally the the florida carry members had to argue with them while at gunpoint at handcuffs saying no you guys got this wrong this is what the law says there was an incident in tampa there was an incident um i forget where else but there's been multiple instances like that and the hilarious and sad thing is there's actually a youtube video floating around of the florida wildlife commission our game wardens doing a q a with the public and someone in the public asked them well can i open carry while hunting and fishing and all this and they go yeah oh and just to let you know most uh street cops they have no clue you could do that so you're gonna have trouble with them on that regard so you had state cops literally telling floridians oh hey yeah by the way most of your municipal cops they're not gonna know this yeah yeah i've i've had my own experiences with game wardens in florida um but yeah it there it is a whole nother topic really but it's surprising how it's like in florida how much more power they have than than like your regular cop and there's no shortage of cops in florida i mean compared to west virginia and here in like in small counties you might have like one guy on duty at a time in an entire county meanwhile i mean you look like brevard county florida i mean you got thousands i mean they're just there's so many more cops and then the game wardens are like like mega cops in florida well in in terms of their authority they have no more authority than any other cop in florida they're the only differences in under florida see i don't know how it is in west virginia but in florida we don't have a unified state police so like i know in texas you have um the texas department of public safety and everyone starts off as a trooper and then they could apply to be either a game warden or they could go to their plainclothes division which is the texas rangers and all that stuff but in florida we don't have a unified state police so the game wardens they are a constitutional office they they are created by the state constitution all the other state law enforcement agencies were created by legislative action for executive offices so the florida department of law enforcement the state version of the fbi they report to the governor the florida department or the florida division of investigative and forensic services they're the the bomb squad and arson guys they report to the chief financial officer of florida the florida agricultural department of agriculture and consumer services police they report to the agricultural commissioner and so on and so forth yeah except here's the thing though the the game board and i i i still own property in florida my our our family farm is is in levy county florida um near near gainesville about 20 miles uh from gainesville and more than once they've they've been game wardens been sneaking around there's a large piece of property yeah sneaking around in ghillie suits killing suits they could go on your property to enforce game laws without a warrant to cross private property yeah so you're say this time of year it's you know april or early may whenever say spring gobbler season is so you and your buddies you're out on your own private property nowhere near anyone else's property nowhere near a public road you haven't broken any laws or anything like that but you've got these guys wearing ghillie suits like they're snipers sneaking around on your property spying on you and what they're doing is they'll go if you have any any beta if you have any corn out you have to be however many like feet away from where your turkey blind is so you can't you can't bait the turkeys and so if if you have any food source like that they'll go it can't even if it's not in the line of sight they'll go out there and they'll check and they'll measure yeah they they have specific legislative authority because the legislature has passed specific laws granting them as an agency that authority but in terms of their certification they have the same cert as any other cop in florida yeah but anyways that that's that's a different video but florida has florida has no shortage of cops that's for sure you drive down i-95 and you'll see them like hiding in different ways and stuff like that yeah out of out of a state of 22 million people i think we have something like 340 different agencies that amount to like 45 or 50 000 cops statewide yeah i once got a speeding ticket from an airplane in florida on the i forget what it's called that was fhp yeah the road florida highway patrol the the road between titusville and orlando that just goes through the swamp and it's like straight for miles and miles it's like 55 miles an hour that is um maybe is it 50 it's not us 192 i think that's u.s 59 or state road 59 i know the road you're talking about yeah and it's like a four lane i mean and it's better than any interstate in west virginia and it goes to the swamp and it's four lane there's nobody even then on the road as far as the eye can see i mean you're seeing mirages like miles down the road it's it's it's so long and empty not a curve or anything and it's like 55 miles an hour so of course i'm cruising i'm like i don't know 85 86 ish damn airplane apparently is cruising above me no one in sight no pedestrians no businesses no homes nothing it's completely controlled access way better than any any road in west virginia and here they are down the road before you get to orlando and they're just they've got people pulling over every car and they've clocked them from the airplane so i got a ticket that was like 250 something bucks and because it was that much i had to report it to like everything i've ever done to apply to the state bar lost lost everything i've had to report this damn speeding ticket the best way i could describe florida under republican leadership with its state government is we are like disney world they put a hell of a lot of work and effort into the special effects and the costumes to make make-believe look like reality and that is what it's like here in in terms of freedom everyone thinks florida is this free state where you can do whatever the hell you want when in reality we are no different than most of the other uh democratic controlled states sure we have a republican super majority but all of our elections are this close when it comes to statewide elections to it going democrat for the governor they've all been under a percentage uh in terms of who wins and our legislature even though it's republican supermajority most of them are authoritarian they don't care about your second amendment rights they don't care about true constitutionalism in terms of business practices they want everything to be a fee a permit or a license i mean just to give you a simple idea if you are a a single sole proprietorship as a handyman and you are conducting business in florida you either have to have proof of workers comp coverage or proof of an exemption because if you don't it's a third degree funny to simply be a handyman to be a guy that you know that you work out of your your panel van as a sole proprietorship you have no employees and all you do is you're doing drywall for your neighbor next door if you don't have proof of coverage of workers comp coverage or you don't have proof of an exemption third degree felony and yet and they're probably enforcing that and prosecuting that through all the kovitz stuff as well oh uh the agency the state definitely does that now most of it of course they do it as a pre-trial interventions where you know they they they go and they file for an arrest warrant and they go after the person they arrest the guy and then uh the state attorney's office will always give them a pti say hey look you know it's an admit it it's a non-violent felony stay clean for a year and we drop the charges and no profit but still the fact that you have that here in the state of florida when you have a republican super majority that campaigns on being quote unquote pro freedom pro pro-second amendment pro-liberty and we have laws like that on the books and people and and i wanna and i know i'm gonna segue here but the fact that you have people constantly voting for these republicans and then they think everything's good i mean look at marco rubio look at rick scott in congress right now you know you have two senators they're backing red flag laws and putting gun owners on a terror watch list because they own guns and yet these guys claim they're for freedom and they always campaign that oh the democrats are worse yeah the democrats are worse but here's the thing simply voting for a guy that has an r by their name that's not freedom that's just voting for the lesser of two evils and voting for the lesser of two evils still takes us down the path of despotism yeah yeah i'm glad i'm glad we had this conversation i'm uh you know feeling a little bit about better about uh west virginia's government here i i'd still would trade our governors but you know maybe you know i don't think i trade our legislators i'll you know i would love to have your legislators i would love to have your legislators because ours are are you know i i can count them on one hand on who i really think is pro second amendment and and i mean pro second amendment in promoting what the founding fathers wanted not them simply claiming that their pro second amendment that oh the democrats want to outlaw guns altogether well i'm for letting you have a second uh 22 single shot that's not pro-second amendment in my book but that is in their book you know i think a lot of this a lot of the the success for gun rights stuff in west virginia is because of the organization that we have here the west virginia citizens defense league they've done a trip they've done tremendous work here and they have they've really been like the the biggest interest group and they have their own lobbyist that that has been pushing legislation through and every election cycle they will give kind of like the nra does a you know a letter grade to the candidates and that can make a big deal in some of these elections i think that that's been very very very uh important to to get a lot of this this stuff through very much so one of the things when goa brought me on board to be the state director and this is what i love about goa compared to some of the other national organizations they understand that each state is different and goa has given me a lot of latitude basically like hey look florida is your project you need to run it how you see fit and they brought me on board in the beginning of this year to be the state director because previously there was an estate director and one of the things that i am trying to do that we have a problem here in florida is gun owners in florida are politically apathetic i had um senator um baxley dennis baxley he's one of the the five on my finger that i could count it's truly pro second amendment he flat out told me in 2019 he said the reason why republican lawmakers in florida don't push pro-gun laws is because florida gun owners are apathetic and they're silent and republicans take that silence as approval i i just saw someone on the comments say another issue is that we have a lot of northerners coming here and that is another issue uh we have a lot of people that come here from new york and new jersey and connecticut and elsewhere and they come to florida and for them like you said in regards to the whole coveted thing it's a brush of fresh air they come to florida where there's no assault weapons ban and they could get a shell issue permit for concealed carry when if you lived in new jersey you can't get one you know you can't have an ar-15 you can't have 30-round mag so for them they already see that as better and they don't see the reason to spend the time and effort to push their lawmakers to get something even better or they don't support it in the first place like they did in new york yeah or they don't support in the first place but as goa's state director for florida i'm here to change that i'm here to literally light a fire under florida gun owners and get them to stop being apathetic because in 2018 when parkland happened i was helping to organize a pro-gun rally at the state capitol with john gottmacher a fellow lawyer a man of your profession and we had between two to five hundred people show up at the capitol while three hours south of us a tampa five thousand gun owners showed up to the tampa gun show to hoard more pmags and lowers and i get it i understand but i really think if 5 000 gun owners showed up at the capitol that day we wouldn't have had the gun control law passed after parkland and the republican lawmakers would have been oh god these people are pissed but instead that never happens and it's not just guns that's every yeah well it is it is a conservative issue yeah apathy is a major issue on anything across the board whether it's a first amendment issue a second amendment issue a fourth amendment fifth amendment it doesn't matter conservatives are political are politically apathetic because all they do is they reliably vote republican and they think that is good enough but the founders put the power in our hands through the for through the different boxes you have the soap box the ballot box the jury box in the cartridge box and most conservatives think that those boxes were stolen they weren't stolen we allowed them to be taken away because we sat on the sidelines and we didn't raise the cane when we needed to yeah not not all uh this guy says not all not all northerners are like that some of them are from new hampshire or maine and you know what not all you know when i was growing up but it was in my family had been in florida since like the 1830s or 40s and it was like the old-timers were like yankees this yankees that yankees your fri your family are what we would literally call florida crackers and for folks that don't know florida cracker doesn't mean because you're white it means because you were the original settlers that used bull whips to herd cattle around and that was the crack of the whip yeah they were florida crackers they were tall and skinny kind of like a bag of bones because they had no air conditioning it was so damn hot and you know what they were pretty damn healthy because there was not a whole lot to go wrong with them they were just just kind of a bag of bones my my great uncle who who really put me through law school and all that i got a picture of him on the wall he was grew up in a log cabin in rural florida and he was a florida cracker and we i brought him up here to west virginia in the last days of his life and he he really loved it here and he said oh boy these people are so blessed with their water he couldn't get over the creeks and stuff but but uh yeah they that's how that's how they were and you know what they were freedom loving people i'll tell you a quick story about his father my great-grandfather you know he grew up he grew up in the in the the really you know rough and tough and poor rural rural areas of florida up in uh levy county and you know there was no there was no real law or anything there i mean the people were so poor everybody was poor but i can recall a story of where you know speaking of game wardens a game warden i guess maybe it was a new thing and was gonna come investigate him for killing a deer or something like that you know to feed his family and he found out this game warden was looking for him and so he he's he's strapped on his you know his pistol i think he had a he had certain pistols and he had a nickel-plated i think 38 revolver that he called his sunday pistol and that's what he wore to church his nickel plated and then the other days of the week i think he had a non-nickel plated revolver but anyways when he heard this game warden was looking for him he said the hell with this and so he he put a severed head of a doe on the front of his truck or car strapped it on there and went around looking for the game warden and eventually he found the game board and and uh stepped out of his car or truck i don't recall maybe it was a willy's and just kind of squared up with him he's like all right here i am and he said and i i've heard this from some of the old-timers when i was growing up that he really did this and he said all right make your play you're looking for me and then he was ready to i mean like something out of the wild west and supposedly it was a true story and the game warden didn't bother him again florida very much in in our recent past was the wild west and um you know to separate myth uh myth from reality too when it comes to the wild west sadly florida has a history of gun control along with that freedom um what a lot of people don't realize is after the civil war and the end of reconstruction when the southern democrats regained control of florida they rewrote the state constitution in 1885 and the first thing they did was they uh in the right to bear arms they said that floridians have the right to keep and bear arms but the legislature has the right to dictate how that will be done and starting in 1893 they started passing gun control laws and the purpose of these laws were to disarm the freed blacks and throughout florida's history up until very recently all of our gun control laws were tied to jim crow and racism so in i don't know if you know about this case but in 1940 the state supreme court here had watson v stone where uh judge butte justice buford literally said in regards to florida's gun control laws oh i know of this law and he was referring to to folks like uh your great-grandfather he goes yeah this law was never applied to the poor rural whites uh right white uh residents it was only applied to the blacks even though on paper it had to be applied to everyone what he was referring to that you had to get a permit to own and carry a firearm in florida it was only applied universally against the black floridians not the white floridians so yeah like in your great grandfather's case you did have folks that just they didn't care about the law they went around they said make you know make your play they squared up but sadly that same game warden probably would have gone after a black family for feeding his family and since he was disarmed he wouldn't have been able to square up and tell the state f you i want i need to feed my family we're at the height of the great depression i don't care if i'm poaching or not my kid and wife got to eat but he wouldn't be able to do that because he was disarmed and in 1968 at the height of the civil rights movement florida revamped its state constitution and got rid of a lot of jim crow but kept that provision still in it the legislature to this day still has the power under the constitution to determine the method of carrying who can carry a firearm in our state and that needs to end if florida republicans really want to claim to be there for pro-civil rights they need to end this bull and push constitutional carry you know it's it's it's funny you bring that up because i actually have the i'm looking for it right now i actually have my great great grandfather's permit so that he could buy and possess a winchester repeating rifle and that's from the state of florida if i could only find it because i've shown it to people over the years like look at this gun control assault rifle assault rifle ban from i think it was like the late late 1800s oh very much so when my family came to florida in may of 1961 from communist cuba and my father uh joined what was then the dade county public safety department uh public safety department which became metro date police which if anyone's watched miami vice metro day pd was the agency that uh sonny crockett worked for in that show and at the time in the 70s when my father was a rookie patrolman you still had to get a permit to possess and carry a firearm now in dade county it was very hard to get a gun permit if you weren't connected my father was able to get a permit for my grandfather and my uncle because he was a cop because my grandfather and my uncle's business were all cash and carry businesses my grandfather had a business of going around miami florida selling women's dresses that was his thing he would buy women's dresses at wholesale from the garment district in downtown miami and he had his clients and he would go around and at the end of the month he'd show them and the following month he'd go to all his customers and say okay what do you want to keep what don't you want to keep give me what you don't want to keep back what you want to keep pay me and it was all cash and carry you know this was all cash businesses back then and miami then just like now was a rough and tumble town it was even rougher back then but because my father was a cop my grandfather was able to get a a carry permit to possess and carry his gun and people don't believe it because right now we're all shall issue but we're only shall issue because in 1987 we became a shell issue state but that could change tomorrow if the legislature decides to pass a new gun law and they and the republicans showed in 2018 that they could do that because they passed a bump stock ban that was so vague it bans binary triggers or any other accessory that could change the rate of fire of a firearm they made it to where anyone under the age of 21 can't possess a firearm they mandated that now statewide there has to be a waiting period for firearm purchases if you don't have a concealed carry permit they changed it to where now of course the red flag laws that they trample the fourth amendment right to go after the second amendment so the fact that we have nothing in stone that says that we could carry without a government permission slip is offensive to me in my opinion as a floridian i'd i'd love to have constitutional carry i'd love for it i found this document i mean let me sure put this up i don't know it's not big enough you can hardly see it but i'll this is the actual i'd love to i'd love for you to email it to me for a few yeah this this is this is my great grandfather's license to carry and possess repeating rifle from 1896 and his name is john r hague now now that my name is john hague bryan so this is the the florida side of my family were the hagues and the brians were actually from montana but this is the the the side of my uh my florida side of my family that i kind of grew up around and this is what he got a winchester repeating rifle caliber number 38 and it was signed by the the chairman of the board of county commissioners and then attested by the clerk it says inc state of florida alachua county 1896 in consideration of a bond executed by john r hague of alachua county of alachua state of florida commissioners do hereby license him to carry use and have in his possession in accordance with the provisions of said law and the bond of four said one winchester repeating rifle caliber number 38 for the term of and i guess he got that left in plank um but that's just just crazy 1896. i mean that's the assault weapon of the time you know it was and to this day we still need a permission slip here in florida to carry um looking at the comments i see gunny and then a bunch of sixes i'm not going to read all this because he says only vote for mega republicans or libertarians if you want your rights gunny i hate to tell you this but um it was mega republicans that pushed gun control here in florida in fact uh it was donald trump that congratulated florida republicans for pushing for uh red flag laws and the uh over 20 the under 21 age restriction so no even mega republicans don't matter yeah uh i mean what somebody asked a i meant to ask you that but somebody had asked a question i think it was somebody who lived in vero and he said what can i do so i mean well we have you on here i mean you we've got some people here in florida and a lot of people like me have family in florida what can we encourage them to do to help us well for the first number one go to gun owners.org and join and i'm not saying this just because hey i want you to join goa i want you to join g08 because we have an email alert system and as the state director i keep track of everything that goes on here in the state and now that session is coming to an end i'm planning to do a whistle stop tour across the state so i could meet with florida gun owners goa members or not to get you guys involved i want to organize florida gun owners i want to get you guys as an organized active group so we could petition our lawmakers correctly so we could go to the capitol during lobby days and we could beat down their doors and we could tell them in person this is what we want so we could show up to committee meetings because one of the problems in florida unlike other states in texas for example since texas is such a big state if there's a bill that your you support or oppose you don't have to be there in person to voice your opinion you could call in and uh your or you could send a fax or an email or a letter and they note that in the official records here in florida they wrote the legislative rules that you have to be in the committee chambers and you have to have submitted a committee appearance form beforehand so you could speak or wave in support or against the bill so i want to organize you guys i want to train you guys so you know how to play the game legislatively that the lawmakers trying to play on us and at the same time i'm literally scouting for people that could be regional uh leaders because florida is such a big state we have 67 counties so you know like in miami-dade county alone or broward county or palm beach it's so big we might need three people because one guy to cover the north the central and the south end of the county versus like in alachua county you know you could cover a couple of different areas i literally want to meet folks that could do this and so we could organize and build a system from the ground up and we could put pressure on lawmakers um and yeah absolutely that's what the left is so good at doing is organizing from the grassroots and and sending letters and and and complaining and showing up and protesting and all this stuff and and and people on you know on the right they don't do that because well one they they probably are out working or you know doing something else that is you know more efficient in their lives but but you know that's going to have to change you know squeaky wheel gets a grease from these coward politicians the the squeaky wheel does get the grease and um gunny again he said uh become a republican committee member um gunny i hate to break this to you um the republican party chair um he actually voted in favor of the parkland uh gun control bill because the republican party chair is a state senator so yeah that the the rpof the republican party of florida is not pro-gun but we could change that and we could change that by putting pressure on them so again i plan to go statewide on a whistle stop tour and organize and educate as many gun owners as i can to get you guys active the best way we could do this is by literally organizing um in 2018 when the parkland bill was being up was being brought up for debate senate bill 7026 i was there in plainclothes to speak against the bill and before any of the uh anti-gunners knew where i was i in terms of the stance i spoke to them and i literally interrogated them i wanted to find out who they were and they were a bunch of different people uh they were the broward county school board union they were the local pta organizations they were the league of women voters you name it but they all were there and they all coordinated to speak on a unified front as the goa state director i have a very good relationship with uh florida cary and not just in terms of being a good relationship with them i'm also a florida carry member we work hand in hand together i work hand in hand with uh protect the second they're a good group of guys they're just getting off the ground they're looking uh to create a grassroots level organization across the state goa we are willing to go to work together and to um build a coalition it's not just our way or the highway our goal is to advance liberty and freedom so if there's a local group that's out there that has the same goals as us of course we'll work with them i have no issue with that and i agree with that as well you know i've i've i've joined the goa and i've recommended to people that if they're going to donate to the the fight for the second amendment to donate to the goa because they i mean a lot of people have been i think rightfully critical of the nra recently and when you donate the gra i mean i've seen i've seen the work you know that that their lawyers are putting in to to these cases and they're doing they're doing good work and as far as the emails go that that's great because i'm on the email list for the goa as well i just got one today that said you know alert from west virginia this you know th this uh this new sanctuary law was signed and it's informing people about it and then a few days ago i i got an alert from them like call the governor's office you know make sure that he signs this bill and so they i mean they were on top of that here in west virginia and i don't even think we have a director here yet in west virginia for the goa and they're they're already on top of our our state law stuff so yeah the email the email notifications i think are i agree with you that's that's that's an important part of it because people need to be informed about what's going on if they're going to call and raise hell with with their politicians or anyone else very much so and the the beautiful thing about goa is we don't waste our money on frivolous causes um when goa brought me on board they brought me on board for one reason one reason only that's to advance the second amendment protected here in florida and with that you know i i take that very seriously when i was brought on board i'm entrusted by goa members to not waste their money yeah am i being paid for this yes i'm being paid for this but you know i'm not making a hundred grand here trust me i'm making less now than i was as a cop and i'm doing it with a smile but i take my job as the state director very serious because it not just affects me personally it affects my wife it affects my kid it affects my family it affects my friends it affects everyone here in florida it's no different when i took the oath to defend the constitution both the state and the federal constitution as a cop so j and that's goa's core principle everyone in goa is like that um on the federal level and on the state level and on the local level and i beg you guys join goa because every penny you send helps advance the cause of liberty because we're not spending our time and effort on frivolous issues here in florida and i don't want to name names but you had another gun rights organization they spent political capital on a bill about uh banning the leashing of dogs in a backyard what what the hell does that have to do with the second amendment what yeah well this is sort of like uh they instead of stopping our governor up here who's been running the state like a dictator for 13 or 14 months now they're they were worried at times for you know deciding whether or not the pepperoni roll should be the official food of west virginia yeah yeah well you know it's it's real simple the second amendment is as crucial as the first amendment and as the fourth and as the fifth amendment and without the second amendment we as the people we can't protect and defend all the others it's this interconnected web liberty and freedom is is crucial and even though i mostly deal with the second amendment i back the first amendment issue because without the first amendment i can't protect the second amendment so the work you do is crucial especially when it comes to fourth amendment cases because we do have the right to be you know for the fourth and fifth amendment in terms of protection from illegal search and seizures the right to be secure on our persons the right not to self-incriminate it's it's crucial it's all it's all an interconnected web now obviously you you have to stay really busy just with florida stuff being the you know such a large state um have you been keeping up with any of the national issues like with the biden administration oh very very much so um i am not i do not personally deal with the federal issues we we have a good group of folks in the dc area that do that but all of us uh whether we're state directors we're federal directors uh it doesn't matter we all keep informed because what happens in dc does trickle down like for example marco rubio and rick scott they're they're backing red flag laws right now but that is very much um even though it's a dc matter it affects us in florida because it's florida voters that put them into office and right now we are looking for anyone that could challenge marco rubio in a primary race um because rubio needs to go so you you don't just support rubio because he's he's cuban and you're cuban that's not how it works let's see rubio as a cuban actually pissed off the cuban community for folks that don't know his family came here before uh 1959 and that's when fidel castro came over so his family came here as regular economic uh migrants seeking the american dream as regular folks you know no different than someone moving here from uh germany in the 1920s or someone moving here from ireland in the 19 in the 1860s or whatever um they didn't his family didn't come here as political refugees but he campaigned heavily in 2012 that his family were political refugees fleeing fidel castro and communism and after he won office and it came out that he was not a political refugee suffering under fidel castro that was a huge slap in the face of the cuban american community because the folks that came here before castro and after castro it's like this big schism it's this big dichotomy folks know the difference got it and a lot of people outside of florida don't understand that generally the the cuban community in florida is has been you know very republican or very conservative as compared to like other what you know i said communities i say this as a hispanic um as a cuban american what a lot of people that aren't hispanic don't understand is hispanics and latinos were not a homogenous uh ethno-nationalistic group we are very different um as a cuban american we're different than mexican americans or chicanos or tejanos or argentinians or venezuelans here in florida it's a huge melting pot we have cuban americans puerto ricans dominicans venezuelans um the venezuelans are fleeing uh hugo chavez and now um uh maduro uh and that communist dictatorship in a socialist dictatorship going down in venezuela they're very conservative i know uh people that are literally old imperial spanish from new mexico uh area that they're extremely conservative i mean their family could trace their lineage back to the 1600s when spain claimed and settled that area it was you had hispanics you had mexicans in texas that were part of that were tejados that founded texas their their family lineage is extremely conservative so the idea that someone is simply hispanic or latino makes them a leftist or anti-gun is wrong it's extremely wrong and forcing people into that box is not going to get you anywhere wasn't it was it biden or was it obama who sort of put their foot in their mouth and and said something like well you know the the problem with the the hispanic population is that they're we just can't count on the vote for um democrat he said something like that i don't remember if it was biden or obama but i don't remember which one said it but yeah one of the two said it i mean i do remember when nancy pelosi visited miami she was literally chased uh through a back alley and everyone was calling her a communist until she was able to uh run into a building and they locked the door yeah it you know i i love you know i i love the the the cuban population just for the you know the fact that i mean it's it's such a good example of blowing up the whole like you know the whole white privileged narrative and and it's like all right well you know if if we're going back to basic tribalism and grouping people by their their skin color or their ethnicity or everybody except for so-called white people i mean it there's a good friend a good friend of mine that i went to college with who's his cuban he still lives in miami i saw on social media the other day that somebody was you know trying to insult him and explain why he's he is where he is in his life and things have been so easy just saying well it's because of white privilege and you know he i mean i don't know that you could look at him and look at me and say you know which one is which one is cuban which one is is white i mean you you can't necessarily tell but i mean so like no technically this guy didn't realize now this is a this is a brown person according to the the the tribalist tribalism narrative that the left and that biden is before oh the the tribalism is ridiculous um how people try to put people in boxes um because i mean i'm in a mixed-race marriage my wife she's puerto rican and she's black our kid our daughter is is mixed race you know what what are they going to put her in are they going to say she's black or are they going to say she's wide or they're going to say she's mixed or they're going to say she's hispanic you know they're going to try to put her in so many different boxes when reality she's a kid made from love i mean and my wife is more conservative than me and i'm i mean i'm as conservative as conservative can be and my wife will sometimes say things i look at her and go damn like you know i didn't think about it that way but it's this whole putting people into boxes is ridiculous last i checked isn't the national slogan of the country e pluribus unum out of many one wasn't the entire idea of the founding of this country is it doesn't matter who you are where you're from what your background is what your ancestry is what your ethnicity is what your religion is as long as you believe in the american ideals and the american ideals are simple freedom and liberty and equality you are an american it doesn't matter where you're from it doesn't matter who you are what race what gender you know i i view the principle of liberty as simple as that i don't care if you're if you could trace your ancestry to the mayflower or if you came off the boat last week as long as you believe in liberty and you believe in freedom and more importantly you believe in protecting liberty and freedom and not forcing your beliefs whatever they are down the throat of someone else and you respect that you're an american yeah in in and uh you know i think we're like the only country why is why is america exceptional well the rest of the world it was defined by blood or soil you know that the the borders of of where you were born where your family was from your ethnicity what your blood is that's what defined you like like being being japanese it wasn't just because you subscribed to a certain ideal it's very difficult to become japanese but but to become american what did you have to do you had to sign on to you know the the beliefs as basically set forth in the declaration of independence you had to you had to subscribe to to liberty to freedom to want to want to to be a part so it's it's a country based around a an idea a dream a belief system and that that is not based around skin color or or blood or or or any particular borders and so i think that's a that's a great point that is purposefully excluded from the narrative that we all have pushed down our throats these days i i mean if if i go through my ancestry my great-grandparents were born in astutia spain the northern part of spain uh my great-grandfather migrated to cuba and my grandfather and his father and my father were born in cuba i'm the first in my family born in the u.s my wife she could trace her lineage to when the united states conquered puerto rico from the spanish-american war and you know made it an american territory her family's been in pr since basically spain colonized it in one former fashion or another due to her ancestry and she's as american as i am and i'm the first in my family born here i mean technically my wife is more american than me if you just go by time frame and family lineage because puerto ricans were made u.s citizens in 1917 so her grand her grandmother and her grand and her parents and her great-grandparents were american i'm the first in my family born on u.s soil but you know it it doesn't matter if you're born here it doesn't matter if you if you came from elsewhere as long as you espouse and you defend the american dream and the american dream is liberty and freedom that's what matters that's that's why it matters for the second amendment that's why it matters for the first amendment for the fourth amendment for the fifth and for everything else well you know that's why you know you're in a strong position to have an opinion on things now and to speak out on things because you know the ever more increasingly you they've gotten so bad with the you know the i see us going to a bad place with with racism against against white people i i think it's primarily coming from other white people so-called white people i mean i i think it's laughable to describe people as white black or brown but but uh it's we're going to a really bad place and here not only were you were you a cop but you're you're a cuban and you you have a a mixed racially marriage and kids and they can't they can't call you a a white guy i mean they can't do that they can't they can't put white privilege on you so you can according to their rules you can speak out you know the funny thing about that is if you go through my ancestors i'm as white as they come i mean my family is only two generations removed from spain and it's from northern spain it was the only part of spain not even conquered by the moors if you go back historically so i'm probably if if you do that whole 23andme thing on me i'm probably whiter than some of the the people that are pushing this crazy stuff but i don't care i mean i'm part of you know you know what race i am i'm part of the human race it doesn't matter what what skin color i am or or any of that crap i i it's very simple it's i believe in freedom and the people that are pushing this stuff the the whole trying to box everyone and segregate everything it's because the first thing authoritarians do is they try to sow division within the public so the public goes out each other's throats instead of those that are trying to rule them that's if you look historically at every dictatorship at every despotic regiment every form of tyranny that's what's happened that's what the nazi germans did you know they they had the jews as a scapegoat they had the gypsies as escape goat you look at the russians they went out they did the programs um you look at the uh the spanish empire and how they created the la la casta which was this horribly complicated racial rule of whether you're mestizo you're this or you're that or you're creole or whatever i mean every every totalitarian regime has set up these crazy systems where people went after each other and they do it on purpose because they want us to go after each other instead of after them because if we're too busy infighting we're too busy to notice our rights and freedoms being stolen from us well you know and yeah i think the other thing that you can you know when you go on your tour and you talk to people is everything that we've witnessed the past well more than the the past yeah the past year the past 13 months not just all the covid stuff but all the riots i mean with the riots the destruction of property people have witnessed themselves on tv these police departments like taking a knee refusing these these mayors refusing to defend businesses and the homes and just cow towing to antifa and and the black lives matter crowd what did that do in my opinion other than really in the debate on gun rights on on the second amendment the the importance of of being able to be armed as an american citizen when seconds count cops are minutes away if you have a good agency with good leadership and good officers and good politi and good politics backing them but in certain jurisdictions you're on your own and that's been proven multiple times in florida especially like here all right well we've got we've got a decreasing population i mean we're pretty safe here in like my mountain stronghold here in west virginia like there's not you could it could things couldn't go that sideways but anywhere in florida i mean you've got what 22 23 million people things could get really sideways in florida to give you for you know everyone historically looks other than what's happened recently within the this last decade everyone always looked at the rodney king riots as like oh my god that was a historical event to show you that you're on your own when the lapd basically told koreatown we ain't going in there you guys are on your own you had the roof koreans and you know they defended their businesses and their livelihoods but prior to that you had um the mcduffie riot here in miami florida um and for the folks that don't know the mcduffie riot was arthur mcduffie was a black man who um was running away from the cops on a uh in a car chase and was pulled over and the cops beat the crap out of him and they killed him and the medical coroner at the time i forget the exact quote but it was in the miami herald and basically wrote something to the effect of they cracked his skull like an egg and there was a riot in downtown miami in liberty city and this was in 1980 my father worked those riots as a cop and has first-hand accounts and i grew up hearing those stories but what a lot of people don't realize is there was a lot of pent-up frustration in the black community because you did have a historical issue of segregation and of mistreatment by the police and but when that all happened the police basically pulled out and you had entire sections of miami destroyed and to this day there hasn't been an economic recovery from that it was very similar to what happened in la and to bring in la you also had a very historic uh issue you had the rampart scandal you had the history of the lapd during the 1960s literally harassing black americans pushing unofficial segregation and all that so you know when people constantly say that blm is wrong blm's actions are wrong and blm has been co-opted to do something completely horrible which is wanting destruction and pushing um an absolute travesty of of equality but and i don't want a segwaying to say that you know we have an issue of systemic racism but as a country we do have an issue that does need to be resolved and that's because again we have our political leaders that constantly have us go as each other's throats through one way or the other another they try to label us they try to put us into these tribes and these teams and instead of us all just around saying you know what we're all americans and we all should promote liberty you have this tribalism and this factionalism going i don't in any way condone what blm has done i don't in any way condone what antifa's done but i do understand that hey you do have issues where law enforcement and i say this as a cop where you have law enforcement on a historical level they have abused people's rights under the color of the law and it happens to this day whether you're white or you're black or you're hispanic or you're asian it doesn't matter you do have an abuse of government authority yeah you i'm not gonna disagree with you there i mean that that's kind of what i do for a living is file those file those lawsuits but yeah you you you have this issue here's what here's what they ought to do though i mean if they they have if they have a legitimate beef go go uh go attack the police department go right at the police department city hall don't go don't go burn down and and i wholeheartedly dollar general yeah every american has the right to to petition the government for their grievances every american does not have the right to march down my street and burn down my neighborhood and destroy my livelihood my business or my home and that is the thing as a country as a society we have our entire system of government is backing one system but denying the other you have elected officials in certain jurisdictions that are backing rioters and giving them room to destroy while our state capitals are closed so we can't peacefully petition our lawmakers and that's where eventually and i fear this because i don't want violence to break out across the country but at some point the honest american whether they're white or they're black is gonna get fed up and they're going to start um rioting yeah well i mean imagine if i mean look what happened at the capitol january 6th i mean which is nothing compared to what's happened in all the cities violence-wise and i mean those were a bunch of like there was a couple hundred like guys with flags and girls like with flags and and the only person killed was was the was the unarmed trump supporter and i'm but imagine if you just took those same couple hundred people and you you did arm them yeah you know and and i think that's sort of what's behind the the current push for the the federal executive order gun control the fear that that created every every piece of gun control legislation has always been for one thing and one thing only those that want to rule want those that they want to rule to be disarmed because they know if they're armed they can overthrow them and that is exactly what our founders did that's what every revolution has done that's what every revolt has done i mean the only armed revolt in american history other than the american revolution was the battle of athens tennessee and that was against a segregationist sheriff that was enforcing jim crow and a lot of people forget that what sparked that was a black uh resident being kicked out of the polling place and you had all these world war ii vets returning from the war saying what the hell we just fought in in the pacific and europe to liberate and fight for freedom and we got this crap happening here in our own backyard no no no no no and what'd they do they went and they they grabbed someone m1 grands and they got some dynamite and they made sure that there was a fair and honest election and that's the only other time since the revolution that you've had americans fight against tyranny you had the battle of um up in west virginia the kentucky area blair mountain you had that i mean you had the uh what was then the army air corps dropped bombs on americans yeah well you you got to look at the picture of all the firearms seized from from the west virginians after after that that battle i mean the hell they had they had like uh belt feds yeah they had stacks just crates of ammo it was i mean great picture the the 20th century was numerous revolts against tyranny in our own country in our own borders you had uh the battle of blair mountain you had the battle of athens tennessee um you had the uh the ludlow massacre in colorado you had um the bonus march in you know washington dc you had numerous civil rights movements uh across the south fighting jim crow and these were peaceful events mind you and you know you had the national guard and the police called uh beating them and lawmakers to this day are afraid of the people wising up and saying enough's enough that's why they're pushing gun control that's always why they push gun control because you can't you can't rule as an authoritarian over an armed people because an armed people could fight against that yeah and and that i mean the permit that i showed you earlier from my great grandfather well when that stuff started is the you know i mean the the beginning of jim crow well yeah the the ex-confederate soldiers everyone returning home to to florida after having fought in the civil war really by force i mean they didn't have any have any choice they weren't given the option of joining either army you you yeah you fought based on geography or you were executed yeah when they returned home they were they were disarmed by statues statutes like that yeah they were and it was it was the start of jim crow and and what people don't realize is jim crow affected a lot of poor whites just as just as it affected blacks um it's again the first the first thing that every tyrannical government does is it goes after guns that's what fidel castro did in communist cuba he went after my family's guns and my family uh fought in the bay of pigs my uncle mario he was a part of regatta 2506 with the cia and helped organized the bay of pigs invasion and sadly that failed and that only failed because john f kennedy refused air support for the cuban uh patriots that were fighting against communism and that's actually one of the reasons why a lot of cubans are republican but that's a whole other story but a lot of people in in every despotic regime whether it's communist cuba whether it was east germany nazi germany the ussr it doesn't matter the first thing they do is they go after guns that's what maduro that's what hugo chavez did in venezuela when he sees power in the early 2000s he went after guns and whether they're republican or democrat here in the u.s if they want to go after your guns they are not for freedom they are not for liberty and it doesn't matter if they have an r by their name or d by their name same thing with the censorship yeah you know if they want to if they want to suppress you know the free exchange of of ideas then they they don't have good intentions you know and it's but again that's that's a whole nother that's a whole other video here but but but you you hit the nail on the head if you know the first thing they do is they go after guns then they could push censorship so but for folks watching um again what's your email that or what's the email that people can contact you if they need to get if they want to get in touch with you the best way they can get in contact with me is um l-u-i-s dot v-a-l-d-e-s at gun owners.org i'll try to put that up here if i have it ready i know i'm gonna get swamp now it's like a million emails but you know what send it folks send it but before that i'd rather you guys join goa again go to gun owners.org join it's 25 bucks for a year membership uh you get on our emails uh alert list and that is crucial because we do alerts on the state level we do alerts on the federal level and for folks that are joining in later that have joined in after i explained at the first go around i'm the state director for florida and um i after our legislative session which ends in april i'm going to schedule a whistle stop tour to go around my state and i'm literally planning to educate as many gun owners as possible so we could get involved and we could push for constitutional carry and a true second amendment sanctuary bill here in florida because we have 102 republicans we have a republican governor we have a republican super majority and they've killed constitutional carry and they've killed our second amendment sanctuary bill well jim jim souder's definitely impressed um yeah i i agree it's it's i've really enjoyed this conversation i'm glad that uh i'm glad you came on uh louis and uh hopefully you'll you'll you'll come back and we can i would have some more i i would love to be back um look like i said as the state director now for florida for me this is literally my passion um i i was vested with the faith and trust by goa members and floridian and florida gun owners as a whole to amplify their voice in tallahassee i don't speak for them i simply amplify them and i can't do my job without gun owners like you guys supporting me and supporting goa and supporting the cause because we could only succeed when we work together and as as i saw a comment somebody mentioned you know the future of resisting gun control is going to be done at the state level and i absolutely agree with that you know it it there there may never be any going back from what we're looking at now the federal level on whoever you know republican or democrat i mean the tyrants are going to tyrant and and it's it's it's the state level where we're going to be able to best protect ourselves and that's the way our country was designed by our founders in the first place it wasn't so that we had nine unelected individuals on a supreme court that got to say whether or not we get to keep guns it was uh limiting the power of any one person or group of individuals through separation of powers and through the concept of federalism so another sort of separation of power so that everybody's kind of pulling on each other as politicians will do from every direction and they sort of cancel each other out and that was the design of our country that survived and we need to get back to not just obsessing with the supreme court but look you know obsessing with the actual founding principles of in particular federalism states rights the ability of the florida legislature to protect the citizens of florida against against the biden administrations the the the founding principles of this country were very simple the constitution grants nothing all it does it enumerates our rights these are rights that are inalienable you're born with these rights the the purpose of the constitution was simply a checklist against the government say no no don't you especially mess with this and in regards to the florida legislature again 102 republicans and they're throwing bet breadcrumbs we had a second amendment sanctuary bill house bill 1205 die in committee this session a real sanctuary bill and instead what they brought up was a house memorial and for folks that don't know memorial is simply a piece of legislation that is an opinion and it sounded really nice it sounded just like a sanctuary bill but all they would do if they passed this was they would write a nasty letter to congress saying we don't agree with this please stop so florida republicans were pushing that instead of a legitimate second amendment sanctuary bill well now's the time to get organized and get out there and primary those guys and to support those four or five good ones that yep that you mentioned and that you know it probably can be done with very little very little money but just directed directed at the right people you know with a small group of people so please you guys uh you know get your family your friends who anyone who who loves freedom and wants to continue to be able to possess firearms as a to be a free country join the goa and and uh i can't stress that enough the the one thing i want to i can't stress enough is everything starts local you guys need to go to your local town hall meetings to your county commission meetings you guys need to put pressure on your local lawmakers and your legislators everything from that happens in d.c starts because whoever ends up in dc started as some local politician and it starts from there you guys are the bedrock you guys are the are the fire break to prevent tyranny and if you don't get involved on the local level then what happens on the federal level simply just grows infesters because it all starts on the local level so again politics is local get active get involved don't be apathetic don't simply vote for the for a party vote for an individual and never trust an individual that you're voting for hold their feet to the fire because they'll say one thing and they'll do another yeah and and for instance and i really like speaking of goa emails the value of of of getting them for instance the the one that that came today on west virginia actually had photographs or screenshots of the lists of members of the house of delegates and the state senators and how they voted on this on this second amendment sanctuary bill so you can look right on there right now and see whether your delegate or your senator voted against it and you need to get rid of those people so you know hell half the battle is just getting getting informed and on the issues and organized with each other so see here here in florida the way they get around that is they never bring up a bill in committee so there's no voting record yeah i mean yeah if you let them do stuff like that they will use procedure to i mean and and it's like they were doing they were trying to do that stuff here they they've gotten very good these politicians are using legislative procedure to kind of to get around what whatever their constituents want and that's what they did with the mask mandate stuff is they they just stick it into a committee or say that they you know they can't proceed i agree with it but just can't procedurally be done that way or leadership you know has the procedure i mean it's all bs we didn't send anyone there caring about the damn procedure we don't care about the procedure we just care about freedom get it done or will primary you and send someone else there yep again folks it starts on the local level you guys we everyone want you want to fight you want to win get involved start on the local level don't sit on the sidelines yeah all right well i i think that's a good spot to end in there um like like i was telling louis beforehand i've been sort of burning the candle at both ends and and uh i need to start getting you know getting home earlier and getting some rest i mean i i've been beat so i think i think that's a good spot to call it a day so i know that feeling trust me brother yeah i mean it looks like you're you're doing a lot of the same stuff that that i'm doing uh work hour-wise and and you know i i do appreciate it as well and i i had seen i had seen your work before you you came on here so you know i try to pay attention to florida so i i appreciate what you're doing and please keep it up and and also you know stay in touch and uh and uh you know i'd love to to catch up again sometime definitely definitely and again thank you for having me and folks join goa you can go to gunowners.org join 25 bucks a year that's all it costs um and every penny that you send counts i'm telling you we don't spend our money on frivolous stuff um right now here in florida we're we're looking at things that it's sadly it's going to cost money but it's it's not going to be like i'm going on some private jet to shoot off to the bahamas or any of that it's it's simply because it costs money and one of the things that we want to do is we want to do a we want to barrage the governor with pre-filled postcards demanding a special legislative session for constitutional carry and just to give you a quick example if you send 80 letters through the mail that's 44 bucks so you know it's going to cost money but send lawyers guns and money yeah i can provide two out of those three yeah you can't you can't fight a war without beans bullets and band-aids and it's that's what we're fighting we're fighting a battle here for our liberty so thanks for having me on all right louis i i appreciate it um keep it up i'll talk to you next time definitely all right and i'm gonna go ahead and call it a day there as well i appreciate you guys watching i think that was a a really uh great conversation i enjoyed speaking with him and that's the first time i've ever actually spoke to him though i didn't know who he was um so there's the link right there i think that's the correct one gunowners.org join you know that's that's what i did and uh i think when you join the goa it doesn't take very long like you can do it very quickly and then it'll ask you like you want to donate an extra 25 bucks or 55 bucks or or 50 bucks or 75 bucks and just go ahead do that and click 75 bucks i think that's what i did you know when i joined it and look you get this is like an infomercial i swear they haven't paid me for this i i just believe in what they're doing they you get some sweet stickers i still have mine that they sent to you so you know if you drive through a blue city and you want them to wreck up your car or something they'll know which car to wreck we don't have that problem in west virginia but anyways thanks for for watching and i'll um probably see you on a monday at 6 30 and again good conversation and uh i really appreciate it and you know everybody keep up the uh you know keep doing what you're doing and uh and uh send me your you know thoughts again it's the civil rights lawyer.com is the website and you can find my contact information on there and still going after the west virginia governor and uh could do a couple more videos on that so stay tuned and and i'll have some more information coming out soon on that so i really appreciate it and i'll see you next time you