It Could Happen Here - How Cops Help Rich People Get Around Gun Laws

Episode Date: March 6, 2023

James, Mia, and Gare sit down to to talk about the various ways police help rich people get around firearms legislation in California and all over the USA.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Gareth just started talking about crimes, and so I was like,

okay, I'm going to hold off. I'm pressing the record. I didn't mention crime at all. Actually, that's true. That's true. James said the word crimes. James is the one that brought up doing crimes. I would never talk about doing crimes.

Oh, welcome to What Could Happen Here, where we never talk about anything illegal. With us today is myself, Garrison, James Stout, and Mia Wong. That's right. We are talking about crimes today, actually, but we're not doing any crimes, crucially, because we never would. Yeah. Like, for example, well, actually, I don't know if it's technically illegal to talk about jury nullification on air. I don't think they can stop you from saying the words.

I think you don't have the right to do it, but you have the ability, I think is the way a lawyer explained it to me. But they also said, I'm not your lawyer before that. So take that with a grain of salt. Yeah. Yeah. You probably shouldn't be describing how to do jury notification

or Googling it if that's in your future. Stay tuned for our upcoming episode. How to nullify yourself. How to nullify your jury. Yeah. Yeah. How to nullify your jury. Yeah, yeah. How to nullify your jury. That will be our final episode.

Okay. Now, we're not talking about jury duty today. We are talking about crime. The people doing the crime in this episode, shockingly, are the cops. So I want to start on October 28th, 2016. Some of you can probably cast your mind back then, the last week of the pre-Trump era.

Yeah. Yeah. So inside the captain's office at the sheriff's station in Rancho San Diego, one of the most expensive zip codes in the country, Captain Marco Garmo was making a deal. Garmo, along with Giovanni Tillotta, who's a licensed San Diego gun dealer,

sold a Glock handgun, an AR-15 style rifle and a Smith & Wesson handgun to local defense attorney Vikas Bajaj inside Garmo's office Garmo coordinated backdated paperwork to avoid the 10 day waiting period required by California law for handgun

purchases and supplied Bajaj with misappropriated San Diego Sheriff's Department issued ammunition. Oh, fun. Yeah. Good times. Good times. Yeah. So he's really thriving in his side hustle here, Mark Ogama. I've used the word misappropriated because that's what the DOJ used. I'm guessing the more vernacular term would be stolen here. I think he's... So when you say issued, is this ammo that was supposed to be given to a cop

or is this stuff they had an impound? No, I think it's supposed to be given to a cop. Hell yeah. I think he's gone into the armory and just grabbed a few boxes of ammo and stole them. Cops have just turned into the Afghan army. It's amazing. Yeah, the ANA.

They've got the, what's that guy who had the, he had the night vision on backwards or something. That was the Taliban guy. Interestingly, what they have in the compound, Mia, is another story that maybe we should do another day. I also PRA'd that, like the weapons that are impounded. Jesus Christ, they have some shit. Like they have like a full auto shotgun, like a bunch of NFA items. And they keep them all for like lab testing in theory.

Like so they can be like, oh, well, this person was shot. What does that wound look like? Well, let's get our armory out from the fucking, and shoot some ballistics gel and see if that helps us. It's like that scene from 2008's The Dark Knight where Christian Bale as Batman fires a ridiculously loud gun in a sealed bunker, absolutely destroying both his and Alfred's hearing

for the entire rest of the movie, which is why they make so many bad choices. Fascinating, yeah. I didn't know there was a character called Alfred in Batman. Yeah. They really welshed him on the names, because, like, Batman is a cool name, the Joker, cool name, fucking Alfred.

Do you not know who Alfred Pennyworth is? No! He's the one British character in Batman. He is your culture. when people think of british people they think of alfred j pennyworth no my culture is not a costume garrison well i have a bad i have bad news yeah they've been disgusted that this is the point of reference not one of our many wonderful modern british role models alfred great. I don't know what you're talking about. Okay.

Yeah. No. Okay. He is a working class hero. He was a, he was a wait, our butlers are working class, right?

Oh God. Let's cut this discourse off very quickly. I would say petty bourgeois, but yeah, it's kind of complicated because you're like working directly for a billionaire and you're living

in the billionaire's house and you're living a very upper class life but you still are working it's kind of complicated well what is your relationship to the means of production though oh that's

wow well but it's all service like I don't know I feel like we have to do a divide here because I think I think the gender division of labor between

maid and butler is very important. I love that we're debating if Alfred is based or not. Yeah, so you can find Garrison on Twitter at I write okay. So we made it to paragraph two, everyone. In February of 2019, federal agents executed a search warrant at the Rancho San Diego Sheriff's Station. Later that year, they arrested Captain Marco Garmo.

In 2021, Garmo pleaded guilty to trafficking over 100 guns which were deemed unsafe for civilians. I shouldn't say civilians because cops are also civilians, right? But non-cops. At his sentencing, the judge said, Garmo was almost becoming a mob boss of sorts. Cool.

What you want to strive for as a sheriff's captain. Garmo admitted to engaging in straw purchases, which is buying guns with the intent of transferring them to someone else. He also acknowledged

tipping off an illegal marijuana dispensary that was about to be searched in order to give... A Bicay based... Based, in order to get based nothing this guy did is in is inherently wrong uh it's the fact that he only did it to certain people um so that was his cousin who owned the marijuana dispensary uh he he was also engaged in illegal consulting with other dispensaries which i don don't fully understand. Yeah, I'm guessing his consulting emerged to being like, hey, the cops are on their way tomorrow.

Maybe stop being a dispensary by the time they arrive. Yeah, that seems like a very classic the cops take a cut kind of arrangement that they're calling consultancy. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, a lot of the things in this DOJ thing are like really fantastically phrased. So Garmo and his co-defendant Wael Will Anton

also helped paying clients skip the waiting list for a difficult-to-obtain concealed carry permit. As part of this scheme, Anton took a legal cash payment to a county clerk who ensured favorable treatment for his clients. Garmo might have flown a little too close to the sun with this one, but it's not actually that unusual for gun laws to have carve-outs for rich people. Often those carve-outs don't involve cops stealing ammo, but it's pretty

easy if you're wealthy enough to work your way around firearms legislation, which is kind of what I want to get into today. So while Garmo did go to jail for gun trafficking and multiple other crimes he was doing, the sale of so-called off-roster firearms by law enforcement officers in California is relatively common. And there's not much that's been done to prevent it since Garmo was arrested. So to understand this, I think you have to understand California's incredibly complicated firearms laws, which probably requires an undergraduate degree. But to give a brief summary, California introduced its gun roster in 2001. And like many of our laws, it has its roots in entrenching systemic inequalities. In this case, legislators were trying to ban something called a Saturday night special.

And people know what that is? No. It's a small, concealable, affordable handgun. It's like, there were these guns that came out in the 80s and 90s that were super small, very cheap, very simple, very concealable. Are they also shit? Well, that's the thing, right? So this is really fascinating. very conceivable and are they also shit? well that's the thing right

so this is really fascinating so in practice right these were at least culturally associated with like black communities right that's

you see them in sometimes like certainly like there was a stigmatic reference to like it's these guns that is causing violence and we're not going to

fucking look at inequality at all right we're just going to ban the guns are they shit is an interesting question because california introduces legislation which said that handguns have to be drop safe so that means you can drop them and they can't go off that that is generally a desirable feature in a handgun uh able to fire 600 rounds without uh more than six malfun, and have a manual safety device. Later on, they added another thing that would make the gun only fire

when it had a magazine inserted. And they put all these rules in place and had said manufacturers had to submit guns for testing. All the guns they were going after passed the testing. So I guess they're not as shit as one had one of one has suspected uh which is kind of like that that is the intent and they are laboring under that misapprehension but it seems like these guns which are very cheap uh actually pass the testing just fine so if you look at the california roster so once those guns have passed that testing right they go on a roster. And that roster, it's done by SKU,

so by the individual code that's given to the gun. And you can look up the California roster. It's online still. There are hundreds of cheap small handguns that are on it. So they failed in that regard. But they created this kind of bizarre system where most manufacturers had to make a California-compliant model if they wanted to sell in California, right? Because it had to have this magazine disconnect, which means that the gun won't fire without the magazine in it, which is not a usual thing for semi-automatic handguns to have.

Like if you are outside of California and you have a normal Glock, for instance, it doesn't have that, but you would need one that did in California. So that means that these guns are going to have a much, much smaller economy of scale. They're going to be more expensive. Manufacturers also have to pay for the testing and submit three models. So what it de facto means is that fewer guns are available in California. It doesn't really become a big issue until 2013, when the DOJ in California added a micro doesn't really become a big issue until 2013 when the DOJ in California add a micro stamping requirement.

But they added it earlier, actually. But in 2013, they certified it was possible for micro stamping to happen. Can I ask something? So is the roster the list of guns you're allowed to buy? Yes. Okay. And if it doesn't appear on the roster, we're going to get into that. You can actually buy it, but you can't buy it new going to get into that you can actually buy it but you

can't buy it new from a store so i you can buy it used uh and there are two ways that these used handguns can enter the state right one of them is if you move to the state so let's say uh garrison moves to uh la right and they bring with them Horrifying. Yeah, just to enjoy Just like a Vulcan minigun Yeah, yeah, they bring with them an M1 Abrams tank It's a balloon shooting gun

Yeah, everyone on the West Coast has to have one now So it's actually different for rifles, sadly, but they bring with them pistols uh and those pistols are not on the california roster they can keep them and they can sell them right to to a california resident the other way that these guns can enter and be sold is cops are exempt from the roster right so yeah oh boy yeah yeah yeah. And when I say cops, I am speaking in the broadest possible terms because a variety of peace officers are exempt

to include employees of the California State Horse Racing Board. So I was thinking park rangers can do this, right? I think it depends what you are within the park ranger, within the park ranger. uh, within the park. And it seems to be that there is actually a list that's in the legislation,

but it seems to be largely like at the discretion of the, of the gun shop, like in practice, they could get in trouble, but like, I've heard of like firefighters and EMTs being able to purchase off roster guns, which is fucking not in the legislation.

Like, uh, it is also kind in the legislation. Like, uh, it is also kind of funny, but like, um, in theory it would depend on like what unit you were in, or they could contact your like park ranger office and be like, Hey,

this, this girl is trying to buy a gun. Like, does she use this at work? Cause the idea is that they would, they would have the most up-to-date weapons to carry at work. Right. Or that they could buy themselves, even though they get issued guns. So like get issued guns like if you need a gun as a cop you get issued a gun

right and so what it means in practice is that there's a thriving market in off-roster firearms but there's also a massive price premium right they often sell for two or three times their msrp even though they're used um and i did a little digging into this, and I looked at one particular item, which was a P365, a SIG P365, which is a fairly popular pistol, right? But after 2013, California didn't allow any new guns to be added to the roster unless they micro-stamped their bullets. Micro-stamping is a little feature where the firing pin of the gun

stamps the casing, not the bullet, with a little tiny stamp, which is unique to the gun, right? Or it stamps it with the serial number of the gun. So in theory, this would allow you to pick up the casings at a murder scene and be like, huh, well, they were fired from this gun and this gun is registered to this person,

therefore we got someone to talk to, right? Pick up the casings. Yeah, right, yeah. Absolutely no ways around this. Although, I mean, admittedly, the one thing I've learned over the years is that people are really lazy when they're doing crimes. So true, so true. You can be are really lazy when they're doing crimes. And so,

so true. So true. Be slightly less lazy and get caught significantly less. That is, that is, that is my biggest, my biggest advice to the illegalists. Literally think five minutes beforehand.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Also, uh, don't tweet your crimes. Oh yeah. Ever,

ever a green statement. Yeah. Yeah. It's one of our mottos here. You could also just use a revolver, I guess, and that wouldn't eject the casings. But because there are no guns... In 2013, right, the DOJ says,

you are not allowed to add a gun to the roster unless it micro-stamps. And we've decided that micro-stamping is possible. No firearms manufacturer will make a gun to the roster unless it micro stamps and we we've decided that micro stamping is possible no firearms manufacturer will make a gun that micro stamps because other states will require all guns to micro stamp once that technology is available so they just don't build it so they just don't do it yeah it is it is very funny it's like car companies just being like fucking you know what If we put airbags in that bad boy, they're going to make us put airbags in all the cars.

You know, this is a thing that I've run into a lot. I think it's really interesting, which is like, okay, the specific combination of regulatory state and corporations being required to do a thing gives you a bunch of really, really weird outcomes that are not what you would expect when you're writing the legislation which makes them ineffective like i mean like the most famous one is like the clean air act actually worsened air quality for a huge amount of time because they put in this exception for like existing coal facilities under the assumption

that people would just like you know build new coal facilities and thus be like and thus like have better like create that cleaner technology and no one just no ever did. They just left these old coal facilities running. Or the other one, like, everyone always talks about those, like, those fucking, like, why the giant SUVs keep getting bigger. And the reason for that is actually, I mean, it kind of is sort of fascist psychosis, but, like, the actual reason for that is

Obama-era pollution controls on cars, right, had these fuel emission standards. But the larger your car is, like, the worst fuel emission standards are. So they keep, so, okay, in order to get around the fuel emission standards but the larger your car is like the worst fuel emission standards are so they keep so okay in order to get around the fuel emission things they just keep making bigger cars make it bigger amazing yeah and this shit just like i don't know this is this is i think a pretty good argument against it like against a sort of regulatory state being able to contain like capitalism doing horror botifying shit is like every single time someone tries to make an air pollution thing, it just makes it worse.

Yeah, they just create perverse incentives to do something which is like just stupid and polluting as opposed to polluting. Yeah, or they just don't comply with the micro-scanning thing. They're just like, no, like, stop this.

We simply will not. Yeah, the specific interaction of like people who elevate themselves, who make it to the california legislature on one hand and gun companies on the other hand just leads to this complete intransigence where like anytime a law is written it is like someone has found an end run or a loophole before it comes into practice do you know what won't illegally smuggle oh legally smuggle guns into california and sell them for two to three times the retail price mayor is it all the firms that are

doing child trafficking and that's right the washington state highway patrol welcome i'm danny thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes

with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network,

available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back, and we're talking about uh cops selling guns for a lot of money in southern california so big uh marco gama wasn't the only cop who chose a life of crime as it turns out um yeah because every other one did. Shockingly enough, this practice is pretty common. So a Gardena police officer in 2021 was also convicted of making 41 illegal off-roster sales in a year. And at least six LA officers have been found to be engaged in illegal firearms transfers, according to a 2021 la times

investigation so that's eight in a single year if you're keeping track and it's pretty common to see people like posting about this like like uh if you go on to like there's a california guns forum where people will be like where they sell guns right where they don't you don't actually sell the guns on the internet because that's illegal but people will post it and then say meet me at this gun dealer and we'll do the background check uh's illegal, but people will post it and then say, meet me at this gun dealer and we'll do the background check. And you'll see people being like, oh, like I'm LEO.

I have a friend who's LEO and like happened to be selling this gun new in package. I bought it to carry it on patrol, but I decided I didn't like it. You know, like that's the theoretical canard here, right? Oh God. Okay, the thing this reminds me of specifically is a very very weird

use case of like people imagine the gathering tournaments where you're not legally allowed to both draw and split the prize money so you have to say this incredibly complicated series of sentences where you're like i want to draw and then new conversation can we split the prize money it's like i have to i have to like say this exact series of words in order to make it clear that i'm not doing exactly what i'm doing and breaking the law yeah this is how the law works right like it always ends up being some kind of like totemistic magic incantation that you can say and then the thing that they're trying to fucking stop obviously no longer applies to you you can do what you want like it's incredibly asinine and so uh in mid 2021 i tried

to i wanted to get a sense right um when i was doing this of how many of these off-roster guns there are in california to get a sense of like exactly how much of a farce the attempt to create this roster has been so uh i've been going after this for a while, but in the middle of 2021, there was an assembly bill passed called Assembly Bill 2699, if you're interested. And the bill required the Department of Justice to send a letter to owners of off-roster weapons, which California officially calls unsafe handguns, to remind the people who own them

of the laws surrounding them and to whom they could transfer them, right? I first became aware of this letter because someone decided to post it online. And that kind of gave me an opening where... Because I can't PRA the names of the people who own the guns, right? Or even where they live, because obviously that's protected information

and it probably should be. And I don't think that information is even actually stored by the state. But I can PRA the letters they sent out. So PRA is a Public Records Act request, right? It's what people might know as a FOIA. And so I did that, and it took me more than a year, and it cost me more than $100, but eventually I managed to get the DOJ to send me the information,

which showed that at least at the time I got it, which is the middle of 2021, 4,510 firearms had been obtained by the subsection of the law that allows exemptions for police officers. There were some other exemptions for antique and collectible firearms as well. So it's not clear that all of those were cops they also noted that it had sent 213 804 notices to the owners of off-roster weapons uh which yeah suggests that like if we think of uh that the the roster became a serious issue in in 2013 right so that suggested about 10,000 weapons a year since the roster began in 2001 have entered the state that are off-roster,

which kind of makes the point that it's a rather farcical attempt at gun control, right? But it still is the roster, which I don't think you're fine, right? You can buy a very effective gun in California, as we have seen. They're very effective at killing people. But it does kind of make it a joke that if you have enough money or a friend who's a cop, then this doesn't apply to you.

Then you have over 200,000 of these guns, which are supposed to be banned in circulation as long as you're wealthy enough to buy them uh i tried also to pra if any of these guns have been involved in crime or murder and they wouldn't tell me that and what uh it's always worth pointing out that like the cops themselves are issued guns which are illegal for civilians to purchase right or it's not possible for them to purchase some new i I should say. The off-ruster guns are issued to the cops, right? So by definition, some of these guns have been used in the accidental shooting of bystanders,

shooting of officers by themselves, and shooting of officers by other officers that have occurred in California since the ruster began. So that's sort of by definition off-ruster guns that kill some people. So this isn't actually the only way that being wealthy can get you around gun laws and i want to go a little further east for my next example then i want to go in fact to a little town called lake arthur in new mexico no benny if you guys are you guys familiar with this part of the world not well not that specific i i i lived in new mexico very very briefly when i was a small child but not there so so uh i've been using google street view that's my uh my dive deep it appears to be the back arsehole of nowhere um and in lake arthur they have one cop who it turns out was a

volunteer and was being paid a dollar a year uh aha yeah so this is this is where the problem starts this guy is called william norwood and uh i'll i'll issue a spoiler here that william norwood is no longer a cop nor does the department exist uh and that's because norwood was running a scam that took advantage of something called leosa leosa is the law enforcement officers safety act uh and what the law enforcement officers safety act does is allow cops from any state in the union to conceal carry a gun in every state in the union so this was a big deal yeah i think you might be able to see what this is going this was a big deal before the supreme court bruin decision right the Bruin decision

was the one that significantly reduced the impediments in between you and getting a concealed carry weapons permit it didn't totally remove them and it didn't make it any less expensive and California seems to be going about trying to make it even more expensive

which is bullshit like everyone should have the same rights regardless of how wealthy they are but California seems to be going about trying to make it even more expensive, which is bullshit. Like everyone should have the same rights, regardless of how wealthy they are. But if you were covered by Leosa, right? If you're a law enforcement officer, you could conceal carry anywhere. So this is very desirable for some people. One of those people is Robert Mercer. Do you guys remember Robert Mercer?

No, I do not. Okay, so mercer is a big time donald trump appreciator oh yeah he's that like super rich guy yeah the breitbart guy the cambridge analytica guy yeah uh okay yeah so this guy is rolling in it um and he yeah he he actually hosted like a a like success party soon after 2016 election this this guy is definitely pivotal to the whole trump scene right like like his bank rolling a bright bar of cambridge analytica he as it turns out is also a cop in this little new mexico town which is kind of weird right especially when you consider that 150 other people are also cops in this new mexico town it's one of these scams yep so that's uh that's one cop for every 2.9 residents jesus yeah and it turns out they're probably not doing much copying uh but they are doing at least a certain amount of volunteering it's

actually unclear how much so um the uh the lake arthur treasurer was um bloomberg did some pras around this and it turns out that mercer was what's called an honoree member of the police department but there there are no records indicate that he actually did any policing. But nonetheless, he took advantage of Leosa, right? And thus carried in all 50 states. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire

and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal tales from the shadows as part of my cultura podcast network available

on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast so these jurisdictions there are several of them uh another famous person who's taken advantage of this is a friend of the podcast steven seagal oh yeah yeah yeah steven seagal who apparently has been a volunteer cop for a very long time and uh like actually was doing some copying according to a reality tv show he made uh called steven seagal lawman you know the thing about that show right is it's like are you gonna come out and defend the show are you pro the show really here's my thing on this show right like obviously seagal is doing stuff that's really messed up but it's also unclear but how how much worse what he was

doing is than the average cop like like probably what he's doing is worse than the average cop but i don't think it's like like i don't i don't think it's as bad as like a like a chicago special operations unit it's like i can't believe you just came out in defense of Steven Seagal. Being a cop, specifically. I'm saying he has work to do to reach, like, the true upper echelon of, like, shitty cops. This is a man who gave his time freely to volunteer for Joe

Arpaio. This level of apologism coming from you right now is simply shocking. I don't know how to deal with this. This Seagal apologism. right now is simply shocking. I don't know how to deal with this. This is a gall apology. Sagalogism. Sagalogism, yeah. That is what I was working my way towards,

but I couldn't finish it. Yeah, thank you for delivering the coup de grace. Yeah, me coming out with the some cops are bastards take scab uh okay so what what is uh garrison's garrison's deceased they've uh they've died okay so these badge factories like the ones in lake arthur and generally trade influence cash or connections for a badge and the right to carry a gun nationwide. Mercer and his son-in-law, George Wells,

have supported the town generously. So Mercer's kind of the best investigated example of this, right? Because Bloomberg went after him. Bloomberg and publication, not Bloomberg the dude. He went down there personally to sort this one out he formed an alliance with apparently uh at one point this this police department did do a raid on a meth house and i would love to see like bloomberg forming alliance with the meth dealers of lake arthur to fucking take on uh mercer so um if bloomberg can take on 9-11 single-handedly,

surely he can bust up whatever operations going down in New Mexico. 150 Steven Seagals. Would you rather fight one Bloomberg-sized Steven Seagal? And don't bother messaging... 50 Seagal-sized Bloombergs. Do not bother messaging me. I know he wasn't the mayor during 9-11. That was the joke. Don't bother messaging me. Do not bother messaging me. I know he wasn't the mayor during 9-11.

That was the joke. Don't bother messaging me. I already know. Thank you. No, no, no. Sign that up. I write okay. Yeah, Garrison's Twitter again.

I write okays. He also famously dropped Staten Island Phil Bloomberg. You guys don't know about Staten Island Phil. Not at all. Staten Island Phil is a groundhog. This will be in a bastards episode as well so it's a second mention of staten island phil for some people staten island phil is a groundhog uh similar to pucks a tawny phil uh yeah but uh he lives in staten island and unfortunately

yeah why would we say that yes this is a second second pretty pretty disgusting take from Mia. Anti-Staten Island. This is why Mia gets cancelled episode. Going back in time and getting rid of the Yankees. Things of this nature. Unfortunately Bill de Blasio dropped the groundhog on its head and it died.

What? Bill de Blasio blames the groundhogs for its reduced popularity everyone who's been the mayor of New York is such a weird type of unhinged yeah yeah yeah it's true yeah like fucking

the current mayor just went on like TV today and talked about how he has this magic sponge that so that he can ring yes went on like TV to Tay and talked about how he has this magic sponge that magic sponge yes so that he can absorb despair and wring the despair out what the fuck

I'm so sick the only thing I saw out of New York was the whole like there shouldn't be any separation of churches that is so much funnier he's doing a sham wow for sadness oh what a place what a town all right so if you're wondering how much it costs for mercer and his son-in-law to carry guns everywhere um they paid at least 93 000 uh to set up this thing called the Southeast New Mexico Police Reserve Foundation, which is doing the valuable work of supporting reserve cops in Southeast New Mexico,

because they are the thin blue line between us and people not being able to buy, conceal, carry permits in all 50 states, I guess. Under its bylaws, at least half the foundation's net dues were required to be paid to police departments whose reservists were members of the foundation. At the time of its founding, all of the members were Lake Arthur reservists.

So just a good public benefit, probably. Just money going around in circles. He also paid for Lake Arthur officers to get SWAT training in Vegas. Again, there is only one full-time cop and he's a volunteer. So some of the lads went to Vegas, I guess. And this was a donation

that was probably tax deductible. The way that this came out is when a quote-unquote firearms expert from Northolina got drunk and shot his brother-in-law in the leg and people were like why were you carrying bro like you're a cop and uh yeah from there things began to unwind a lot of the other clients for this place are people like bodyguards and they they were clients cops volunteer officers i should say uh they're people who do close protection for wealthy folks right um and carry guns as part

of that work and i'm guessing it's their employers who are making these significant donations to lake arthur that probably allowed these people to be reserve officers which allowed them to carry in all 50 states which in turn allowed them to protect these wealthy people, right? So it's another, and like, it's important to understand that like New York, for instance, declined before, this is before the Bruin decision, a concealed carry permit applicant from like an FBI informant who had taken down a biker gang.

They were like, no, you don't need to carry a gun. Like it was almost impossible for people, even if they were like helping the cops to get concealed carry permits in some parts of the United States. And California was very hard, lots of places before Bruin. Like I think, was it Nancy Pelosi had a concealed carry permit or Feinstein or someone? This is the whole thing.

Okay, so this was Feinstein. One of the scams for this is uh you can get deputized as a federal marshal there's like a bunch like i like feinstein's rumored to have done there's like a bunch of like every like a bunch of sort of like california like congress people have done this that like they they get they get deputized as marshals and so they can do this shit yeah incredible stuff yeah it's so i guess what i want to come back to is that like all of these laws right all of these gun control laws um are circumventable if you have enough money right so if you want a nice brand new gun that doesn't micro stamp it doesn't have the uh it doesn't have the magazine disconnect. And like modern carry guns,

especially are a lot nicer than they were in 2013, right? They're smaller. They have a higher capacity. You can put a little red dot sight on them if you want to. And if you want one of those things, you can have it in California

as long as you're rich. And if you're not, then you can't. And the same applies with this 50 state carry right if you want to carry a gun all around the country and even now with bruin um states are not required to recognize each other's concealed carry permits right so i have a concealed carry permit in california it's not recognized by any other states because california doesn't recognize any other states carry permits so i can apply for one arizona that cost me more money and but if you want to carry in all 50 states you can just

make this donation to the cops right and you can almost all of these things right these aren't the only examples rick meyer cited the uh the federal marshal thing another one is the nfa right the national firearms act yeah act um which like essentially it's not illegal to have a suppressor it's not illegal to have a short-barreled rifle uh it's not illegal to have a machine gun actually you just have to spend a shit ton of money to get one which mercer has a collection of machine guns i guess so all of these things yeah it's great it's fine it's great that we live in a country with two tiers of rights for people those are those those machine

guns are totally going to be used for normal completely normal things like armor in 20 years yeah yeah a totally normal guy who will use them for normal stuff and just i'm sure likes to like make holes in paper with his friends and it's not problematic at all that like to be as rich as this guy is you have to be a problematic dude and maybe those are the people who shouldn't be having guns yeah but instead it's uh it's it's gonna be poor people who you can't be having guns and i think regardless of what you and it's perfectly reasonable to think that like there should be fewer guns in this country um it's perfectly reasonable to believe that and i think like it's perfectly reasonable to think what the fuck should we do about the fact that kids get shot in schools that's not unreasonable starts at all but uh if the way around it is saying well only rich people get

to shoot people then that's not really a solution like it's just kind of the appearance of one and i don't think any of us certainly if we were on the left should should really support that and yeah that's where we are in california which is great yay so that's about all we've got on this if people are interested in seeing more about uh either the mercer case or the public records I have, we'll put them all up on our sources page. You can find our sources page on the It Could Happen Here website. We put all our sources up there for all our episodes. So yeah, go check that out.

Anything else to finish off with, guys? The cops having guns, bad cops being cops, bad cops, bad? Yeah. Oh, what about Steven Seagal? Guns, bad, cops, being cops, bad, cops, bad. What about Steven Seagal then, mate? This is a dramatic change of form from your earlier times. I only ever argued that he was slightly more violent than a normal cop. That was the extent of my argument. He is only slightly more violent than a regular cop. She is flip-flopping

on the some cops are busted issue. Again, you can send me your opinions on the police. She's on Twitter at I write OK. It could happen here as a production

of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here

updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow of Wrath. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.