I found this out about two weeks about but had forgotten to post about it.

After getting xyz to resubmit a letter of recommendation to the Fort Lee police department so I may get permission to exersize my natural right to self defense which is reinforced in the government calling itself the United States of America’s 2nd Amendment. Two weeks ago I called again after not hearing a word since the letter was sent. I was told that the other person who I had put down had not yet sent back the recommendation letter. I know his is a lie for two reasons. First is that I lived with the person at the time and know they had sent it out months ago. Second, the officer who handles this told me over the phone that he had received the letter when I called in April.

And yet some people wonder why anyone would not go through the system who weren’t criminals. Reminds me of immigration. The general public has no idea how corrupt and inefficient the system is and has no interest in finding out before passing judgement. The government bureaucrats are not there to serve nor protect you. They are there to leech and abuse.

I never updated the blog about my Firearms Permit out of sheer laziness. I wasn’t too busy or distracted–I just wasn’t interested in recapping the story into text form after I talked bile’s ear off about it last Wednesday. If there was a way to do voice posts (idea!), I would have opted in that direction. At any rate, in case there was anyone on the edge of their seat over it, the thrilling conclusion of: You have the right to bear arms. Period.

I left work early last Wednesday and headed over to the Nutley Police Department where I ended up waiting in the “lobby” before I was admitted entry to the Detectives’ Offices upstairs. There was a woman in the lobby with me, pacing and showing 8×11 black and white photos of what looked like a fallen tree to a police officer and dispatcher. She kept saying that she wasn’t able to move her car because of the tree. She spoke in broken English. I couldn’t tell what her first language was. The police officer, a hard-looking older woman, asked her if she called the police when this happened. She said yes, waved the photos back and forth, and impatiently said the cops told her they would eventually get to her but had other things to do that day. At that point, the police officer buzzed me through the main door, and I walked up to the second floor.

I had to ring a bell because the door was locked. An older man opened the door and let me in. I gave him my first name, and he said, “Oh yes, your permit. Just take a seat.” I watched him open the file cabinet and go through some papers. This was the same man that took my prints and chatted with me on the phone the week prior. He came back over after a few minutes to tell me the laminating machine was warming up and that I owed them roughly $70. When I told him I paid in September, he never questioned me and was shocked it had taken this long to get my papers together. He fingerprinted my permit and brought me to the sink, instructed me on the proper way of washing away ink (scrub with liquid soap and only use water when the ink is completely gone; the soap loses its effectiveness when mixed with water). When I finished I walked over to the laminating machine. I asked him for his name, shook his hand and thanked him for being so incredibly helpful and informative every time I called. Dennis gave me that, I’m just doing my job look and smiled. After explaining to me exactly how I should go about purchasing a firearm, we talked about gun laws again and how ineffective most police officers can be about the subject.

He agreed that bile being charged $56 twice for applying in North Arlington and shortly after moving to Fort Lee was garbage. He started telling me a story about how he received an application a while back from a guy that answered “yes” pertaining to him having a record. The explanation? The kid was in the town park after curfew when he was in high school. The same applicant also explained that he had charges brought up on him for assault with a weapon. Dennis said when he saw that, he had to dig up what the charge was. After investigating old records, he discovered that this guy was charged with firing a potato gun with his younger brother 10 years ago. When he brought this information to the Chief of Police, Dennis said he asked if they were really going to get in the way of this person’s right to defend themselves because of a childhood prank? He shook his head and said, “It’s ridiculous.” He never told me if the applicant ever received his permit.

Before I left, he assured me that when I apply for another Purchaser’s Permit, it won’t take that long at all.

The Second Amendment needs more people like Dennis in law enforcement. As much as I was annoyed that it took so long, I’m glad I got a relatively hassle-free experience out of it. And there you have it, another positive police story on the blog. Maybe next time I go back and see Dennis, I’ll ask him if he’s a member of LEAP.

I guess filling out bile’s Firearm Reference Form for the second time inspired me call over to Nutley’s Police Department to inquire about my own ID. It’s been about nine months (Sep 19, my birthday) since I dropped off the paperwork and got fingerprinted. In those nine months I’ve seen bile, bosco, and ramuh get their ID’s and make their purchases. Ridiculous, I know. I suppose I could put a little blame on myself for not being overly persistent or aggressive, but I had little faith in my abilities to make anyone in the police department move any faster than they were currently going.

My experience throughout this process was that police officers and detectives have notably different attitudes about firearm possession. The police officers in my town always sounded “put-off” with any phone call I made–this includes my inquires about when I would be able to come down to process my fingerprints. They changed the times and dates on a weekly basis–to which I found out later were incorrect, thanks many to the detectives (who rolled their eyes when I explained how I was misled). The detectives were more than happy to answer any questions, go over my paperwork for accuracy, and fingerprint me twice (during the first round of printing, the computer froze and my prints were lost). They’re also very open about airing out their disgust of the system. They’ve critiqued the FBI’s ability to review prints in a timely basis and how the NJ Freeholder’s dragged their feet when they should have been verifying my mental background check. I was told that I should receive a phone call relatively soon:

I asked him what the phone call was for. He said, “Um, well, so you can pick up your ID; the nature of this conversation.” He sounded like he was holding back a laugh to avoid embarrassing me.

Being a stickler for following procedure, I had to ask, “But you guys never sent out the reference letters. Aren’t you planning on doing that?”

This time he laughed, “No.”

A little confused and interested, I explained what the procedure was (to my knowledge) and asked him why they weren’t going to bother with the references.

He replied, “We aren’t issuing the reference letters because it’s your Second Amendment right to own a firearm. Plain and simple.” He said that so clearly, as if his intention was to ensure that I never confused that right with anything else anyone would or could have said to me to skew it. For a moment I was speechless, due to half-expecting some run-around, asinine reply. Attempting to regain some ground in the conversation I stammered, “Well, yea. Exactly!” I could have just as easily said, “well duh,” and it would have been the same effect.

Still surprised, I continued the conversation further, “You know, in Fort Lee, they wouldn’t take that for an answer when I filled out the reference letter for my boyfriend. They called me up, told me they didn’t really want my opinion on gun control, and asked me to fill out another form if I was seriously interested about being a reference.”

He laughed, “Well, let’s be reasonable. If I am your worst enemy, are you really going to make me your reference? References don’t mean anything.”

We talked a little about gun politics and how if a criminal wants a gun, they’re going to get it through illegal means anyway, and how all these references and background checks really don’t do much.

It was a pretty refreshing conversation, I’m not going to lie.

It’s totally possible that my file has been sitting on their counter for months, and the only reason I have a pick-up date is because I called in today. Since the detectives have consistently kept positive, down-to-earth attitudes towards me, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt this time and shelf my cynicism… at least until next Wednesday.

My recommendations for those Republican and independent voters of New Jersey.

For Member of the United States Senate: Murray Sabrin

For Delegaes-At-Large To The National Convention: Constitutional Republicans Protecting the Liberty Platform

The delegates which make up that group are: Donna Ward, Fernando Powers, Jammes J. Valencia, Ron Brittin, Stacey Sperbeck, Girard Falzon, Charles G. Ward, Marc Mingle, George Ajjan, and David Wallace

All other positions have only one person running under the Republicans for Responsible Government banner. Most if not all of which are big government Republicans, RINOs.

You can learn more about Dr. Sabrin at MurraySabrin.com and the Constitutional Republicans Protecting the Liberty Platform here.

For those who may not be aware Murray was endorsed by Ron Paul earlier in the campaign.

Sabrin may not be a good libertarian (securing the borders with fences?), he’s not as good as Dr. Paul, but he’s definately better than Dick Zimmer, Joseph Pennacchio and Frank Lautenberg.

At around 6:05PM today, May 17th 2008, Edward Marcus rang my door bell. I unfortunately wasn’t prepared and was unable to record the conversation.

He told me he was here because “the Census Bureau had sent me a booklet that was never returned” and now he just needed to come in and ask me some questions. I stood in the doorway holding open the secondary screen door with my right hand and placed my left hand up on the door frame so he wouldn’t have any opening for which he could walk in. The conversation was very repetitive. He kept telling me that I needed to provide the info and I refused.

He told me “you can have your libertarian beliefs or whatever but you’re obligated by law to answer these questions.” I told him I was well aware of the law and that I had no plans of providing him any of the desired information. Eventually he asked me just to give him my name so he could “close out the account.” After several attempts to get him to explain exactly what it meant by “closing it out” he told me that when asking questions the person can decline to answer particular questions. That the main office wanted to know why I wasn’t answering their questions. I pieced together what he wanted to do eventually which was to get my name so he could just fill out blanks in all questions. After realizing he was trying to deceive me… trying to trick me into answering the questions I became all the more stubborn.

He again told me I was obligated not only as a citizen (which I’m not since the courts have ruled the State has no obligation to protect me, therefore I’m by definition a subject) but as a person living within the United States to provide the requested information. That it was the law. That it’s necessary. That it’s only every 10 years. That it’d only take a few minutes. That it was constitutional. That it was anonymous. It wasn’t some Big Brother thing. It was used by my congressmen to help allocate money for the roads and schools.

He became agitated and started telling me there were consequences for not participating. Said that they could send more bureaucrats to my home at night to try to get me to answer. That they could request me to show up to the New York office to explain why I am refusing to participate. That they could fine me. It seemed Ed wasn’t very familiar with the legal consequences. He said they could fine me thousands of dollars and perhaps worse. I told him I was well versed in the law and that Title 13, Section 221 says that I could be fined upwards of $100 for refusing to participate and $500 for lying. He then admitted he wasn’t aware of the exact punishments and just knew that he could be fined $250,000 for misusing the census data which he collects. That’s actually not true. It’s “not more than $5,000 or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.” I knew that but I wasn’t interested in arguing with him about that too. I did notice however he was carrying the same hand delivered envelope which I received last weekend so I opened it and showed him where in the letter it said I was obligated and made sure he noticed that I had gotten the title and section correct.

After about 10 minutes Ed seemed to have had enough. I had made it abundantly clear that I was not going to provide him with the data he desired. I wasn’t going to give him my name and was fully aware of the consequences for doing so. He turned to leave and I thanked him making sure I knew my obligations and the consequences and wished him a good night. He didn’t seem to acknowledge my statements and just got into his SUV, put away his laptop, and drove off.

He didn’t leave me with the letter he had for me, didn’t say whether or not he would be coming back, if someone else would be visiting or if I’d be receiving a notice to appear in front of some bureaucrat at the regional office. I’m having fun with this whole situation… I hope they continue harassing me.

I receive a phone call from a number I didn’t recognize around noon today.
I usually don’t answer unknowns, as they tend to end with me struggling to explain to Spanish-speaking Texans that they’ve dialed the wrong number.
This was my conversation, to the best of my memory:

Me: Hello?

Caller: Um, yes. Is this Laurie Par-a-vati?

Me: Speaking.

Caller: Yes, hi. This is Officer (inaudible) from the Fort Lee Police Dept.

Me: Oh, hi. (I immediately try to remember if I missed paying a parking ticket or something)

Officer: Yes, you submitted a reference letter for an (real name omitted) bile. Did I pronounce that correctly?

Me: Close enough, and yes I did.

Officer: For a fire arm permit.

Me: On, yes! (possibly a little too eager)

Officer: (long pause) I’m not sure if you completely understood what you were supposed to write on the reference form.

Me: What do you mean?

Officer: Well, (sympathetic pause) in the section where you’re supposed to explain why you think bile should get a fire arm, you wrote ‘because he wants one’ and ‘it’s his 2nd Amendment Right’.

Me: Yeah. Is there someth–

Officer: I always say these papers aren’t clear enough.

Me: …

Officer: Well, (pause) we aren’t really concerned with your opinion on gun control. I mean, if you look at the news, just giving someone a gun because they want one really hasn’t worked out well.

Me: (I opt to bite my tongue instead of getting into a blog of bile discussion) Oh, yea, I watch the news. I mean…

Officer: What this is suppose to serve is (pause), a moment to sort of vouch for Mr. bile. Tell us briefly why you think he should get a firearm. I figured you probably didn’t understand the intention of that section.

Me: I see. Because I figured, since Fort Lee already issued him a firearm.

Officer: (pause) Yes, well, you know. If you look at the news, just giving someone a gun because they want one really doesn’t work out well. If you watch the news (nervous laugh) you’ll see this.

Me: Oh, okay. Right.

Officer: Well, if you are serious about being his point of contact…

Me: Can you send me another one then?

Officer: We’ll send you another form, and just briefly explain if you think he is capable of owning a firearm.

Me: No problem. Thank you.

Officer: Have a nice day.

I want to throw this out there: the officer was not being a jerk. He stuttered, was really trying to be polite, and almost sounded like he was expecting me to get confrontational with him.

So am I surprised that my comments got me a phone call? Yes and no. I knew what they wanted to read was most definitely not what I wrote, that’s for damn sure. But the fact that they actually took the bait, wasted the time to call me, have this conversation, and to resend the reference letter annoys me a bit. Sure, now I have blog of bile subject matter to post about, but at the expense of bile’s firearm license waiting period. I guess the new game is seeing how long it will take them to mail out the blank form again.

Moral of the story? The 2nd Amendment is not a good enough reason for wanting a firearm.