SAY NO TO SEARCHES!!!!

<-SAY NO TO SEARCHES with these SNTS buttons & stickers while they last. 1 or 2 free on request. The latest in lawyer chic! or give them to clients. It's a pro bono effort to educate lawyers, and to help lawyers educate the public about their rights. Also ask about the new bumper stickers and T-shirts that read "I dare you cops to search me!" Inquire by email below.

There are new proposals for stepping up lawyer searches and, of course, the usual excuses are used: give up your freedom for the illusion of security. Below is an artist's rendering of the proposed plan as it would appear in use. Every attorney (and everyone else) is asked to provide feedback such as:
(1) if he/she is opposed to the new plan, or (2) not opposed to it and looking forward to it.

THE NEW PLAN> There already is a search device in use that reveals the human body and provides a "technological strip search."
click here for more details.
If lawyers don't fight the statist quo (not a misspelling), then lawyers should embrace technological strip searches and worse and lawyers should learn to enjoy being treated like criminals.

<-- Guavaween on 7th Avenue in world famous Ybor City. It's the "Say No To Searches" guy in costume. Handing out stickers and educating the partygoers. Would this count for a lawyer's mandatory pro bono slavery hours? There were lots of laughable searches at Guavaween entrances (and they missed the ankle holster). That's more proof that lawyers are as qualified as other law enforcement to carry (or moreso). The seaches only served to disarm good people, and thus served to arm and aid criminals. One fan anonymously reports that while he was wearing a SNTS sticker a cop pointed at the sticker and asked "what does that mean?" The fan said "You know what it means." The cop retorted "Let me see your identification." The fan retorted "up yours" and ran into the crowds, losing the cop. That's more than saying "no" to searches !! When you SNTS......COPS act like SNOTS.

As part of the nationwide campaign, lawyers are aiding the Air Line Pilots Association to enable pilots to carry firearms in cockpits. In the proud tradition of pro bono publico, lawyers are joining with pilots in doing all they can to selflessly help protect others, especially during these times of need.
Even before the WTC terrorism, many courthouses were like airports, and everyone who entered, including well-respected counsel, was treated like a criminal, subjected to metal detectors, emptied pockets, x-ray machines and shake-downs. Since the WTC terrorism, security at some courthouses is harsher, putting lawyers in the same predicament as pilots, and increasing everyone's danger of vulnerability and the lack of self-defense.

        It wasn't very long ago that the search procedures didn't exist at any courthouses.
        There are still many courthouses where many people (e.g. court personnel and even the cleaning crew) and many lawyers (e.g. prosecutors, public defenders, judges) avoid the search gauntlet, while other lawyers are treated like criminals. The "other lawyers" want the searches to stop.
        There are many courthouses in many states where lawyers are not treated like criminals and are not searched. Lawyers want that everywhere.
        And not to be forgotten is the danger of assaults, muggings and/or injuries that attorneys have endured (and will endure) en route to or from courthouses, because the effect of the gun ban is to disarm attorneys away from the courthouse, even in some of the seediest neighborhoods and parking lots all over the country as lawyers walk to and from the courts. Courthouses are defeating states that have laws that encourage carrying concealed firearms. click here for a related story.
        Popular objections to guns in planes do not apply to guns in courthouses.   And unlike airplanes, courthouses always contain known criminals, even violent criminals, and that heightens the need for self-defense above that in airplanes.

        There are many courthouses that have procedures that are more professional than other courthouses. For example, Utah courthouses provide a "safe storage for personal defense items" (gun lockers).
        Lawyers want to be treated the same as judges and law enforcement. Judges are lawyers who were elected or appointed, and at many courthouses judges are allowed to carry firearms, and many do.
        Many courthouses allow "law enforcement officers" to carry guns and avoid searches. The definition of "law enforcement officer" often includes some paper-pushing lawyers and non-lawyers in bureaucratic jobs, who are allowed to carry firearms. If such people are "law enforcement officers" than every lawyer is more qualified as a law enforcement officer.
        Lawyers have a duty to enforce the law, and lawyers also enforce laws against the government, including the Bill of Rights. Therefore, the term "law enforcement officer" applies to lawyers as much as it does to regular law enforcement officers.

Amendment II: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed
Amendment IV: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Lawyers are as qualified or better qualified than most law enforcement officers, with stereotypically higher education, and attorney careers are based on understanding the related laws, trials, jury instructions and appellate cases, including cases related to guns and the justifiable use of guns. Lawyers prosecute and defend law enforcement officers when law enforcement officers are investigated for, charged with, tried for, or convicted of improper shootings or the illegal use of guns.
The idea of lawyers carrying on their hips is sometimes criticized. Yet in many courthouses regular law enforcement officers openly carry guns on their hips, and those officers are often distracted with paperwork or conversation. When lawyers are able to carry concealed firearms they will be even safer than regular law enforcement officers.

Cops do not carry firearms in Great Britain. In the U.S.A. the Bill of Rights guarantees the right to keep and bear arms to private individuals (not agents of the government). See USA v Emerson at http://laws.findlaw.com/5th/9910331cr0.html. If the U.S.A. adopted the British system for cops, then the U.S.A. could become the first country where the percentage of private individuals carrying firearms was greater than that of cops. --anonymous fan.

        Courthouses are every lawyer's place of business in the same way that airplanes are a pilot's place of business. Lawyers are "officers of the court." Many lawyers are licensed to carry concealed firearms, have training with firearms, and many have past military or law enforcement experience. Lawyers go through rigorous background checks with State Bars, and these background checks are more extensive than that given to law enforcement officers.
        If there is some training that law enforcement takes that is cited to justify their being armed, then lawyers want to have available the same training with the same treatment. Although even that condition should not apply because it does not apply to judges.
        If judges and law enforcement (or prosecutors, public defenders or court personnel) are not searched then lawyers should not be searched. If judges and law enforcement can carry, then lawyers should be able to carry.
        Some lawyers are only advocating a secondary position: that lawyers be permitted to use a separate entrance or to walk past courthouse search procedures (as do many prosecutors, public defenders, judges and courthouse personnel), even if lawyers are not allowed to carry firearms. It wasn't long ago that search procedures didn't exist at all – for anyone, lawyer or not.
        Anyone who opposes these freedoms must, in order to avoid hypocrisy, lobby that the same search procedures (and gun bans) apply at all times and at the same entrances to judges, law enforcement officers (officers who are not "on duty" at a courthouse), prosecutors, public defenders and all court personnel. Afterall, judges are lawyers who are elected or appointed, and they often have unsupervised access to courts to such a degree that any judge could carry closed boxes, containing anything (e.g. guns, flammables, explosives), into any courthouse, and could do that all night long, either on his own or under threats from another (e.g. a terrorist). To anyone whose reasoning follows that path - away from freedom and professionalism- I say "Please state so publicly." Do you support ending the unprofessional treatment of lawyers, or do you support expanding that treatment to elected and appointed lawyers (judges) and to everyone else?
        At this time, lawyers and jurors use the same entrances and jurors see attorneys (with or without their clients) treated as criminals, while prosecutors, judges, law enforcement and others are not. The courthouses are teaching the public that lawyers are criminals and cannot be trusted, while prosecutors and others are law-abiding and can be trusted. This prevents clients (especially criminal defendants) from obtaining fair trials.

Further, the search gauntlets are a pretense for the government to make easy busts of regular citizens for charges that have nothing to do with attempted violence in courthouses.
Of course, after lawyer searches end, anyone who claims to support searches can still volunteer to go through search gauntlets. So far, the many hypocrites who are exempt from the searches are not volunteering. The only reason the non-exempt search-apologists go through the search gauntlets is because they are forced to, and they don't have the courage or philosophical wherewithal to even voice criticism, much less take action.

To help contact: Rex Curry, Attorney at Law, P.O. Box 8816, Tampa, FL 33674-8816; (813) 238-5371; rexy@ij.net