I wanted to make a comment on Miguel’s last post but as I thought about it, the subject became more of a post in and of itself.

Pinellas County is a rather safe county in Florida, home to St. Petersburg and Clearwater.  It’s a tourist and retirement county, below the national average on unemployment and crime rate.

So why would it have such a murder happy sheriff?  I call it the “Rambo theory of Law Enforcement.”  Remember the movie Rambo: First Blood.

What was the plot:  Rambo, an ex-Army special forces vet, is passing through small town in Washington state.  The sheriff (played by Brian Dennehy) doesn’t like the look of Rambo, thinks he’s a drifter, and drives him out of town.  Rambo says he wants to get a meal before moving on and the sheriff arrests him for vagrancy and tortures him.  Rambo escapes and goes on a rampage.

The “Rambo theory of Law Enforcement”  is that you get sheriffs or police chiefs in power in (usually) low crime areas, and they get it into their heads that “this is my sleepy little town and I’m going to keep is that way with an iron fist.”  They become the kings of their little domains.  I’ve experienced this in Florida a number of times.  I grew up in a little town near South Miami called The Village of Pinecrest.  It had one of the lowest crime neighborhoods in Miami-Dada County.  Pinecrest police patrolled in SWAT gear.  Bal Harbor is a tiny town on Miami Beach, known mostly for having some of the most expensive condos and the most high-end shopping in the state.  Bal Harbor police are Nazis.  They will arrest you for doing 5 over the limit.

It’s not that the Sheriff of Pinellas County is oblivious to the insult he done to his officer’s intelligence or the people of the county.  He doesn’t care.  He is the law.  Nobody is make waves in his county.

But this brings me to my next point.

Is Rambo: First Blood the best Second Amendment supporting movie ever?  I know fans of the 2A love Red Dawn, and the idea of American citizens fighting off in invading army.  But our founding fathers put the 2A in place for the people to defend themselves from tyrannical government.

So… if you have a sheriff, who arrests, tortures, and tries to murder an American citizen, was Rambo exercising his 2A rights as envisioned by our founding fathers?

The CSGV likes to make the idea of “gun owners want a rebellion” against the federal government.  What if it’s just against a sheriff that threatens to murder his own constituents?

Keep in mind, this happened twice before in 20^th century America, the Battle of Athens (1946) and the Battle of Blair Mountain (1921).