As I said, not so funny to deal with professionally. Sometimes deadly. When you are certain the law does not apply to you, you can do anything you want. Louisiana Police Shooting 2012 - Sovereign Citizens Cop Killing
If they are “exempt” from the law, then we ought to be able to shoot them at will. Although that might mean a small fine for “discharging a firearm within the city limits” or something like that.
I thought Somalia was the place for this.
I’ve read this opinion before. It’s pure comedy gold. These people are batshit crazy, the lot of them.
No, you don’t get Diplomatic Immunity just by claiming it. You have to be recognized as a diplomat by the host country.
I love this one, from that doc;
“You cannot identify one instance where a court has rolled over and behaved as told. Not one. Your spells, when cast, fail.”
But if you are your own sovereign nation and your nation travels where you do, it’s easy to get such recognition. From yourself.
The real question here is what kind of dumbass takes a pound of weed in his car to court? Lets think about this for one second. What do you find at court? Besides Judges, Defendants, Lawyers? Cops maybe? You think that is the place to bring your felony amount of weed? To court? Teh stoopit
Capt
“Sovereign citizen” should always be used with quotation marks, or a qualifier like “so-called.”
I know that’s a picky thing to say, but I notice a lot of these articles AREN’T qualifying the term, which kind of lends it legitimacy as a real term of art. It’s not. There is no such thing as a “sovereign citizen” and the term should not be used as if there is.
So far they’re mostly an irritation, but this shit could become a serious problem.
From the link provided above;
“In the absence of a better moniker, I have collectively labelled them as Organized Pseudolegal Commercial Argument litigants [“OPCA litigants”], to functionally define them collectively for what they literally are. These persons employ a collection of techniques and arguments promoted and sold by ‘gurus’ (as hereafter defined) to disrupt court operations and to attempt to frustrate the legal rights of governments, corporations, and individuals.”
Kinda unwieldy on a conversational level, but that’s essentially what they are.
You may well wonder if this person has been reading too much Harry Potter fan fiction. There is a certain disconnect to reality that is pervasive in this paradigm.
“Sovereign Citizen”, indeed. Why not just declare yourself “Center of the Universe” and have done with it?
– John Donne
I might pay money to watch these people try to get out of a traffic stop by casting a spell on the cops.
It’s easy to laugh at them when they do and say stupid stuff, but it is dangerous because they really believe what they say. When they look to the Declaration of Independence and the tradition of the American Revolution, and the justifications given for the right of revolution, then they have adequate grounds in their minds to resist the believed illegal usurpation of power by the so-called false government. So just how far are they willing to take their beliefs?
If it is just continuing to cite bizarre phrases and misciting legislation in order to try to finagle some special password that gets them out of the situation, that is frustratingly comical. But then they turn to more active resistance, including hostile acts with interference and, as cited above, violence including firearms.
Law enforcement officers need to be trained to be aware of the type and the danger they pose. The tactics of calling for other “sovereign citizen” backup to obstruct traffic stops and the potential for armed resistance speaks to the need for law enforcement to be prepared with their own backup. If there are indications of phone calls, they should definitely call their own backup, and be prepared to arrest the lot of them.
“No man is an island, but I’ve met a few peninsulas in my day.” – Ihave N. O’Idea
I am loving that Response above, but I have to ask - I’m at para 184, and he’s talking about how there’s a thing called a “pot church” that claims that pot is integral to Christianity, and is specifically called for and sanctioned by the KJV Bible.
Is this just a Canadian version of Rastafarianism, is this a one-shot loony proposal, or is this really a larger thing? Obviously googling “pot churches” isn’t getting me much of anywhere useful.
Every once in a while someone asserts that pot is an integral part of his religion, and therefore protected from prosecution under our constitutional freedom of religion. Then the person gets convicted and goes on to lose again on appeal.
From the Response linked above:
I want to send this Judge a gift basket.
And the stock answer from any (US)[Canadian] judge these days should be;
“Then why haven’t you moved to (California, Washington, Colorado)[Vancouver]?”
Well, because they’re high.
Appropriate, but I’m loving “vexatious litigant.” 