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Leader of heavily armed 'militia' driving on 128 says Second Amendment gives them the right to protect Maine from foreign invasion

Bey

The leader of the group of heavily armed Moorish sovereign citizens who held an hours-long stand off on Rte. 128 in July is suing over his arrest and continuing lockup - and is demanding $1,000 a day in recompense for his time behind bars plus written apologies from Charlie Baker, Maura Healey and the troopers who put him in cuffs for what he claims is a violation of his and his fellow gun slingers' Second Amendment rights.

In a handwritten complaint filed in US District Court in Boston - one of three filed by Moorish sovereign citizens against Massachusetts this week - Jamhal Talib Abdullah Bey of Providence, formerly known as Jamhal Lattimer, cites a bevy of cases from outside New England and one case involving stun guns in Massachusetts that he says protects the rights of armed militias to pack weapons to protect themselves and that his group should never have been questioned, let alone arrested, in Wakefield while on their way from their Providence headquarters to Maine for training on the "large capacity firearms" they had with them.

He claims these rulings protect the rights of militias like his to prepare for "a foreign invasion from the Northern States, or an act of domestic terrorism in the northern States, such as Maine" and that Massachusetts's strict gun-control laws, which outright ban certain types of automatic weapons:

[C]ould and clearly does have a direct negative effect and impact on the response time, ability, effectiveness and efficiency of any militia trying to help the situation if said militias had to either: travel around Massachusetts, adding at least an additional 7 hours of travel, plus gas, or somehow, during foreign invasion or terrorism, unload their firearms, apply for an FID card, wait for approval and destroy or trade in their standard and high capacity magazines before the militiamen can ever do their job in protecting the Constitution Union. No military organization will ever burden itself in that manner, the former nor the latter.

He claims that a federal court decision created a legal definition of an acceptable militia - that its members wear uniforms, have a chain of command, open-carry weapons and practice with their weapons - just like he and his fellow Rise of the Moors members were doing, or trying to do when stopped. In fact, the case he cites involved a Lebanese man brought to the US to face charges after he and members of a Lebanese militia hijacked a plane with American passengers on board. In its ruling, the court was not defining a militia under the Second Amendment but describing how the man and his fellow militiamen boarded and then hijacked a plane getting ready for takeoff from Beirut's airport.

Bey also cites the 2008 Heller decision in which the Supreme Court recognized that the Second Amendment grants people the right to own guns for self protection.

However, he seems to have missed two recent decisions in federal court in Massachusetts that hold that even the Heller decision has limits and that there's a limit to what can be considered weapons for "self protection."

In 2019, US District Court Judge Allison Burroughs - who was assigned Bey's case - ruled that while Heller means states can no longer totally ban all weapons, they can still place restrictions on them, including enacting requirements that gun owners must first obtain a license. She noted that Heller was not absolute, that it allows governments to ban gun ownership by the mentally ill or people with prior gun convictions. Burroughs cited a 2017 case in which the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit - which covers Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island and Puerto Rico - upheld the right of Massachusetts towns to set requirements for gun ownership.

Just two days after Burroughs' ruling, the appeals court ruled Massachusetts could bar specific types of assault weapons because they go way beyond the "self protection," as defined by the Supreme Court, that nobody needs a gun that can fire 10 or more rounds in rapid succession to protect themselves. The court contrasted the weaponry with the small stun guns the Supreme Court ruled Massachusetts could not ban, because they can be used for self protection without threatening the lives of large numbers of people at once.

The record contains ample evidence of the unique dangers posed by the proscribed weapons. Semiautomatic assault weapons permit a shooter to fire multiple rounds very quickly, allowing him to hit more victims in a shorter period of time. LCMs [large-capacity magazines] exacerbate this danger, allowing the shooter to fire more bullets without stopping to reload. ... It is, therefore, not surprising that AR-15s equipped with LCMs have been the weapons of choice in many of the deadliest mass shootings in recent history, including horrific events in Pittsburgh (2018), Parkland (2018), Las Vegas (2017), Sutherland Springs (2017), Orlando (2016), Newtown (2012), and Aurora (2012).

Unusual for a complaint by a Moorish sovereign citizen, Bey, a former Marine, concludes his complaint by avowing he is a "proud American" - typically, they will say they are, in fact, citizens of Morocco not subject to American laws. Bey does state, after saying he is American, that he is also "a Moroccan citizen."

Complete complaint (3.3M PDF).

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Comments

These guys going to defend the whitest state in the country.

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They won't just stop at Maine.

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You think Fort Ticonderoga can't be brought online in a day or two?

We might need to put 1/2 the Bruins into an internment camp though.

Pretty sure they all stop at Old Orchard Beach though.

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The Quebecois will go all the way to Fort Lauderdale with the requisite banana hammock uniform.

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Just with the same kind of non-stop through transit like getting to West Berlin back in the day.

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Actually that's Vermont.

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Maine is 94.4% white and Vermont is 94.2%.

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Hand written complaint? Let me guess how many spelling and grammatical errors were in it.

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"Rise of the Moors"?

Somebody ought to tell this guy that it's "Moops."

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Bey does state, after saying he is American, that he is also "a Moroccan citizen."

I'd happily send money to Morocco for one of their government lawyers to send a certified letter to each of these "citizens," saying they're being conscripted and are to report for duty at a base in Morocco for training in one month's time.

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What a maroon .

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This live action reboot of Morocco Mole went sideways real quick.

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and Golden Age noir movies only as an adult, I have to ask: would any kid watching that show when it originally aired in the 60s have recognized Morocco Mole's voice as a lampoon of Peter Lorre?

I had a similar question recently rewatching Young Frankenstein, which is full of jokes referencing ancient movies, theater and music that I was oblivious to when I first saw it as a teenager. I still thought it was hilarious at the time, but it's a lot richer now.

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Bey could benefit from Alexander Pope:

A little learning is a dang'rous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.

He and his chums seemed to have skimmed just enough to get themselves in court and jail.

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The sacred spring was said to be near ancient Leivithra in Pieria, a region of ancient Macedonia, also the location of Mount Olympus, and believed to be the home and the seat of worship of Orpheus. The Muses "were said to have frolicked about the Pierian springs soon after their birth". The spring is believed to be a fountain of knowledge that inspires whoever drinks from it.

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Mr. I Invented Email's lawyer?

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Magoo likes his hat. Magoo thinks it’s silly. Which causes Magoo to ponder, that silly does itself sound silly. Is this because of the definition of silly. Or if silly meant say for example, grouchy, would the word silly still sound silly? Magoo.

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during foreign invasion or terrorism, unload their firearms, apply for an FID card

Guys, I promise you, when the shit hits the fan, this stuff won't matter. But the night in question, there was no shit hitting any fans, fortunately.

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Are these people any relation to Shiva, the Email guy. These court complaints read just like his in places. Ya gotta wonder.

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of the Masshole Institute of Nuttery.

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Well Maine was part of Massachusetts!

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