Attorney and Author Dan Conaway and Mike Brooks Radio show "Arrested"
Attorney and Author Dan Conaway and Mike Brooks Radio show "Arrested"
Attorney Dan Conaway and Mike Brooks Arrested radio show January 5, 2019
Welcome to arrested the only five and local show that takes you into the belly of our criminal justice system, cohosted by Mike Brooks and Atlanta criminal defense attorney Dan conaway of Conway and strictly pc. Good morning everyone. Welcome Mike Brooks
Speaker 2:and criminal defense attorney Dan conaway. Well, we hope everyone had a great Christmas and a happy new year. It's great to be back with you in 2019. Dan, I hope you and your family also had a. had a nice holiday season.
Speaker 3:Thank you Mike. We had a lovely time. All sorts of fun.
Speaker 2:No, absolutely. But it's, uh, it's great to be back on the air with, with arrested for a new year. Twenty, 19. Well, there's been a lot going on folks, as you well know. And right before Christmas, the trump administration, they officially banned bump stocks. Now, I don't think a lot of people, Dan even knew what the hell above stock was before the mass shooting in Las Vegas. And you know, I fired a bump stock before. Um, I know people that have bump stocks, but usually they're not very reliable. And for our listeners who don't know what above stock is, it's a device that you took off your regular stock. Usually you'll put it on like an ar 15 type type rifle and its uses a spring inside of the stock, if you will, that you add on. And it basically turns your semiautomatic rifle almost into a fully automatic. But you know, you can do the same thing if you, if you take your finger and you loop it around your belt loop and you hold it against your side, you can do the same thing with that. But the question, the question is they know that the trump administration, uh, I think a lot of people were upset at this, that this happened in a lot of people were happy but is officially banning bump stocks, which is an accessory for, for a, a rifle. Is the constitutional, is it unconstitutional? And a lot of gun advocates think it could also be a slippery slope. What do you say their counselor?
Speaker 3:Well, and these are all great issues. I really liked this bump stock issue from the point of view, Mike, that it really, really displays the balance that the supreme court has to do and any constitutional civil libertarian has to do, uh, when looking at the balance between a guns on the one hand and the right to bear arms and our second amendment and also the right to public safety, both of whom are both of which are valid concerns and basically under supreme court. And this is true for all of our constitutional amendments. There is always a balancing test. We've talked about this before, right? It's always the right, the individual right to have free speech, freedom of religion, freedom to bear arms, so forth and so forth versus the government's right to maintain laws, to help promote and protect public safety. Okay, so let's take a look. The bump stock, I like the bump stock issue because to me there's good arguments on both sides. My personal opinion, and it's, but it's also based upon reading a lot of constitutional cases over the years looking at different issues, is that I think the bump stock man, his constitutional. Now, that doesn't mean that you have to have a bump stock man, right? But I believe that the government and the trump administration, and it has the right to ban them. Now, that doesn't mean that you can't make constitutional challenge to it and say it's too much violates second amendment rights. That's perfectly legitimate and I'm sure that argument will be made. And looking at this issue, I was struck by a. You were talking about the arguments on both sides. Uh, one argument made. This is made by a gentleman who is long standing in the military. Uh, he's a former military intelligence officer, Michael Diamond, and he is for the bump stock band. I'm the bump stock ban. And there he lays out his different arguments for it. And one thing that he lays the out, which I think is a pretty good argument, is that there's precedent for this. That is, we've all heard of the Tommy Gun. We've all probably seen the old Al Capone movies, scarface, a James Cagney movies like white heat. Yeah, right. We've heard the expression Tommi Gunn.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So no, it's a 45 caliber usually with a drum, that kind of thing. In fact, in fact, I need to were really nice suit. You've got to wear a nice double breasted pinstripe suit and a fedora while shooting it. Well, you know, one of the first times I ever fired one, I fired one long time ago. But then at the FBI headquarters when he used to give tours of FBI headquarters, they would end it up with one of the old 45, they'd show doing shooting demonstration down at the range in the basement of headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue. And then it would ended up with an agent using the Tommy Gun to show you what it used to. What was like back in Alcoa posted because law enforcement used to use the 45 caliber machine gun thompson submachine gun. That's right. Yep. So, uh, so
Speaker 3:now those were banned from use by citizens. In other words, you can't be running around with a Tommy gun as a citizen. And these, the first enactments and the first sort of restrictions on these types of automatic weapons where you were gone back in the day and largely to fight they're organized crime. Who at one point had an arguably is, especially before the development of the FBI, they had more firepower, meaning the bad guys. Then the good guys, the local police. So there's that concern. So there's precedent for this. Second thing is the any brings it up. The shooting in Las Vegas. He makes the argument, I think it's a good argument that it's hard to imagine that this particular a crazy person, I can't remember the guy's name, but whoever the nutbag was that did this. Yeah, um, that he would not have been able to inflict nearly so much carnage if he had not had an automatic weapon created out of taking a, using a bump stock.
Speaker 2:Well, you know what I was hearing from my sources that at least one of the 20 some odd rifles that he had up in his hotel suite there to Mandalay bay, that one of them actually had been. It was a three awake rifle that had been converted. Ah, so yeah. And so is that, is that a different process from the bump stocks? It is. And, but he did have a number of weapons that had the, uh, the bump stock owner because we talked about it on, on, on my show, you know, no Mike Brooks show that's on every day from noon to three. We talked about this issue and uh, I thought initially when I heard the gunfire there at the shooting, it sounds to me almost like a, like a belt fed, fully automatic weapon. Yeah. You know, and then we find out that there were bumps stocks, but you know, initially the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Dan, they basically called a bump stock a gun assessory. So, you know, and that's why I say the slippery slope, you know, is, is this could be this be the first of many regulations that are coming down. Now, you know, and I have think that president trump did this kind of just to pacify folks because right after the Las Vegas incident, there were a number of states that moved to ban the bump stocks, you know, and yes, it's constitutional. It's, it's, uh, some people think it's not constitutional gun. Second Amendment advocate. Just
Speaker 3:to jump in on that. Yeah. Uh, there's the other side, right? Which is a, there is an article out today, uh, and uh, this one is absolutely against a stock man. And um, this is, uh, uh, written by a gentleman who, uh, is very, very anti banning bump stocks and believes that it is unconstitutional. Yeah. So there are arguments there too. I think the better arguments, this slippery slope argument because I agree there's always a slippery slope issue and the issue is how far do things go, right? Do you ban that? You start then to ban semiautomatic firearms, uh, do you start to ban other types of guns? Right? Where does it go? Where does it stop? How much? All these kinds of things. And that's one of the fascinating things for people who love the constitution, like I do and love constitutional rights, especially our bill of rights, because there is no perfect answer or solution for these things. Uh, the best thing, uh, is, um, uh, the, the, the best thing is the debate and the discussion that has to take place and ultimately a decision to figure out where that balance is. Right? On the one hand, no, you cannot have a nuclear bomb in your home, right? On the other hand, you can have a handgun in your home. Um, they're giving you. One other example of another interesting thought would be I was, uh, we were driving down towards the beach this last week for a couple of days. And, uh, since I was headed towards Jacksonville, I decided to put on Leonard Skinner because they were from Jacksonville. I had Florida Georgia line in Leonard Skinner, two of my favorite pen, uh, and it seemed apropos and right on the Florida Georgia line. So one of the, uh, and there's a great new special Leonard Skinner, by the way, that you can find, I believe it's on Netflix, which is really neat. Um, so, but one of the
Speaker 2:thinks they want your hang man didn't, didn't know about that. Overall, it's really good. It's really good show
Speaker 3:you've got to m and a in there. One of the things they talk about is the fact that they have a gun. There's a, a, a musical piece. The song called Mr. Saturday night special and it talks about, you know, there are 38, 38 hand goes, there are no good for, they're no good for nothing but putting them in six feet in the hall at the end of the song. Ronnie van Zant, who's lead singer for Leonard Skinner, uh, he says, why don't we take all those handguns and dumped into the bottom of the sea before some old full come around here and shoot either you or me. Right? So
Speaker 2:see, that was, that was an issue back in the, uh, in the seventies, you know, when I was a young top, you know, that was the whole, that was all the big, the big thing instead of about[inaudible], it was all about the Saturday night specials.
Speaker 3:And because they're cheap, they're easy to get hold of. They're easy to conceal. Right, right. You have a criminal could have one in his lap and shoot you and you wouldn't even know what's going on. So the. So there's that. There's another example of where you could, you could flip it the other way. You could say, well maybe the semiautomatic ar 15 is fine, but maybe the problem are these cheap handguns running around. I don't know. Would that pass cut? Would that pass constitutional muster? Not as of right now, no. As long as you have in your home because the Heller decision.
Speaker 2:Well we'll talk about that and a whole lot more. And maybe also about how you spent your New Year's eve and hopefully you weren't celebrating it by firing weapons into the air. That in a whole lot more coming up on arrested with Mike Brooks and criminal defense attorney Dan conaway on talk one. Oh, six seven. This is arrested with Mike Brooks and Atlanta criminal defense attorney Dan cutaway listening to arrested with like Russian criminal defense attorney Dan conaway. Then again, thank you for joining us and by the way, if you haven't picked up Dan's book called arrested badly and America's criminal justice system, you are missing out. Check it a you purchase of what? Dan on Amazon to Barnes. Noble,
Speaker 3:www arrested book.com. There you go. Well,
Speaker 2:for winter break we're talking about bump stocks and and for those of you that have never heard of bump stocks and it's basically an accessory that you add to your semiautomatic weapon, usually a rifle a that uses the bump if you will, of the recoil to fire rounds more regularly. And, and again, people probably never even heard of a bump stock until the massacre in Los Angeles. We're 58. People were killed. Eight hundred and 51 injured. 400 of them by gunfire, by Stephen Paddock who barricaded himself in a suite at the Mandalay Bay and opened fire on the crowd at south by southwest music festival that was just across the street, basically from his hotel and come to find out there were a number of the 20 some odd rifles that he had there in the suite that we're equipped with bump stocks. And soon after that we heard Dan, president trump had moved to talk about possibly banning bump stocks altogether in right before Christmas of 2018. This past Christmas, he officially signed into his acting DOJ director, Department of Justice, uh, Scott Whitaker cited in and law basically banning bump stocks and banning people from owning bump stocks. So we're talking about whether this is constitutional, is it unconstitutional, but it does it infringe on your second amendment rights and is possibly a slippery slope on maybe getting some other things past. Uh, and this is going to be interesting to see if any of this comes up with the new democratic majority Congress that just started this past Thursday. Dan.
Speaker 3:And obviously the slippery slope thing was the slippery slope thing will, uh, will bear itself out with the Democratic Congress because obviously, especially on the progressive left, there are a lot of movement there to try to, uh, bring in all sorts of different types of gun control issues and gun control laws
Speaker 2:in some states just recently at 2019 basically say that you cannot buy a rifle now until you're 21. He used to be, you could buy a rifle at 18 years old. And handguns were, were 21 years, asked
Speaker 3:a couple of states already for sure has. So where's the slope exactly? That's right. Well, we'll see because, uh, again, that's, it's one of these, excuse me, this is one of these classic gray areas in law. And uh, and, and for the people who are against this, this is a, there are some people who are much against this, uh, different groups. Mine calls it a stab in the back. Uh, the gun owners of America and firearms policy coalition is filing suit against the band. So, you know, you've got a lot of people who are arguing against this type of thing. Um, and then the issue is, is, is unconstitutional, unconstitutional. See, I think eventually it under put the Supreme Court. There's a good point, I think. I think that very well. Um, now I'll give you a textualist argument if you will, which based upon legislative intent, which is one type interpreter statute, uh, to kind of give you a background, give a greater background, uh, my opinion on these types of issues in how I approach it. Alright. So if you look at the second amendment or any of the amendments for that matter, meaning the bill of rights the first 10 minutes, but then you can go on from there. But let's just focus on that because the first 10 were passed a as restrictions largely upon the federal government, uh, because the founding fathers, especially people like James Madison were concerned that the federal government would have too much power over your average citizen as they had seen in Europe for example. Yeah. So the bill of rights was added and only then was the constitution passed as far as the whole thing being accepted with the first 10 amendments, which we call our bill of rights. Right. Okay. So here we are with that in today's world. Let's take a look at it from a legislative intent issue. One, again, when you interpret a statute and any one of the bill of rights is a statute a first year, plain meaning sec. That's plain meaning is you can read it and the meetings, very plane first. For instance, you want to subject it says right, exactly like us. If you have a speeding statute rate that says it is illegal to go over the posted speed limit, right? Well that's pretty easy. So if it's 55 miles an hour and you're going 56, then you're speeding. That's just it. That's plain. Even even though most departments that give you ted over, for the most part, that will be called custom, what is customary, that's a whole different thing. Okay. But at the plain meaning of the statute is very clear, right? Yep. Okay. So first you start with plain meaning of flame, meaning is his plane, the meaning of the statute is playing, which she does all was. Then that's what you're supposed to go with. The second one you can look at is what I call legislative intent. I like legislative intent under certain circumstances because it helps you understand what the people that wrote it and past it, what they were thinking at the time. To me, the second amendment has to be taken in context with the whole thing. The whole, the whole amendment itself talks about the need for a state militia. What's the state militia? Well, state militia in 17, 89, 17, 91, which very simply the local people coming together on the town square, they would be formed into a local militia in the town. Then ultimately if needs be, they will be then formed into a larger militia they want across that ultimately brought together people all the real estate. Right, right. Uh, so that was the idea. So the idea is that you had to show up with some type of arm, you had to be armed well enough. What I've always said about the second amendment, I talked about this in my book, arrested. Is that the. If the second amendment was simply dealing with a guns, right? Right. That would be like passing an amendment saying that you have the right to own a hammer or a saw or an ax in. In 18th century America. Everybody had a gun. Right? Because she had used the adopt with it, right? Yeah. So you have to protect yourself. You had hunt, blah, blah, blah. Okay, so what's the real purpose of it? Why is the militia in there and why is it the right way? Is the right to have arms, which is a military term, not guns. It doesn't say guns is his arm arms. Why? It's because you need to show up for the militia. Now what's this based upon? This is based upon the fact that the people that wrote the second amendment are very familiar with the battle of Lexington and Concord. The British went to seize all the guns outside of Lexington and concord that were being held by the state militia or back then the colonial militia. She said, all right, when they got there, the guns were gone to another march and back to Boston and jump over the fences and through the trees you've got all these farm boys who were shooting using their guns and the, uh, the British that they called lobster backs because they had the bright red uniforms are sitting ducks, ducks, because there were things that were these bright red uniforms the farmers had behind the trees shooting them all and the farmers have got guns that in some ways are better. It might be better rifled for instance, than the muskets that were issued to the British army. So everyone was aware of this in 17, 89, 17, 91. And if you want to see a great example of this, watched the hbo movie called John Adams, great movie. And it depicts exactly what happens at the battle of Lexington and concord have mere funk farm boys are able to outfight the greatest military power of the time. The British, the British army. Well, okay. So why is this important to us today? It's relevant today because you want, when you think about something like an arm, like an assault rifle or shortly, right, right. Something like that. Well, you might want to lose this weight. What is it? Assault rifle when we can go on and on about that and, and you know more of that and that's part of the slippery slope and I agree that there's they're slippery slope. I'm not saying there's not, but the point is, it's one of the ways that you can stop the slippery slope is you don't have to go hyper one way or the other. If you just look at legislative intent, which is a standard normal centralist way of interpreting a statute. There's nothing rattled. Cool. Bad legislative intent. If the intent is so that if the Chinese come over the hill or you know, if the, I don't know, the Isis comes pouring down, you know, and ended Atlanta. I mean, who knows what could happen, right? Orthog breaks into your house or fuck breaks into your house. Now let's, let's keep them more in the militia center. Okay. Um, you know, but something like that happens and you actually had to show up, say a walmart parking lot, right? You can't show up there with a 38 special right. That's not gonna cut it. Now, do you need to show up with a Tommy gun? Probably not, but do you need to show up with something that can be used to help defend your community, to help form you into a militia under the second amendment, the arguments, you have the right to bear that arm. You don't have to, but you can. And then certainly the government or whomever is running the bullets, you could fill in the park.
Speaker 2:Now how are we going to enforce this bump stock bank? Because it said within 90 days you're there, turn it in or destroy it.
Speaker 3:It's going to be very simple and that is that it will not be enforced all the way through a. instead, what will happen is they will slowly be removed because what'll happen is you'll have searches of place this, right? You'll have drug issues, you'll have other stuff. You have your red flag laws, right? Which I think are unconstitutional, but all those things will lead to the seizure of bump stocks. Some people will voluntarily destroyed them and bringing them in. I don't like that word. Seizure helped. Some of them will be seized, but for instance, the new drug event or on a red flag.
Speaker 2:Hi, this is. We have a. We used, we see you bought a bump stock at a now where is it?
Speaker 3:Which brings up a whole nother issue which brings up one and a whole lot of there so we can talk about another time and that is for instance, if you're in New York state, again, I practice both in New York and Georgia licensed in both and I've had, I've had these cases up there in New York. You have to register your guns with the local police so it's easy to get them up there. Whereas here in Georgia, you don't have to register your farm,
Speaker 2:but you know what somebody on on, uh, on my show this past week brought up something. We'll touch on that in just a moment because we got a whole lot more coming up. Auto rested that you're listening to right now with your host, Mike Brooks and criminal defense attorney Dan conaway. You're listening to the new talk one. Oh, six seven. This is arrested with Mike Brooks and Atlanta criminal defense attorney Dan conaway. You're listening to a restaurant with Mike Brooks and criminal defense attorney. Dan kind of way. We really appreciate you joining us on this Saturday morning. Dan, we're talking, just to finish up, we've been talking about bump stocks, constitutional and constitutional slippery slope. But my big thing is a president trump said that, uh, basically the order said that we'd, you'd have 90 days to either turn them in or have them destroyed, but you didn't have to register them. So, uh, after 90 days if something happens and you get pulled over and you have a bump in your car, can you, can you be charged federally with this?
Speaker 3:Um, you can, uh, I don't know that you will be charged with a crime for that. I think that it would be seen more. Certainly the way the, let's put it this way, the way these laws tend to come into effect is it's Kinda like with the texting right now on your phone, uh, you know, people, I still see people holding up their phones in the car in Georgia. Oh, I know. It drives me crazy. Well, you know, so from the point of view of that, I think it'll be similar from the point of view. There's always a grace period there to allow people time, right? So it'd be a lot of warnings giving out and a lot of other stuff and then hopefully it will resolve itself that way. The other thing they can do is they can do, and this already exists, a certainly under federal law, but then state laws could add their own things as well. Uh, they could add increase penalties. Criminal penalties ultimately were either a crime where you have a crime is involved, a bump stock is used, right? There's some of that already exists with respect to the number of bullets you have in a magazine and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:Well see, and that's the other part is slippery slope. I'm worried about, you know, because you've had, you have states like California and other states now, um, New Jersey that you can't have a magazine that holds any more than 10 rounds of ammunition.
Speaker 3:Well, and on that note, I'd like to finish up a super glued to the news to, uh, I'll give you another Leonard skinner song. No, they talks about the, uh, again, I was down in Jacksonville says, listen, the only songs, much time at the beach and another, you can't spend too much time to it. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Uh, the other lenders scattered song is called Gimme back my bullets. Put them back where they belong. There you go.
Speaker 2:In my 30 round magazine, that's where they belong. Well, changing gears here a little bit folks. Hopefully everybody had a great new years eve and uh, you celebrated responsibly, but I tell you, I live in Kirkwood. I call it Kirkwood sometimes and uh, and I've joked and I, if you go to my facebook page, you can see posts of me, um, in, in my, in my ballistic helmet with a Bot, with a glass of champagne because it's a reality and there are warnings out there every single year, Dan. And that's about celebratory gunfire. People, people are idiots. And, and it's, you know, we used to be sit in the back yard of my house, around the fire pit or girlfriend, sit there and do it. Would be okay. Is it fireworks or is that gunfire? And I, and sometimes it's hard to distinguish, but here in Atlanta on New Year's eve over in northwest Atlanta, a nine year old boy who was outside with his family shooting off some fireworks were illegal. He got hit with they believe was celebratory gunfire. And you had a six year old girl who was shot in the head by celebratory gunfire. I'm in Oakland, California. You know, it's number one. It's irresponsible at any. Any gun owner who, uh, who, who engages and celebratory gunfire, um, is an idiot. I mean, why do people do this
Speaker 3:because they think they're in a movie, uh, with dodge city or something. Um, I, I don't know. Uh, I know that, um, I looked up a statistic, there's a federal statistic put out by the federal government for 100 people will die by New Year's Eve by New Year's Day. Excuse me. Another was on New Year's Eve, right? That could've been prevented. And it talks about both a gunfire and really stupid stuff like that. And then also a more than 300 Americans were about 300 Americans die, uh, across the US and Dui related crashes. Um,
Speaker 2:yeah. You just had the one on New Year's Eve on, on a 400. Yup. You had a woman who was three times over the legal limit, ran in, ran into an Alpharetta in a patrol car, right while they were investigating another accident. And, and this person who was drunk out of her gourd or ran into them, thank God nobody was hurt, but, uh,
Speaker 3:still hit the car 85 miles an hour. It says here. Right. So, I mean, you know, you've got. So you've got all sorts of madness and mayhem out there and to me it's just like, you know, um, it's just sort of what's the point of it because, um, for instance, the Duis, the Dui issue, really, let's just fuck it. Let me just focus on that and I'm going back celebratory gunfire, the Dui issue, you know, in today's world with Uber and lyft and all the different writing services, there's also, um, more and more, uh, places that will allow you to park overnight for a fee because they've got those, like for instance, on, at the whole foods in buckhead. I remember when we were running around having fun back in the nineties, um, uh, it was hard to park your car and a lot of places they wouldn't let you
Speaker 2:rail or you did it. It would boot it or something.
Speaker 3:Food who they tell it, you try to put it on like a parking garage somewhere that would, they would boot it or show it. Um, whereas now because of the digital, have the ability to pay digitally. Yeah. Oh, for overnight parking, right? Uh, for. And I just noticed that whole foods, because I want it to the whole foods here in bucket. He gets some stuff and I pulled in and there's a sign right there and it's pretty cool. It says, you know, um, it's right off of that Saint Andrews drive driver, you know, where all the bars aren't sure. And um, and it said, uh, you know, you can park here overnight, just pay with this APP. And you know, anybody under the age of 35 has that APP. I don't have that APP. I think my wife has that APP, but I don't have that.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean it's the same. A lot of different places you can go in and pay a parking meter. It's
Speaker 3:your fish out quarters and nickels and dimes anymore. You don't even have to put a credit card in, like the central machine there and get the receipt to put it on your dash. Now you can pay for it of time. Yep. So it's gotten between that and lift and everything else. And also to give Atlanta credit, Atlanta has a lot more sidewalks than they used to. A lot more sidewalks, a lot more ability to walk. There's simply no reason to, uh, to be out there driving drunk. You have alternative. Exactly. Um, and you'll save yourself and save everybody else a lot of trouble. And so that's that. That just needs to be done. Secondly, with the gunfire, I don't know what to say on that. I mean, you can buy so many fireworks nowadays. Me As a police officer, right? Do you have an answer? Why would somebody. I mean, we went to kroger the other night, my daughter and I, because she wouldn't shoot off some for sure. So we went to kroger and we bought some fireworks. I think they cost$10. We bought some fireworks, we let them off at midnight. Boom. They went up right now. Had a good time or lit on fire
Speaker 2:and you can go, you can go get fireworks that they're basically like mortars that you can drop into a tube and you're shoot it, it goes up. Then it goes, you know, explodes. My neighbor does those. He's really good at that. Well, you know, it's funny, one of our, uh, one of our other, uh, hosts from night, Shannon Burke, who's, who's on from nine to noon every day with Karen Stockton, he had had some friends over, in fact invited me over bad. I didn't make it up to a smarter, but he was firing off fireworks on his, on his back deck and uh, and the police came and knocked on his door. Well, the policeman said, look, it's not against the law, but your neighbor said that some of the debris was falling on his, on his, on his house or something. But no, but I mean, you can, it's not against the law to do it anymore. We're not, you know, I remember it used to be against the law to do it here in Georgia.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was really. And he had to go to Alabama to get ticket fireworks and all that. Then I grew up with a father for. I grew up on a farm in California. So, you know, to him fireworks for just part of the deal. Oh, sure. Um, but he, I mean he learned how to shoot a rifle, like by the age of 10, he could shoot a squirrel at a 200 pages or whatever, but you know what, he didn't shoot off guns to celebrate. He liked fireworks. Right. So I guess, what is the mindset as a police officer, what is the mindset there of that?
Speaker 2:I, I have no idea what the mindset of that is. You know, it's just, it's to me, to me, it's stupidity. To me, it's stupidity and it's just um, you know, I mean to go out in your backyard and to shoot off a shotgun, a pistol and you can hear it, you know, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And you know, those aren't fireworks because I don't think they, someone really thinks through what they do when they pull the trigger because that round what goes up must come down and look, I mean, you've got, you know, you've got the technology in place, like shot spotter that I know they're doing a pilot program is city of Atlanta in certain neighborhoods and it can differentiate between fireworks and because of the presents he goes, it's called massage and sharpness of user when you talked about usually explosives, but it's um, well we'll talk more about that when arrested with Mike Brooks and Grenville defense attorney Dan conaway 10 a new talk one. Oh, six seven. You're listening to arrested with Mike Broxson, criminal defense attorney Dan conaway on the new talk one. Oh, six slash seven. Thank you for joining us. Um, and by the way, I mentioned it before, but I cannot stress if you have not read Dan's book, arrested battling America's criminal justice system. Do yourself a favor folks, even if you have not been involved with the criminal justice system before, you've never been arrested. Never. And just pick it up. It is a great read and could possibly help you get your way and navigate your way through the criminal justice system should you or your family when you were a family member or loved one and up in trapped in the beast, which unfortunately as much easier than you can imagine. Yeah, but that. But the book arrested I, I tell you, it really kind of explains a lot to folks who aren't familiar, familiar with the criminal justice system here in America. So please do yourself a favor, folks. Pick it up. We're talking about the stupidity of celebratory gunfire on New Year's Eve, and hopefully none of you were the victim of a celebratory gunfire. As I said, I'm in northwest Atlanta. We had a, a young boy, nine year old boy who was, um, struck. Thank God he wasn't seriously injured but was still struck by a celebratory gunfire on, uh, on new years eve while he was out with his family shooting off some fireworks. And, um, and he had a girls, a six year old girl in Oakland, California who was out with her family. What's. She killed herself? She was, um, she was shot in the head with a stray bullet and it's just, it's just unfortunate, unfortunate that that happened. And, you know, you were quoting the statistics about, uh, about these kinds of things, Dan. But, oh, it was, you know, you talk about what[inaudible] B R I s a n c e and I was talking about the shotspotter technology that has been very successful in Washington DC, New York, Boston, Chicago, uh, and, and they're doing a pilot program here in Atlanta, Atlanta police department. And it can differentiate between fireworks and gunfire because of the, you know, the, you know, basically the pop of fireworks compared to the pop of, of, of, uh, of a guns have a round being fired off from a weapon. And uh, and it's, it's amazing technology. And I hope they incorporate it, uh, eventually into a permanent program because I think it's a, it's a great tool for law enforcement and, you know, especially if you get a call for shots fired and uh, and they, they can pinpoint to the exact spot where the shots were fired with this shotspotter technology.
Speaker 3:Did it sort of allows the police, they're not chasing their tail on a shots fired call where it's actually fireworks. Will it allow them to hone on an, on where shots are actually being
Speaker 2:fire? Exactly. Because a lot of people will mistake a fireworks for gunfire. Plus let's say an officer gets to the vicinity of where the, uh, the shots fired call was company, didn't vs shotspotter and it, they can look around for shell casings and pinpoint dislocation, shell casings so they can take steps and then maybe compare it with other incidents that have been entered into the system here in Atlanta or you know, that lead a metro area and um, and, and come up with and solve it helps to solve crimes forensically.
Speaker 3:I think that's great. And just from a constitutional standpoint, uh, the right to bear arms does not, in my professional opinion, uh, allow you to fire gun off in public. That is similar to yelling fire in a public theater, which you're not allowed to do either because of public safety concern,
Speaker 2:right? I mean it got. It's gotten to the point where there are certain neighborhoods were law enforcement knows that there's going to be a lot of silver jewelry, gunfire, and if they're patrolling a weird year there, they'll try to go to a two underneath a, uh, you know, like a railroad bridge or something to sit underneath that to make sure that the rounds that go up don't come back, don't come down on their, on their cars.
Speaker 3:Meanwhile, the Mimo, all the little, all the little kids in the neighborhood and all the moms and Dads, they can't hire to hide, hide underneath the railroad. Trust me.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right. You know, and that's, and that's what happened in northwest, was in California where the six year old girl and a nine year old boy were, were, were shot. But it to me folks, it's just total total stupidity, total stupidity to, uh, to, to do this kind of thing. So don't do that. And again, now that we're into a new year in 2019, the, uh, the other time where you get celebratory gunfire all the time is during the fourth of July. So, so please use your heads out there folks. I know Dan, this past week a, a, a campaign started here in Atlanta because we do have the superbowl coming up, uh, in February and a campaign started here in Atlanta to raise awareness of child sex trafficking because yeah, I, I had heard this before, but it's just, boggles my mind to think that Atlanta is one of the main hubs in the United States for child trafficking and child sex.
Speaker 3:Thirty, 3,600 3,600 on average, 3,600 children a year 40 say are into sex slavery every year in Georgia. Thirty 600 children. That's amazing. That's why the six dozen school buses are going around because that's the number of school buses. Apparently you would need to carry 3,600 children.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right. So they had 600 school buses. They made your way through Atlanta on this past Wednesday to represent those 3,600 kids. Um, you know, who were sold into slavery at every year, every, every year in the state of Georgia. And, and why right now it's because a large, large, uh, going on like the superbowl, they attract unfortunately kind of the savory characters because you know, whether you get a lot, you get people here who have a lot of money and our wellness spent a lot of money and we know the sex business in Atlanta, you know, with, with the clubs and everything else is they make a lot of money. So what, who winds up coming here, you see increase in prostitution and with that you, you get the pimps and the other folks who were involved in this and in this shady, just nasty industry bringing in kids to offer them up and putting them in to a prostitution.
Speaker 3:And one of the things about Atlanta that not many people realize we see this all the time. Meaning a lawyers who practice in the federal system, right? Especially here in the northern district of Georgia, is that if you think of Atlanta, Atlanta is built basically as the hub where the spoken wheel system, uh, where you've got highways and railroads and airplanes and they all basically run over the same spoke spoken. We'll assess them. Um, and uh, so you've got a tremendous amount of people coming in and out of Atlanta and that's one of the great things about Atlanta from the point of view of trade. This has been an area for trade center was built nationally very briefly. The, the railroad routes, the stagecoach routes that were built in the 19th century. They ran along the same trails as the Cherokee that had been here since for 10,000 years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I know there's a, is one railroad line right near me that runs through decatur and uh, and that's, you know, people go along there and they still are finding Indian artifacts to this day.
Speaker 3:This was a trading area for all of the Indian nations, all the native American nations for, for thousands of years. So it's always been that way. Unfortunately for child sex trafficking. It also brings that, um, we see it in the federal system with respect to the illegal gun sales with respect to drugs with respect to all different types of criminal activity. So much of it flows through Atlanta, comes up from the south, further south, whether it's Florida, Savannah, mobile, places like that, and then moves up and then from there is distributed throughout the northeast and the Midwest and so forth.
Speaker 2:Well, this campaign is called stop traffic t r a s s I c k, and you know what, like sex trafficking and um,
Speaker 3:this is by a state attorney general, Chris Carr and governor like Brian Kemp who joined with other elected officials and anti trafficking advocates to highlight this campaign. Um, and you know, this is obviously very, very good thing. It involves a wide variety of organizations helping both faith based organization called street grace, which is mentioned in the article and then also other organizations as well from different walks of life. And this is one of those areas where, um, you know, there's just no need for this kind of nonsense.
Speaker 2:And, and because the super bowl and as we get closer to the soup bowl, we'll touch on, on security measures, those kinds of things. Um, but as when, when you have a super bowl, it's a national security event. So that also brings the federal law enforcement entities and assets into play with the locals. And I can tell you one organism to organizations that are real, people have no idea that they're involved in, you know, uh, trying to track down a child. Exploitation is immigration, Customs Enforcement and Department of Homeland Security. They are integral parts of this. Absolutely. And uh, you know, that's, that's something we'll talk about a little bit later because we've, we hear, we've heard that a mayor Keisha, lance bottoms basically as close the jail to anyone who has been arrested by ice. So will this have anything to do with the superbowl? Well, thank you so much for joining us this Saturday morning on arrested. We will see you back here next Saturday. Eight am for arrested with Mike Brooks, criminal defense attorney Dan conaway on the new talk. One. Oh, six seven.