Speaker 1: 0:00

This is arrested with Mike Brooks and Atlanta criminal defense attorney. Damn conaway, thanks for joining us here on arrested. Well this past week and he'll probably be going on maybe for another week. The hopeful new Attorney General Bill Barr has been in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee for the for for the good part of all of the week and then I'm on Wednesday. Bar was talking about what he thought was the single most thing that we can do into gun control arena. Problem of our time is to get an effective system in place that can keep dangerous firearms out of the hands of mentally ill people. That is should be priority number one and it's going to take some hard work and we need to get on top of the problem. We need to come up with agreed to standards that are prohibitors of people who were mentally ill. We have to put the resources in to get the system built up the way we did many years ago on the on the a felon records and so forth. We have to get the system working and as I say, it's. It's. It's a sort of piecemeal, a little bit right now. We need to really get some energy behind it and get it done. And I also think we need to push along the, the Erp Bose, uh, so that we have these red flag laws, uh, to, to, uh, Supplement, uh, the use of the background check to find out if someone has some mental disturbance. This is the single most important thing I think we can do, uh, in, in the gun control area to a stop these massacres from happening in the first place. So Dad, now he's talking about some things we've talked about in the past and uh, he's talking about the red flag laws and uh, that, that was just one of the things you talked about, but he says that this is the single most important thing we can do in the gun control area. And he's talking about Dan, he's talking about these, these Erp bose as he called it, which, uh, are extreme risk protection orders and which we discussed a few weeks ago. Exactly. But this also didn't play well with some folks who are supporters of the second amendment

Speaker 2: 2:41

interest. Yeah. It was interesting because, um, there were three things that came out in here that really, that I saw as concerns a w, two, one, a couple of things that, uh, I figured other people would be concerned about it, but I actually thought were good things. Um, and just to understand why we're discussing this is just so the listeners understand, this is the spot for the attorney general. The attorney general is the chief law enforcement officer in the United States and runs the Department of Justice. So we're talking about, uh, someone with immense power, uh, and who runs the, runs the beast, if you will, if anybody is riding on the back of the beast, you know, in a, with a cowboy hat on right now and a saddle. It's whoever's the attorney general at the time. So that's why we're discussing these issues. Um, uh, with respect to a bill barr bullying, Barb said there's one thing was that I said that he said was, is he was asked about the Mueller investigation, Mueller. He said, uh, he actually apparently knows Bob Mueller

Speaker 1: 3:50

very well together. Uh, their wives also or are very, very good friends. They've known each other for years,

Speaker 2: 4:01

so he was very clear that he won't be bullied by anyone, uh, with respect to the Mueller will be allowed to complete his investigation. Uh, and uh, as this, I think this is critical for the attorney general to be able to go in there and say, look, uh, you can say what you want about the Mueller investigation. Uh, my personal opinion is that it's time to wrap it up. It's been going on a long time, but he'll be allowed to do his job. Uh, and then the second one I have greater concern with and that's his past support for draconian punishments for especially involving drug and firearm charges in the types of things we were just talking about, uh, under the first step back.

Speaker 1: 4:44

But things have changed.

Speaker 2: 4:46

Things have changed, but a leopard doesn't always change his spots. He was already attorney general under a Hw Bush back in the early nineties. And Senator Cory Booker asked him if he felt that a drug and firearm crimes, the disproportionately hurt blacks and Latinos, especially young men, should be changed and disproportionately affect those communities and, uh, would he be. And he told a senator booker a that he'd be willing to look at these alternatives, but he was, it wasn't clear to me that he has changed his fundamental, his fundamental view, and he did not give me an indication whether it was his response to Senator Booker that he is willing to look at fundamental changes to our criminal justice system, which now favors in some circumstances a white. And this is my opinion, but white and well off criminal defendants over the poor and young men in black and Latino community.

Speaker 1: 5:43

So how that first step, where does the first step that we've been talking about today first come into the first step, helps a lot.

Speaker 2: 5:51

Um, and that's a good thing. We want to move forward with that. And I'm not saying William Barr can't change. He, he stated that he was changing and that his positions have evolved with respect to Senator Booker's question. My response back is we'll see again, a criminal defense lawyers tend to be pragmatists, so we'll see. That's a polite way to put it in. So we're over here, right? Uh, and then now, finally, let's, and we can talk about the sun today and get into it more next week, but, uh, um, because this, we've really got to unpack and that's this thing with the red flag laws. So. Okay. And just to go back the red flag laws, right? Right. They are a threat to the second, fourth and fifth amendments of the United States, uh, all three, not just the second amendment, but the right to bear arms, but also against unreasonable searches and seizures, not supported by probable cause, which was the fourth and the fifth amendment rights to due process, right? Because there's almost no due process with red flags laws. Again, you have a secret, I would call a secret kangaroo court deciding whether or not somebody's a government official can take away your guns on the basis of the board of one individual, usually

Speaker 1: 7:03

that you are a danger to yourself or others.

Speaker 2: 7:06

No ability to respond before your guns received, your search, your house ransacked, and gun toting, government officials come into your house, which in the United States is supposed to be your castle and you have no right to even address the issue because it's all held in secret. So I have major problems with this. The thing that's key, and I was going to leave this on for today, is that he mentioned, and this was mentioned in the letter by the organization that opposes his nomination, right, but Barr said is that the second amendment is based upon the Lockian notion and right of self preservation. And what it does is that it allows people to basically possess firearms. Right? But the problem with that is his idea is that the second amendment is what allows people to own her.

Speaker 1: 7:58

Well, we'll, we'll, we'll continue with this discussion next week. We appreciate you joining us this Saturday morning auto arrested with Mike Brooks and criminal defense attorney Dan cutaway on the new one. Thanks for listening to arrested with Mike Brooks and Atlanta criminal defense attorney Dan conaway. Well, this show provides general information. It does not constitute legal advice. The best way to get guidance on your specific legal issue is to contact a lawyer. For more information or to schedule a meeting with an attorney, please visit conaway and strickler.com.