Did Morro Bay Council, Staff, Police, Conspire to Infringe 2A Rights in Retaliation for Political Speech?

UPDATE: In drafting a 42 USC §1983 complaint for filing in federal district court, I recently noticed that the copy of Chief Cox’s denial letter produced as a public record by the city clerk (and posted at left) differs substantially from the denial letter actually mailed to me. This is not due to mere redaction — the letter produced by the city clerk is NOT the real letter, a scan of which can be found here. The nature of the differences indicates the officially-produced draft was created after the original letter was sent.

Did Morro Bay city council, staff, police, etc., conspire to infringe my 2A rights in retaliation for my political speech as a political candidate?

Based on the public records linked at left, such a conspiracy appears to be quite possible, exposing the City to damages and City officials and others to damages, including punitive damages.

Several citizens put pressure on city council and staff to charge me with the crime of brandishing, revoke any CCW I might have had, add police security to events specifically to protect against me, cancel my free gun training, etc. An especially nasty email accused me of some kind of “bait and switch” with my free gun training and suggested I was violating Bar rules, yet for almost twenty years I have provided such training free of charge to the public, the vast majority of whom never hired me for anything. And by the way the Bar is fine with PI attorneys, for example, giving away expensive cruises at their seminars, which is likely much more of an inducement than handgun training, because it is not at all easy to get gun owners to train regularly, even though their life may depend on it. Moreover, handgun training is so enmeshed with legal training it can itself be considered a kind of legal seminar. (There are some reckless firearm instructors out there and the despot in me would like to force them to pass a bar exam.) Finally, as an absolute rule, not once violated in my twenty years of giving seminars, I never sell anything or engage clients at my seminars. Prospective estate planning clients undergo a lengthy process, requiring significant effort on their part, before I will even consider engaging them as clients.

You will note in this correspondence the sloppiness of the police chief in assessing my background as a trainer. Though my background was described in my CCW application submitted to him and is easily found on my website here, he falsely implies I am not a licensed firearm instructor and that I do not offer concealed carry training, despite my twenty year history as a firearm instructor including over fifteen years specifically teaching concealed carry. In actuality, no license is required in California to provide concealed carry training, and in fact I was licensed by Utah to provide the course for Utah’s license here in California until I let that expire in 2023, well after this high-tech lynching of me. I was registered with California’s DOJ as a firearm instructor when I was an approved CCW trainer for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, however I let that registration lapse when I moved up to SLO County as the list of trainers was much more tightly restricted among all the issuing authorities here, both municipal police and sheriff departments. At this point, none of my training activities require a firearm-specific training license or registration as I use only realistic airsoft replicas, not firearms. Yet my free training program includes training that is far more advanced than that provided in the statutory CCW classes, and that is in fact the main reason I no longer am interested in getting approved to provide those statutory classes.

In the correspondence with city council members as well as members of the public, the police chief repeatedly admits that my conduct at the forum was completely legal and non-threatening, and that no crime had been committed by me, yet he also refers to my political speech as “antics” that are “completely unacceptable“, without bothering to explain why the political speech is unacceptable.

One particular item of correspondence involved a council member Jeff Heller writing that he looked forward to the City’s response to my political speech. That email was forwarded by city manager Scott Collins to the police chief and the police chief responded yes and mentioned that I had a CCW app pending with MBPD.

These records appear to corroborate other evidence of conspiracy noted in my article on the high-tech lynching, and my eight-page response to MBPD’s denial of CCW.

The plastic “red gun” I used is the same gun I used two years previously to canvass, without incident, almost the entire city of Grover Beach in my run for city council there. Despite getting a late start on that campaign, I was only ten votes behind first place on Election Day, although the tally changed direction in later counts of last-minute mailed ballots. The voters I canvassed enjoyed the short concealed carry drills and training they received right on their porches, out in the open, in full view of the public.

It is also the same “red gun” I had already been using for several weeks to canvass right there in Morro Bay, giving the same training on porches all over the city, openly and in full view of the public.

The “red gun” I used is actually designed and statutorily defined for such use in public.

I would have been in more legal jeapardy had I used a soggy piece of toast cut in the shape of a gun, unless perhaps the toast was smothered in orange marmelaide. Statutory red guns are less messy, in theory.

I ultimately obtained late last year (after some unexplained delays at the state DOJ level), a new CCW from our county sheriff, but not before incurring significant damages. The sheriff’s office said the delay was unprecedented and was unable to get an explanation from DOJ other than that my file was somehow misplaced (for several months).