Security agent or terrorist? You decide.

On Friday, police stopped Wesley Alan Beeler at a US Capitol checkpoint, because he had a pro-gun bumper sticker on his truck. When asked, he admitted he was carrying a loaded Glock and five hundred rounds of ammunition. He was arrested for carrying a firearm without a DC license, even though he is registered in neighboring Virginia as a private security agent licensed to carry firearms on the job. Washington, DC does not permit “open carry” of firearms.

Stopping suspicious characters who may be plotting further insurrections during a presidential inauguration is good. But arresting bona fide security agents doing their job, for what amounts to a legal technicality, does nothing to enhance Capitol security, and only contributes to a further alienation of the people from their government. They could have simply confiscated the “contraband” weapons and ammunition, which would have defused the entire situation, without making what is literally a federal case out of it. It is exactly this sort of over-reaction that has half the country so angry at their national government. 

Richard Barnett is getting off lightly

 Richard Barnett, the guy with his feet on Nancy Pelosi’s desk during the storming of the Capitol, has been charged with minor offenses. He claimed he took an envelope from her desk as a souvenir, but that it wasn’t theft, because he left a quarter on her desk. Taking something that doesn't belong to you without permission is still theft, despite its lack of value. As a souvenir of the historic storming of the Capitol, it may even be valuable to a collector. Perhaps valuable enough to count as grand theft. I wonder if he knows how lightly he’s getting off.

He could be charged with grand theft, criminal trespass, burglary, and insurrection. I looked up their definitions and penalties in the District of Columbia. If a prosecutor wanted to make an example of Mr. Barnett, he could be facing sentences totaling more than sixty years in federal prison. Parole is not allowed in federal cases.

Even then, he’d be lucky. Taking part in an attack on Congress, causing Congressional leaders and the Vice President to flee for their lives, might be construed as treason. The Constitutional penalty for treason is death. In the past, even those barely associated with treason have hanged.