Lake Morton's (alleged) Capitol Lynch Mobbist: a case study in the malevolent ambiguity of gun language and policy

The FBI arrested my neighbor Brian Boele Friday for his alleged role in the Capitol Lynch Mob. He makes a useful lens for understanding terms like "open carry," "constitutional carry," and "red flag."

A little more than a year after the FBI says he stormed the U.S. Capitol to disrupt to peaceful transfer of presidential power, Brian Boule bought a nice house very near my own in Lakeland’s Lake Morton historical district.

It’s one of the cooler places to live in our city — walkable to downtown and right next to Florida Southern College. I’ve lived here since 1999, when it was much cheaper.

Along with a second owner, who I will not name (scratched out above on the parcel information), Boule paid $449,000 for this house on March 1, 2022. This shows yet again shows that the Capitol Lynch Mob (like MAGA itself) ran on neighbor hatred and the stupid grievances of entitled wealth and social status, not “economic insecurity.”

Boule was arrested at home Friday morning by federal agents. Here’s an excerpt from the Tampa Bay Times:

James Brett IV, of Clearwater, and Brian Boele, of Lakeland, were named in an indictment filed last week in Washington, D.C. They are charged with civil disorder and other crimes related to the siege, which disrupted congressional certification of the 2020 presidential election results.

The new indictment offers few details of the specific allegations. But federal prosecutors in a news release stated that Brett and Boele were part of a group that illegally entered Capitol grounds and moved to the Lower West Terrace, where rioters clashed with police.

Here’s the house. Very all-American, right down to the flag its owner is accused of disgracing and trying to overthrow in the name of indulgent lies and neighbor hatred.

I was friendly with the previous owners; but I have never met the current owners. At this point, I do not care to. I would prefer, instead, that the state of Florida, county of Polk, and city of Lakeland protect my neighborhood from them.

By sheer coincidence, I happen to be the current president of the Lake Morton Neighborhood Association, an unpaid volunteer job that I got because nobody else was really willing to do it.

I do not speak for LMNA in what I write here; but I think I do have some standing that goes beyond just living here to address neighborhood safety in a formal way.

Is there an arsenal of AR-15s and ammunition inside 803 College that can be seized by Florida’s red flag laws?

I think it’s entirely likely, given the love of the AR-15 and desecrated flag that drove the Capitol Lynch Mob, that Brian Boele keeps an arsenal of military-style weapons in this lovely home located very near to mine.

In Florida, our so-called “red flag” law, approved in 2018 after Parkland, actually manifests itself in something called a “risk protection order.” Here is a good overview of risk protection orders from what seems like an official Florida court website.

Note this excerpt and parts in bold.

In 2018, The Florida Legislature passed the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act in response to a tragic school shooting.  The law is designed to enhance public safety by restricting firearm and ammunition possession by a person who poses a danger to himself or herself or others.

What can you do if you believe someone poses a danger to himself or herself or others if he or she has access to firearms or ammunition?

Contact your local law enforcement office.  Only law enforcement may ask a court to enter a Risk Protection Order against someone who may be a danger to himself or herself or others.

Consider this article, which I will send to Lakeland PD and the Polk Sheriff’s Office, an act of “contacting” my local law enforcement. Because I do think a neighbor prepared to help violently and criminally overthrow my vote and representative government poses a threat to me and my family, which is enhanced by access to and possession of firearms.

The FBI certainly thinks Brian Boele poses a threat. It brought a small army of vans and agents to arrest him Friday morning, according to a witness I spoke to. I’m sure the agents were heavily armed and wearing body armor.

Thus, my message to local law enforcement is blunt: take a cue from the FBI, get over your general political and cultural sympathy for this desecrated flagger, and go take Brian Boule’s household guns, as the law allows you to. Make my neighborhood safer.

It’s worth noting that if Gov. Ron DeSantis had his way, risk protection orders would not exist. He wants law enforcement to have no tool with which seize guns from a high risk owner.

Brian Boule’s “constitutional carry”

I doubt LPD or the Polk Sheriff’s Office will act on my request. Because there’s no vague “mental illness” at work here — just hatred of American self-government, violent lynch-mobbing, and the likelihood of heavy weaponry.

Most likely, the federal felony civil disorder charge Brian Boule faces will get bartered down to a misdemeanor. He seems to be connected to a larger case, focused on a specifically violent man connected to the Proud Boys assault on the Capitol. Maybe they want him as a cooperating witness. Who knows?

If he’s not convicted of a felony, I don’t think he has any restrictions on the guns he can own based on his actions at the Capitol.

I wrote a piece yesterday about Polk Sheriff Grady Judd’s opposition to so-called “open carry” of firearms. That article was incomplete because I had missed a statement Sheriff Judd made back on April 16 in an article by Gary White in the Lakeland Ledger. More on that in just a second.

But Gary’s article does a good job highlighting the squishiness of the malevolent gun marketing phrase “constitutional carry.” I have always heard the psychopaths who bleat on about “constitutional carry” use it as a synonym for “open carry.”

But it appears that “constitutional carry” means more different things to different people than I originally thought.

So let’s assume my neighbor, accused Capitol Lynch mobbist Brian Boule, gets back full use of whatever guns he owns. What do the various “carries” mean for him — and us, in the neighborhood?

1. Concealed carry permit: You have to get a permit to carry a concealed weapon in public. Here’s an overview of requirements/rules. I’d be rather shocked if Brian Boule doesn’t already have a concealed carry license. Indeed, it seems to me the concealed carry system could easily be applied to gun ownership in general. But a licensing system inherently creates a registry of gun owners, which has always been a gun zealot bugaboo. And I suspect that’s why gun zealots want …

2. Permitless concealed carry: This would allow future Brian Boules to carry concealed guns with no rules or licensing at all, as I understand it.

3. Open carry: Because it’s hard to conceal an AR-15, gun psychopaths don’t get the full feeling of their gunsick public power without “open carry.” With “open carry,” accused Capitol Lynch Mobbist Brian Boule could walk unmolested around our neighborhood — which is full of young children — with AR-15s and ammunition hanging off his body. No one could legally do anything about it until he shot us. That is why I use the term “mass shooter” carry to describe “open carry.”

Again, my understanding has always been that the squish term “constitutional carry” means both #2 and #3. But there are other folks who seems to use it only for #2, permitless concealed carry.

Sheriff Judd’s quiet, nuanced take on the various “carries”

Although Sheriff Judd doesn’t seem to use the term “constitutional carry,” here he is, in Gary White’s story, drawing some interesting and useful distinctions about the various carries.

Judd, a nationally known figure who has encouraged Polk County residents to arm themselves, said he doesn’t think a state permit should be required to carry a weapon — but he also emphasized that possessing a gun brings potential dangers.

“My position’s not changed any,” Judd said. “First and foremost, possessing and carrying a firearm is not something to take lightly. If you don't care enough to learn how to safely handle a firearm and use a firearm, clean a firearm, if you're not comfortable with that or you don't take the time to learn how to do that, then carrying that firearm can be exceptionally hazardous to your health.”

Judd said he would welcome a state in which trained and responsible citizens carry concealed weapons without licenses. He said someone openly displaying a gun would be at a disadvantage against a “bad actor.”

“That's why I believe in carrying a concealed firearm, so that if the unfortunate event ever arises where you need that firearm to protect the life of yourself or someone else, then you have the element of surprise on your side,” Judd said. “On the other hand, I do not support open carry, where you strap a six-shooter on your waist like you're in the Old West.”

Judd mentioned the potential effect that an open-carry law would have on tourism in Florida.

“This is the vacation state,” he said. “So, no one's going to feel comfortable having their children out at the beach if the 75-year-old man in a Speedo has a six-shooter strapped on him, laying on the beach beside them. That's just not positive optics for the state of Florida. And it's not safe.”

Will the sheriff debate DeSantis publicly — like I did the sheriff in 2018?

This explanation, which I had missed, is, in fact, almost exactly what I challenged Sheriff Judd to do in my article yesterday — with one big exception.

It’s buried at the bottom of an easy-to-miss newspaper article. Gary White had to go find Sheriff Judd for comment. The comment was useful and interesting; but it’s not an issue the sheriff wants to push himself, as he did the idea of arming teachers in 2018. He confronted the public and elected school boards in Polk County and elsewhere with intense public pressure to arm teachers. He and I very publicly, very usefully debated the merits of arming teachers — both in person and in writing.

The public was very well served by this intense, but serious and civic debate. Ultimately, we settled on a compromise that did not arm teachers and educational staff here in Polk County.

I would challenge Sheriff Judd to engage a similar debate process with Gov. DeSantis.

As near as I can tell, DeSantis supports no rules or restrictions whatsoever on gun ownership and terms of carry. I have never heard him oppose “open carry”; and he is on record saying “constitutional carry” is going to happen. Florida Republicans have made him dictator; so I suspect he’s right.

But that puts him very much at odds with Grady Judd on “open carry” and “risk protection orders” which DeSantis has said he opposes and would have vetoed. Grady Judd is very much to Ron DeSantis’s “left” on gun — in the stupid, meaningless, tribal way people think about “left, right, and center.”

Will the sheriff debate DeSantis publicly and loudly on open carry and risk protection orders the way I debated sheriff publicly on arming teachers. I was successful in my debate with the sheriff, who was and is more powerful than me; and the sheriff can be successful in his debate with DeSantis, if he chooses to truly engage.

The answers to those questions could very well determine if an accused Capitol Lynch Mobbist gets to walk up around Lake Morton and Florida Southern College legally sporting an AR-15 publicly.

Thus, my family and my neighbors embody the risk in the “risk protection orders” DeSantis wishes did not exist. This is not some abstract discussion. And frankly, if anything awful ever happens, I want there to be this public record for people to see. I’m not interested in quietly surrendering more public space to people who don’t think I have a right to self-govern through voting and will act violently to prevent it from happening. Quietly surrendering public space makes us no safer.

Of dog crap and citizenship

There’s a fascinating little sign in the grassy area alongside Boule’s house. See below. I assume Boule or his family put it out there.

And yes, sometimes folks let their dogs do their business there without showing the basic courtesy and neighborly respect to clean it up. It’s a small, but real violation of shared civic space and life. I understand the instinct to object to it with a polite sign.

But I wonder if whoever put this out ever equated the violation of neighborhood norms they were complaining about with the violation of shared American life Brian Boule got arrested for.

For the record, my dogs have crapped on that strip many times over the years — long before Brian Boule bought the house — during walks along that road. My wife and I always clean it up. Always. We don’t need a sign to ask us.

That’s the type of citizenship we try to practice.

So perhaps Brian Boule and local law enforcement can take this article as a citizenship sign of its own: if you’re going to crap on my country, on shared society, on my right to self govern and have my vote count, someone needs to clean up after you.