I have to say that among the things I worry about, people toting guns while in possession of psychedelic mushrooms just isn’t one of them. Don’t get me wrong, shrooms can mess up your mind and cause you to see imaginary enemies. Given a particularly bad trip, you might think that the Kenyan Usurper is sitting right there on your couch and fill the cushions with bullet holes. But the idea that someone might face 12 years in prison for mere possession of mushrooms and a firearm? That’s more than a little extreme.
If they want to charge him with something else, perhaps that would be more appropriate.
A psilocybin ‘shroom made me think Elvis Costello’s “The Long Honeymoon” was the best song ever when I ate one during his Forest Hills show in the summer of, I think, 1983. Didn’t make me want to harm anyone. But maybe that’s just me.
Well, maybe you just aren’t paranoid enough. If you were watching the detectives dragging the lake…
Having ingested a variety of illegal substances many years ago, I am not sanguine at the notion of a person holding a high-powered weapon during an acid or mushroom experience. Not a good idea.
However, this is prior restraint, which has never been a part of our system. You need to actually do a bad deed to get a bad punishment.
I do make a specific exemption to my comment. If you have the guns and drugs on the premises, I am not hugely concerned. If you have the drugs in your system and the gun on your person, I am less sanguine, and may well be willing to do a little prior restraint. Mushrooms/LSD lower the inhibitions way low.
You’ve fallen for the drug warrior propaganda.
There are a lot of drugs where people are generally harmless, often more so than sober, far more so than drunk. Mushrooms, LSD, pot, MDMA, ketamine, N20, DMT. There’s a long list of this stuff that either incapacitates you or turns you into a harmless goofball.
A lot of drug freaks are rare freak accidents, or were often triggered by the cops ramboing into someones apartment. But then again people freak out stone cold sober when the cops rambo through their front door.
Yeah, what a pile of shit. I have taken LSD, have you? It radically distorts your perspectives and judgement. With a gun, you are much more likely to do something stupid and deadly.
From your answer, you seem perfectly comfortable with someone driving while drunk. After all, until they kill someone, they haven’t killed anyone.
I’ve done a lot of LSD, mescaline, mushrooms, I love tripping. I’ve never once done anything stupid on it. It’s not like being drunk at all.
Go back to DARE Nancy Reagan
Just wait my friend. You will pay the price. Lets just say I had a friend. LSD just plain sucks. I don’t care if you laugh and laugh and feel great. Just keep tripping SiDC you will find the extreme downside to that drug. Paranoia will destroy ya.
So, your reasoning appears to be “I can drive while drunk. I can handle it. It’s the other people who have problems.”
The whole point of making it illegal to operate motor vehicles while intoxicated is that the probability of a bad outcome goes way up. Would you drive a car while on LSD? Geezus, I sure would not. Even walking around and talking to people was hazardous, because I was pretty incoherent.
Doing anything with a vehicle, weapon, or dangerous situation while impaired in any way is not acceptable. If you drive or carry weapons while you are intoxicated on either alcohol or psychedelics, I strongly urge you to rethink.
Having a gun, having a gun on you, and operating a gun while high are not the same thing. Nor is having a car, sitting in a car, getting a ride in a car, and trying to drive a car.
Try again Nancy, and give your love to Ronnie.
Sure. But he wasn’t high and he wasn’t holding a gun. He merely possessed them in his home.
Yeah I’ve got a buddy who’s ex-Army, and now in GFX design. Fuckers constantly high, goes with the job. He also still has a gun. He’s not a danger to anything high, well other than ice cream and mountain dew, and that’s even while tripping.
And as I noted, I have no problem with that situation.
Yeah, but.
If this same guy had a shotgun and bottle of Jack Daniels, I’d be more afraid, much more.
And I guess that would be OK.
So is the point that psychedlics are more dangerous than guns?
What decade did I just wake up in?
Have you ever taken LSD? I have.
Me too. Several times. Also pretty much all the other major natural psychedelics. Wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Tried a little coke once, and a few prescription ups; they were way scarier. I lived where there was a base during the Vietnam war. Guys on R&R walked around fully weaponized and high on acid and/or gods know what, to say nothing of PTSD and barely contained rage. In the general population. Never saw or heard of a single gun incident. I’m certainly not recommending the combination to anyone, this being America and all, but to me the difference between somebody on shroom and an NRA member is that the former’s possible psycho paranoia lasts a day, while the latter’s is hard wired. Which do you think is more dangerous?
This is a ‘five blind men and an elephant’ argument. Back in the day when a dose of Owsley was 350 micrograms bad trips were not uncommon; some people are just not equipped for it and no two trips are ever the same. It was always a good idea to have an experienced ‘guide’ or access to one. Since the Eighties dealers learned that a 60-80 micrograms was enough for a ‘party’ dose with rarely messy or tragic consequences.
Just saying ‘have you ever done LSD’ doesn’t really tell the tale. I always maintained high dosages were like a razor blade, if handled carefully it was just the metaphysical tool for the job, otherwise unsafe.
Yes, you’re right about taking care with it. When psychedelics were still sorta new they were generally treated with respect, partly because most of those who used them knew about their potential bright and dark sides. Now they’re treated as just an alcohol alternative, near as I can tell. Still, if we’re going to be concerned, coke, meth, and prescription ups and downs are far more personally and socially dangerous.
I had a friend who was pretty experienced with the stuff who went on a trip one time and never made the return journey, so to speak. But that was a long, long time ago.
FWIW I believe the law is aimed at drug dealers who happen to like to shoot each other and bystanders.
Of all the things wrong with this story, the fact that a guy had a firearm in his home, and had shrooms in his home at the same time, is way, way down the list.
Much higher on the list: that authorities got a search warrant for what appears to have been a pure fishing expedition based on a provocative activist video the guy made last week. Based on that – but not on the basis of any more serious suspected crime than having a loaded gun in the District, a legal violation that’s probably more common in DC than jaywalking – a well known activist’s suburban Virginia home get stormed by a number of heavily armed SWAT team members. And – oh lucky day – they happen to find the shrooms, as well as a gun whose possession is in all probability totally legal in the free fire state of Virginia.
First let’s talk about a SWAT team storming a guy’s house in another state on the basis of a suspected minor, and very common, violation of the law – a response that appears to be directly related to the guy’s visibility as a local activist. Oh, and I also notice that he doesn’t appear to be white, not that that could possibly have anything to do with the wildly disproportionate response. And: he lives with several other people. Do we know the drugs were his? Or any of his housemates, or – not exactly unheard of in these kinds of cases – did they arrive with the cops?
The appropriateness of the law he’s being charged with seems to me to be a pretty minor piece of this story.
It’s hard to sympathize with a professional publicity hound like Koresh, but this is ridiculous. A gun charge would have been quite sufficient. Guess some of his crusades rubbed some police pomposity the wrong way.
The authorities response to a relentlessly self-promoting, grandstanding show-pony whose entire shtick is publicly railing against claims of unjust application of the law and intrusions of the state?
A Brazil-style armed invasion and prosecution for possession of a substance classified, questionably, as a ‘Schedule I narcotic’ and naturally occurring worldwide. Whose decision making capability seems impaired here?
“relentlessly self-promoting, grandstanding show-pony” would seem apt for both sides of this farce.