Illegal in Florida
The united states of total paranoia
I know Britain is full of incompetent water board officials and stabbed Glaswegians but even so I fell on my knees this morning and kissed the ground, because I’ve just spent three weeks trying to work in America.
It’s known as the land of the free and I’m sure it is if you get up in the morning, go to work in a petrol station, eat nothing but double-egg burgers — with cheese — and take your children to little league. But if you step outside the loop, if you try to do something a bit zany, you will find that you’re in a police state.
You need a permit to do everything in America. You even need a passport to buy a drink. But interestingly you don’t need one if you wish to rent some guns and some bullets. I needed a 50 cal (very big) machinegun. “No problem,” said the man at the shop. “But could you just sign this assuring us that the movie you’re making is not anti-Bush or anti-war.”
Also, you do not need a permit if you want — as I did — to transport a dead cow on the roof of your car through the Florida panhandle. That’s because this is banned by a state law.
Think about that. Someone has gone to all the bother and expense of drawing up a law that means that at some point lots of people were moving dead cows about on their cars. It must have been popular. Fashionable even.
We’ve allowed the Republicans, Democrats and lawyers suck the life out of this once great country. Happy 4th of July!
That’s not the America I live in.
#1…so the America YOU live in you don’t need a permit for just about anything and everything? In your America they don’t spy on their citizens?
Where is this America you live in, I want to go there and leave this one.
That’s why I live in NYC. It may be crazy here too, but it’s at least smart crazy.
(And you can get decent food around the clock!)
No one took freedoms away, we let it slip. Americans now just seems to want to be protected and coddled, and many are far too trusting of authority. As far as permits it’s a CYA mentality due to law suits.
This guy is full of bull. Where the heck is he getting a .50 cal without even an ID? No place legal. And if he got it illegally, then that defeats his argument.
#5- anything is possible. Just cause you cant or haven’t seen it doesnt mean it can’t happen.
#4- i agree
#2- you need a permit to say that 😛
#1- is the room padded where you live?
I love Jeremy Clarkson, but that rant is asinine. England is the land of the over powered bureaucrat, they have more cameras aimed at their own citizens then darn near anywhere in the world and it takes balls for an Englishman to complain about the food anywhere else in the world. Sounds like a bad case of don’t they know who I am, I am famous, the rules are for others to me.
#4. Right on. We only have ourselves to blame. We get what we deserve.
Fear is the new black.
They’re not taking any freedoms away. They’re not taking away any of our rights, nor re-writing the Constitution. They’re just blatantly ignoring our rights, ignoring our freedoms and ignoring the Constitution.
They’re not taking away anything, they’re just ignoring it all and doing what they want anyway.
Isn’t that the same thing?
Justice delayed (or ignored) is justice denied.
It’s not just America Jeremy Clarkson has a problem with, he did a tour around Europe where he pointed out all the stuff he did and didn’t like
#5 – I’d assume he knows what he’s talking about. He did a documentary about guns – right through from the past, present and their future
#5: It’s at a gun store here in Las Vegas. You can shoot most any gun they have, including machine guns, in their indoor range. It’s really big with tourists, especially the Japanese.
http://www.thegunstorelasvegas.com/rental.htm
&: I think that’s his whole point, that as a British citizen used to incompetent bureaucrats and surveillance around the clock, he finds America to completely quasi-fascist and over-controlled. And yet you can find a 50 cal, as long as you promise not to slander their right-wing sensibilities by making a film or video that makes fun of them or the Pope, Bush.
That’s a warning from a friend. We’ve gone insane.
Catbeller –
Where do you get this “we” $–t?
Anyway, what freedoms have been taken away from Michael Moore, Sean Penn, or the Dixie Chicks?
While it’s true that America suffers under the tort industry, “consumer protection” laws and Victorian alcohol laws, somehow Mr. Clarkson doesn’t seem to be bothered by those BBC vans with multiple antennae that come snooping for illegal TV use.
I needed a 50 cal (very big) machinegun.
No such thing, and certainly not available in stores. What a load of BS.
Sorry if I’m monopolizing the comments, but there are currently only two true “machine guns” in use in the United States, and they are in use only in use by the military, and they are absolutely illegal for civilian use – the 7.62 mm (.30 caliber) M60, and the (.50 cal) M2.
It appears that Mr. Clarkson is yet another idiot who doesn’t know the difference between “semi-automatic”, “assault rifle”, “automatic”, and “machine gun”.
All automatics and machine guns are illegal in the USA, and have been since the 1930s.
And the military rifles, the M16 and the M4, while originally designed for continuous fire, are now limited to firing bursts of three shots per trigger pull.
Here’s the list the store had:
Colt M16 Carbine .223
M249 Minimi .223
AK47 Assault Rifle .223
H&K MP5 SMG 9mm
Colt M16 SMG 9mm
UZI SMG 9mm
Thompson M1A1 SMG .45
STEN MKII SMG 9mm
Madsen M50 SMG 9mm
MP40 “Schmeisser” SMG 9mm
Stemple “K” SMG 9mm
M3A1 “Grease Gun” SMG .45
Note that these are for rent to shoot in their indoor range.
Don’t know why, but I found this quote from him amusing
“…but all you ever find on a menu is cheese, cheese, cheese, or cheese with cheese”
Uncle Dave –
Oh, OK, I missed the “rent” part. The M16, full-auto Uzi and the Tommy gun would most definitely be illegal for sale.
Where did you get that list from? I couldn’t find it in the article.
You can buy an automatic weapon with a BATF Cat III license.
You have to show a license or other ID to rent a gun in every state that I know of. I seriously doubt the veracity of this story.
“You can buy an automatic weapon with a BATF Cat III license.”
Good luck getting one.
Also, his statement that “you need a passport” to drink is misleading, since it applies only to tourists who do not have American drivers’ licences or similar forms of identification, and also since he neglects to mention that it is strictly for age verification.
Also, why on earth did he want to transport a dead cow on the roof of a vehicle? Did he look up all the laws of the state of Florida, and deliberately kill a poor cow just so that he would have a pretext for carrying it on his car roof?
Except, of course, I wasn’t. Technically you need a permit to film on every street in pretty well every corner of the world. But the only countries where this rule is enforced are Vietnam, Cuba, North Korea and the United States of America.
So, seconds after breaking out the tripod, a policeman pulled up and demanded that we show him our permit. We had one that covered the city of Los Angeles . . . except the bit where we were. So we were moved on.
The next day I was moved on in Las Vegas too because the permit I had didn’t cover the part of the pavement I was standing on. Eight inches away was fine.
I call BS on this part too.
I would expect this kind of malarkey from The Independent, but it’s a huge disappointment to see it in The Times.
But would you admit there is a disturbing amount of f*cked-uppitry in America today?
Some quotes from his article:
“…out of the main population centres, the potato people are getting fatter and dimmer by the minute”
“…because people in the sticks have stopped marrying their cousins and are now mating with vegetables”
Mouth breathers. He forgot to add we’re a bunch of mouth breathers.
You can find in Rural America some of the most generous, helpful and polite people in the world IF you are generous, polite and helpful.
His works provide a clue to his personality. It’s obvious he fosters the worst in many people he encounters. Thankfully it is illegal in this “police state” to provide him with what rural people call an “attitude adjustment”.
Then again, what fun would it be to read about nice people? He is a skilled writer, even if he is a jerk. We reward his behavior by reading his articles. I’ll give his next article the “proper review” on my way to the “out-house”.
is it illegal to transport other animals on the roof of your car?
Say a deer, or a sheep, or a pig?
Frank, you really need to come to Vegas sometime. There are things here like nowhere else.
There are laws here regarding activity on the streets on the Strip. They are to regulate the crowds of people you have to wade through who are handing out porn business cards (ads for outcall hookers — oops, sorry. Escorts), pimps soliciting business and so on, and are based on what is city property and what is casino property. You simply cannot imagine how much clout the casinos have. If you are on their property and want you arrested, you are. Figure out the charges later.
Double-egg burger
He can’t even get his countries straight. He’s confusing America with Australia.