 And tonight we are very, very honored to have one of our Missouri representatives, Paul Kirkland, speak to us. Paul has spoke to Oathkeepers before, and I think most of you in here actually were not a part of Oathkeepers when he spoke. So it's about time for him to come back tonight, and he's going to speak tonight on Amendment 9. So I'll present to you Representative Paul Kirkland. I've got my phone set up here, and I'll bring this down a little bit. We're going to have five issues on our ballot in August. Like I said, my name is Paul Kirkman, and I'm a representative from Franklin County, District 109, part of Washington, and Union, St. Albans, Lavity, Gray Summit, Villa Ridge, those areas. And this year, I was fortunate enough to be part of a ballot issue that we were able to get out of the Senate, to the House. I handled it on the House side, and what the issue does is it would put on the ballot on August 5th a constitutional amendment proposal for the consideration of the people. For the first state in the nation to have this particular proposal, and we're hoping that what it is is it not only will protect Missouri citizens from an intrusive government, but it will also do more to kind of be a bellwether issue for the nation, and hopefully the federal government and bureaucrats and elected officials at the federal level will begin to take notice of what the people of Missouri are saying. And what the amendment does is it adds to the Missouri Bill of Rights in Article 1, Section 15. In addition to items that are supposed to be protected from unreasonable search and seizure, such as our homes, papers and effects, it adds electronic communications and data also. This is important for Missouri because I think if anybody who's been paying attention, and Missouri politics or governance over the last couple of years probably knows, especially if you're a gun owner, that we have a government in Missouri at the executive level who's not very mindful of our personal information, not very protective of data that identifies people and might be able to be used to compartmentalize them. Pointing to here is Governor Nixon, when the Nixon administration decided to send information to the federal government about all the people who had CCW permits. And then they lost it. They sent it on a CD. One of them got lost and the other had to send it twice. So I don't believe that a government in Missouri is very mindful of the personal security of the data or the personal information of the citizens of Missouri. Not only that, but there's really two schools of thought on this. As far as it goes with emails and what's in your cell phone, recently in was it Riley versus Illinois or California. I'm trying to remember the Supreme Court case just earlier this summer, the Supreme Court ruled that law enforcement has to have a warrant in most cases whenever they stop you and they want to go through your cell phone. They just can't go rifle through your cell phone because the information contained on a smartphone like your iPhone, the owner of that smartphone has a reasonable expectation of privacy and that reasonable expectation of privacy needs to be protected from government intrusiveness. So they ruled that as far as cell phones are concerned, the government has to have a warrant. That electronic data that's on your phone has to be protected from unreasonable search and seizure. But that Supreme Court case was only confined to smartphones. Now anybody here who has a cell phone that you send text messages on or you send emails on, you know that when you send an email or a text message, that message is not contained just within your cell phone anymore. That's actually data that's out there in a much larger electronic or digital cloud and I would say that it doesn't matter whether or not that message stays on your cell phone or if it's part of an electronic or digital cloud. If there's a reasonable expectation of privacy that that message is going to stay private between person A, the one that sent it and person B, the recipient of it, then government needs to respect our privacy and make sure that they're applying checks and balances to prove to us that the government is doing everything in its power to protect our unalienable rights. There's a huge misconception about what the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution actually means. In light of the Snowden revelations, you know where we find out that the NSA has really been collecting a lot of made data from our cell phones and other communications. The government immediately said, well, no, no, no, we had warrants. They were secret warrants. They're from secret courts, right? The FISA court. But that's not how the Fourth Amendment is supposed to work. The Fourth Amendment wasn't written so that way whenever it became convenient for the government to have a warrant, they could say, oh, no, it was okay because we had a warrant. The warrants were written so that way they could show us up front that, hey, our government has been at work applying all the checks and balances that have been necessary to prove to you, the citizen, the people that are the creators of our government, that our government is actually working concertedly to make sure that we are protecting your privacy. The warrant is to be provided to us before anything is done. Any government who operates under the premise of having a secret warrant kind of undermines the whole point of having a warrant in the first place. So I would say that Amendment 9, if you're interested in protecting your personal electronic communications and data, then a yes vote is what you'd want to put on Amendment 9 on August 5th on our primary ballots. Immediately, some people might say, well, wait a minute, this is going to hurt law enforcement's ability to do their job. What if there's a kid who is lost and have a cell phone and we know that, you know, there's GPS in here, we can find them? Look, all the Fourth Amendment issues that really probably need to be tried at this point, at this point, probably most of them, if not many of them, have been tried. Whenever there's probable cause, whenever there's something that's in plain view, whenever, I don't want to say probable cause, this has already been decided in several court cases. I don't think anybody would argue that if the government seriously believes that a child's in trouble, because the purpose of government, right, according to the Declaration of Independence is to protect our liberty. Governments are instituted to secure these rights. That's what the Declaration of Independence says. That includes our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. So I would say that the government has jurisdiction under circumstances of probable cause. In other words, a child's lost? Yes. If they're lost, say, within 50 meters of Niagara Falls or someplace where there's imminent risk of loss of life or serious bodily harm, sure, they're going to immediately try to locate that kid with the cell phone that he's got. Of course, they're also going to have to back it up in court later on to say, hey, we have to prove our probable cause now. So this is not going to hurt law enforcement's ability to do their job, but what it is going to do is it's going to provide another legal barrier whenever they try to push that envelope just a little bit further and pick up more data and more information on us because it suits their ends or their agenda or their means. Did you know that in Missouri, if you call, I think it's the Department of Revenue, you can actually pay, I think it costs about $2,000, but you can get a list of everybody in the state of Missouri who has a driver's license, including certain pertinent information that can be found on that driver's license. We had a representative in Missouri. He said he did. I'm going to take him in his word. Representative Chris Kelly from Boone County is a Democrat, but he actually introduced the bill that I brought through my committee, Downsides and State Government, to try to clamp down on that. I don't think it's a good idea to be putting all of our private information out to the market. It's not what the government's supposed to be doing, right? So I would say that our government is really not all that mindful of our privacy. And this is an issue for everybody whether or not they're a conservative, a libertarian, an independent, constitution party, liberal, Democrat, everybody understands whether it's a social issue or some other civil issue that privacy is something that needs to be highly guarded because a government that's intrusive will be intrusive on Democrats it will be intrusive on Republicans, it will be intrusive on everybody. Intrusive government knows no party lines. And people got upset with President Bush for one thing. Now they turn around and they get, you know, now we're trying to, some people on the Republican side get upset with President Obama for the exact same thing, right? Everybody knows that privacy is an important thing that we need to guard against an ever-growing expanding government. So that is Amendment 9. That's the purpose of Amendment 9. And I believe Amendment 9 is going to win. What I want it to do is I want it to win big because we're getting ready to start going into another presidential election cycle and I would love for whoever it is that's campaigning to be the chief executive of the nation to be bringing this issue up during the presidential debates about what the proper role of government is. I would like for them to be bringing up, you know, well, the state of Missouri passed by 85, 90 percent, the people there are saying they want to be protected from an intrusive government that's collecting data. So that is Amendment 9. There's going to be five issues. Stale tax issues for transportation funding. The Right to Farm Amendment, which is Amendment 1. Second Amendment-like constitutional proposal relating to Second Amendment issues. And there's another one that just slips in my mind right now, but I could probably pull it up on my phone in just a second. And I'll take any questions from anybody, Tim. On Amendment 9, Paul and Jim were both sitting there. That's the first we had heard of it was tonight. And personally, I haven't seen any signs to support that. Do you have any information on where we could get that? Senator Rob Schoff, I'm kind of co-chairing this committee with him. He's really the one in charge of this committee. He's got a committee that he started. I'm trying to remember the exact official name of the committee, but it's the Electronic Privacy Amendment Committee. And he is able to collect money. And I know that he is, I haven't talked to him in probably about two weeks related to this, but I know that he is in the process of trying to gather some money to raise some signs or at least put information out on the air. I have myself probably spent about 12 hours on the radio all over Central, everywhere from Springfield, East and South. And North, as far as North is handable. Trying to get the word out about it. Yes, sir. On the amendment, as I was mentioning earlier, Terrace Corporation is selling police departments a product that allows them to intrude on your cell phone and other things without your knowledge. And they're kind of sworn to secrecy. Does Amendment 9 cover that? And does Amendment 9 cover when the city collects your information and the violation of federal privacy acts and other things, they dispense that information and fail to protect it? Does it cover those, or is it just? I think it will, to certain degrees, kind of depending on the scope to which government is disclosing information. And I mean, is there a penalty against them, or does it just say you can't do that? Well, it's a constitutional, it's much like the first amendment. What this is is a constitutional legal barrier. So the constitution itself does not prescribe penalties. The penalties usually come through statutes after something's already been enshrined in the constitution. So there's going to be room for that, but the first step really is to make sure that we outline the legal parameters for the courts to be able to make decisions off of and for the state legislature to also begin to make decisions off of as well. But having this set down the parameters, here's what our law enforcement, here's what our state executive branch can and can't do, here's what the government in general just can and can't do. So basically, amendment nine might make that product illegal, but it allows local police to mute by your cell phones. Well, it wouldn't make a product illegal. But what it would do is it would make a legal practice of anybody in government driving down the street with some type of electronic magnet that immediately begins to gather random information. They would not be able to do that unless, of course, they had a warrant or some otherwise checks and balances were applied that allowed them to do that for the purpose of conducting whatever investigation they had. But this amendment says that this amendment creates a process by which they have to... Well, the processes are already there. This amendment actually requires that they use it in order to apply checks and balances. Yes, sir. Is this binding? I mean, is this... If it passes, it's in the constitution then? Yes. As opposed to a referendum. Right. If it passes on August 5th, it is in the constitution. Any other question? On amendment nine, or anything else related to the process? Did you say it's the communication devices or the signals emanations from? I'm sorry? Is it the signals emanating from or is it the communication device itself? Both. They cannot... The actual word says... Let me see if I can pull it up right here. This should maybe take just one second. But we're adding to be secure in our home's papers and effects. It's going to say home's papers, effects, and electronic communications and data. So it doesn't... It's regardless of whether or not they get it through your phone or whether or not they hack into your computer. Both of that's covered. The constitution will be adjusted to say that they can't do that without a warrant. Does this answer your question? Yes. You said communications, which would be the data signals themselves. Right. Yeah. Any electronic communications or data. It's just data. For example, if they're trying to follow certain patterns that you have online, if they're collecting data, that's your personal information, then they can't... The amendment said that they can't do that unless they had a warrant for their investigation. Judy? You mentioned home. Does that stop the enforcement of the Patriot Act from the Homeland Security, from the feds coming into the state? Good question. What this does, since this is the Missouri Constitution, what we know for sure is that this is going to bind the government of Missouri. The federal government is still going to continue to, I would say, breach our trust as far as the Fourth Amendment's concerned. So there's... The state of Missouri is not going to have the jurisdiction over the federal officers that I wish that we did. Okay, so they don't really have... They don't come in and have local... We always talk about the local sheriffs standing between us and the feds. Can the feds empower the local people, if they're not elected sheriffs, to act on their behalf? That would stop those people, right? If they were Missouri agents? I'm a little lost in your question. Okay, so the feds can empower the Missouri officials to carry out the Patriot Act in the state? No. No, no, they... Yeah, this... Right now, and that's... Currently, that's what's being done. When the Real ID Act was... They tried to pass that through law before. And whether it's the Real ID Act or you look at the notification issues, such as when they've legalized marijuana out west, those are federal issues. Those are federal bans or prohibitions. But the reason that they're able to legalize it is because the federal government doesn't have the resources to come in. The federal government does not have the manpower to come in and enforce marijuana prohibition. So the federal government has decided that they're just... They've really just decided that they're just going to let this go in like Colorado or Oregon or Washington, whatever, just do whatever it is that they want to do. In Missouri, when it comes to our law enforcement, law enforcement in Missouri still doesn't have the same resources that they need to enforce all federal laws. So they rely on our local law enforcement to do things. If the federal government... I'm not being a lawyer, but just putting two and two together here, if the federal government stepped in and said, hey, we want a local law enforcement officer, here's the device, drive down the street, and start peeing all these cell phones. There might be a court case to decide whether or not that would be lawful or not under the jurisdiction of the federal government. Personally, I would argue that it's probably not lawful because of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. I would still say prohibits that, but they do it anyway. And a lot of times, we're still going to get people that say it's the federal government. We have to do whatever the federal government says. So in those particular cases, I'm telling you, most likely it's probably still going to happen. But what we do know is that in Missouri, the question is going to say that our government cannot do this within the confines of the operations of our state government. And what we're hoping that it will do is that it will send a message also to the other states and say, we did it, you can do it too. And going into an election year, where the White House literally is an open seat, we're hoping that this becomes part of the main discussion in America, considering everything that we've learned from Edward Snowden and everything else. And now that the state of Missouri measures just to stop this type of government intrusion, we're hoping this becomes part of a much broader discussion. And I think it will. I'll take this gentleman in the back, and I'll come back to you. Yes, I just want to address that. There was a Supreme Court ruling of Mac versus the United States June of 1997, in which the sheriffs were given to confirm by the Supreme Court that the federal government cannot force their regulations on local law enforcement officers. Now, there's still a lot of sheriffs and law enforcement people that just go along with that edict from the federal government. But the county sheriff has the constitutional authority to tell these federal agents that they cannot even come into his county and try to impose any of these illegal, unconstitutional regulations. Right, yeah. And I'm glad you brought that up. I'm aware of that Supreme Court case, like I was saying, it's still going to, like you said, it's still going to happen because there's just not a lot of people, not enough people, that understand the separation of powers there. And they're not jealous guards of the powers like Jefferson, our buying fathers wrote about. And then you had something else. Well, I was actually very parallel to his question was is can the follow-up legislation direct the sheriffs that they cannot allow federal agents to enforce, do any law enforcement which involves electronic surveillance without a state warrant? Yeah, I think so. I think once we get this into the Constitution and we have a springboard to begin to or an anchor for this type of statutes or legislation, we can do that. And we've done similar things. We've tried to at least with other Second Amendment bills that have been introduced. But it's a struggle because there's not, there's just a huge prevailing thought that the federal government supersedes state government no matter what. And so the real fight is really making sure that we get people in that understand the whole concept of federalism and state sovereignty as it relates to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in the 10th Amendment. Also the other one that you forgot was the Second Amendment definition in the state constitution was the other thing on the ballot that we were trying to figure out. Oh. I can talk about that in a minute if you want, but I'll just take a couple other questions. I know I thought I saw another hand. Yeah. No, if I'm correct here, what you're basically getting at is state sovereignty or state's rights, right? So my question regarding that is is that do you foresee either this election or next election the state of Missouri being capable of saying, hey, if something doesn't cross state lines the Commerce Clause doesn't affect it? When is that going to happen because we need to know by all this admiralty law that they are passing all the stuff 99% of some admiralty law which is only the Commerce Clause unless it crosses Illinois or any other state that borders us they have nothing to do with it. We had a bill for the last two years that's been introduced by Gene Riddle that was introduced by Chris and Summer and I think we passed it out of the House. The firearms freedom act I'm trying to remember exactly what the title was but it said for anything that was any firearms that were manufactured in our state and sold within our state do not fall under any federal regulations and that's I kind of think that the final file has probably already had that in mind but of course I believe the Commerce Clause has extremely been used broadly and elastically they have literally used the Commerce Clause and wrapped it around school districts and have used the Commerce Clause to regulate people's ability to carry firearms even if they're just driving through a school district so the Commerce Clause has definitely been abused, no doubt about that but I totally agree with you state's rights this issue in particular hinges on a civil liberty that I believe is unequal Regarding that the Missouri Beaulieu Assembly of the Criminal Protection Act one thing that I've actually looked into that very heavily one thing about that is that in it, if I'm not correctly wrong here but it does not basically it nullifies that but it says all law doesn't apply to machine guns, suppressors or NFAI suppressors being the biggest ones that's the safety device and that's literally designs that you don't lose your hearing to so that's one thing and then the other thing too that I've noticed about that is that it doesn't have any T that doesn't say if they try to come here and enforce it we arrest those agents what could be done about that? That was actually part of one of the bills two years ago and that was the reason one of the reasons why Governor Nixon vetoed it and it's one of the reasons why we had some otherwise usually pretty sound Second Amendment advocates in the Senate vote no on the veto over right so we went back and we did it again this year and that part was left off to a certain degree well to a certain degree we didn't lose a lot of our Second Amendment rights in one legislative session we're not going to get them all back in one legislative session so from time to time whenever we can get something in and it continues to build our case I'll take it if we can get it as long as there's not some other hidden cost to it that some people like to slip in so that happens quite a bit Thank you all very much for your time It's definitely been too long since you spoke to us Paul so we'd like to have you back you have an open invitation as Marine a nosekeeper and of course our Missouri representative to address