CEO of ThinkPenguin, Inc arrested for filming police

Corespondent safety is up to the corespondent, not the police. The police only have a reasonable expectation of safety up to a point. A person filming from across the street and/or well within view of a police officer is in no way endangering an officers safety. Chris intentionally stayed on the sidewalk between the east and west bound lanes of traffic to avoid police interactions and still be able to get video of the checkpoint from a safe distance. The officers had already identified the people recording from across the street as they had sent an officer over conspicuously to get an identification. When Chris started crossing the street the officers immediately recognized the street crossing and preceded to cross themselves from the other direction confronting the video recording. There was no significant amount of traffic on this road due to the time and activists alerting motor vehicles of the checkpoint far ahead. 90% of the traffic was successfully re-routed. There were no arrests for DUI that night and the only reason these checkpoints continue to be operated is for federal funding purposes. If there is no DUI arrests the validity of the authorization of the checkpoint becomes invalid. Theoretically the case should be thrown out if the right motions are made at the right time.

Now it is possible you can get into unsafe positions, but in almost all incidents it is completely safe to get VERY close. That said Chris, JP, and others were prevented from getting close enough to properly document the improperly conducted sobriety checkpoint. Chris tends to stay at a good distance or at least a safe visible distance if he gets closer.

The police did not follow the plan laid out under the superior court for which authorized the checkpoint. The police were in contempt of the order for going outside the checkpoint, putting up closed sidewalk signs, which also hindered the reporting by press of both the arrest and the checkpoint. There were also probably other crimes committed by the police. Notices to quit will be forthcoming and numerous complaints have already been filed against the Manchester police department prior to this interaction.

It's likely a properly brought lawsuit will result in $50,000 damages settlement for Chris and/or New England Cop Chasers as has happened in similar cases of the past. Look up the arrest of Carla Gericke for similar charges (disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, which was really just for filming police):

http://freekeene.com/2014/05/23/fsp-president-wins-federal-c...

The usual definition is quite distinct from the usual definition of machine gun.

> Both require the weapon to be "select fire" which means it can be set to fire more than one round per trigger pull.

Actually, no; the term is "selective fire", and while that's part of the usual definition of an assault rifle (which typically have semiautomatic, burst, and sometimes full-auto modes), it's not for machine gun, and machine guns are quite often full-auto only. An assault rifle also is a weapons that is deisgned to be fired unsupported (though it may also integrate a bipod) and which has a fixed, folding, or telescoping butt stock. While a machine gun may have none of those things, and may be designed to be fired only mounted.

> In actuality, an AR-15 is the same as any other semi-automatic rifle in function.

AR-15 is problematic to categorize, since the original Armalite AR-15 is a selective-fire traditional assault rifle, and other rifles to which that moniker is applied (which is sometimes used as a catch-all for the whole family of variants of that original design, which the US military adopted as the M16 series, and the M4 series) may either also be selective-fire assault rifles or civilian variants of the same design with variations in a few key components that render them semi-auto only.

At the same time, Colt currently markets a subset of it's line of civilian semi-automatic variations of that design as the AR-15 line (which was done after the Federal Assault Weapons ban specifically to take advantage of the AR-15 moniker's association with assault weapons.)

> For example, many states list the AR-15 as an "assault weapon" (made up term with no concrete definition)

Every state that has an "assault weapons" law also gives it concrete definitions. Typically, that's done by identifying both feature sets and a set of named existing weapons which are included (along with any copies or duplicates) regardless of whether they meet the feature sets.

There are a couple of issues with the idea of, say, aiming at the leg.

* A leg wound may not stop the person.

* A leg wound can be lethal: you can bleed out very quickly if the femoral artery is hit.

* The trajectory of a bullet (and its fragments) once it impacts the body can be very unpredictable: a bullet entering the leg may strike bone and enter the chest cavity.

And all of these assume precise aim under stress. You mention aiming for the heart: police won't generally be aiming for something as small as the heart. Police (and all people using firearms) should receive the best training they can (and likely more and better firearms training than is often available today), but precise aim under stress is no easy task. They may be aiming for the torso (which of course includes the heart), because shots to the torso are generally more effective at stopping a person and it's a relatively large target: shots are more likely to hit and therefore less likely to miss (and hit something else: all bullets land somewhere).

Firearms are deadly force. Police have less-lethal alternatives available as well, and should be trained to use them effectively when it's appropriate to do so. If a police officer resorts to deadly force, the goal should be to stop the person as effectively and quickly as possible.

And for the last point I know states have defined the term individually. However the ATF has never issued a letter defining "assault weapon" like they have for other grey area weapon classifications. So it's just a hodgepodge of messy rules random states have (mostly based on cosmetic features).