Is Your Illegal Gun Range Oppressed? 'Moorish American' Sovereign Citizens Can Help!

Or maybe not, since it's all an insane scam.

The Washington Post brings us this day (free gift linky) a completely whacko story about guns, an illegal gun range, conspiracy theories, and 'Moorish American" sovereign citizens in Maryland. Seems a local property owner, 64-year-old Byron Bell, wanted to have friends over to shoot guns on Sundays on his very rural property in Welcome, Maryland, which the Post describes as an "agglomeration of tumbledown farmhouses and newly built homes roped together by winding country roads" in southern Maryland.

The get-togethers on Bell's land started getting bigger, with firearms classes being organized by Mark “Choppa” Manley,

a social media influencer and former D.C. security guard who promoted the site as home to the “Choppa Community” — an incubator of firearms education and ownership for African Americans. [...]

Manley catered in particular to Black residents of the District and Prince George’s County who were seeking to arm themselves for protection amid spikes in violent crime. Visitors were not charged, although ammunition was sold, as well as classes for concealed-carry licenses. “It was like a family day,” Manley said.

At least it was like a family day for people who liked shooting more and more powerful guns and firing more and more rounds, not all of which stayed on Bell's property.

After neighbors complained — especially after more stray rounds started whizzing through the air of neighboring properties, worrying Bell's closest neighbor so much that the neighbor started grazing his cattle farther away — county law enforcement got involved. In September the site was declared an unlawful shooting range. Bell could have applied for a zoning exception, but it seems he never bothered. Manley complained he was being tyrannied, but confirmed to the local paper that the gun range would be shut down. The Post reports Manley decided it would be easier to find a new site in Virginia, so this is where he leaves the story.

Good thing, too, because suddenly there were all these weirdass, apparently unrelated claims to the property from the Moorish sovereign citizen dudes. Like all sovereign citizens, they believe some very weird shit about how federal and state laws don't apply to them, according to the "real" Constitution they made up in their heads, but they join it with some additional pseudo-Afrocentric bullshit alleging that in fact, what most people think is North America actually belongs to the nonexistent "Moroccan Empire." The Post explains, insofar as it makes anything like sense:

Around the same time, county officials came up against a new challenge. It was heralded by the filing of perplexing documents — adorned with symbols including the star and crescent and the pyramid-tip “Eye of Providence” that appears on the back of the dollar bill — asserting that the dispute over Bell’s land was subject to the terms of an 1836 treaty between the United States and Morocco. [...]

Moorish Americans, also known as Moorish sovereign citizens, believe themselves to be the inheritors of a fictitious empire that they say stretched from the present-day kingdom of Morocco to North America, with Mexico and Atlantis thrown in for good measure. They claim the same protections from U.S. legal proceedings that are granted to foreign citizens, while simultaneously asserting their rights to take over properties — often well-appointed homes   owned by other people — that they say are still part of the “Moroccan Empire.”

It is super convenient to have a fictional legal system that gives you an excuse to appropriate nice houses when their owners are away, especially if you have guns to back up your fictional legal system.

The leader of this particular group of Moops (as with most extremist groups, there are a number of factions all over the place) is a dude going by the name of Lamont Maurice El, who claims he's the “Morocco Consular Court at the Maryland state republic.” Again, the Post provides background:

The consul, whose real name is Lamont Maurice Butler, had some experience with Maryland’s judicial system. In 2013, he was convicted on multiple charges stemming from his attempt to occupy a 12-bedroom Bethesda mansion .

Butler had attended the gatherings led by Manley and apparently thought the one thing missing was some crackpot ideology and a chance to grift: He restarted the Sunday shoot-a-paloozas, and started charging 25 bucks per visitor (Manley's classes had been free). Apparently he took filthy worthless US fiat money without demanding silver or gold. Butler assured attendees that “security will be in full force for everyone’s safety and protection” because after all, now they were being conducted under Moroccan consular jurisdiction. He's a diplomat, you see.

Bell, the property owner, became a Moorish American in September too, though he explained to the Post he was still kind of a newbie at all this. He said he was still working his way through the doctrine but considered it "very educational." You can see why!

Among the things he had learned, he said, was that he should consider himself exempt from the county’s legal actions — in part because government officials did not refer to him in court documents by the Moorish variant of his name, Byron David Bell-Bey.

“They weren’t really talking to me,” he said.

Yep, it's that good old-fashioned SovCit word magic! It's a bit like that episode of "The Tick" where the American baseball team gets stranded in Mexico and decides they're all Aztecs, and add "-itlan" randomly to words to prove it.

Sadly, Butler and another Moop, George Neal-Bey ( see! ) were arrested in November and charged with a bunch of weapons violations, so they're in jail and plaguing the local court with nonsense pseudolegal garbage. Bell, who had ignored court orders because Maryland's laws didn't apply to a self-declared citizen of the fictitious Moroccan Empire, is now taking matters a bit more seriously after a contempt of court order ($350,000 fine, but it'll be reduced by $1000 each week there's no shooting on his land). Also, last week his home was raided by sheriff's deputies, who seized his firearms and a computer.

Bell told the Post the deputies were "very cordial" and that he appreciated that they hadn't torn his house up. Apparently he didn't mind too much that the warrant wasn't even for Mr. Bell-Bey. He told the Post there'd be no more shooting parties on his property, because "You got to follow the rules."

Including, we guess, the ones some grifter told you were all fake.

We wish Mr. Bell a happy new year and better judgment in who-bey he trusts.

And even though we're not marking this with a red thumbprint, this is your OPEN THREAD.

[ Wapo (gift link) / Atlantic/ "Enforce the Constitution" on YouTube]

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