We The People !.......Its time to change the laws!

[camo]

We The People !.......It's time to change the laws!

We, the people!.... (detectorists) can do this at the Federal level. those little "back water municipalities " will cringe because the law will be Nation wide. The law will be neither Left or Right so we will know which ones in Congress are truly "For The People" Individual states will become powerless against the mandate. But most of all, it will open up all OUR land for metal detecting.

This isn't some new and untried concept. The law has been in use for some time now in Great Britain and our fellow detectorists across the pond have benefited greatly. If our interest is to change the existing laws and bring us to the twenty-first century, through forums like this one, then the time has come.

Posts like this on will go viral! It's an election year and as we (the people) have seen, elections are won and lost because some politicians refuse to address our issues. Because of the internet we now have a very strong voice!


http://finds.org.uk/
...........the link to what this is all about.

We can do this........ lets make it go viral !

 

[illinidigger]

Re: We The People !.......It's time to change the laws!

I dont think emulating government controlled English laws are the answer. We formed this country under this premise, and its like comparing apples to oranges. The average finds in the U.S. are not close to being on the same level of either monetary value or historical importance. That said it is not our government that I have a problem with, I love the fact that our system is set up starting at the individual, local, county, state,....... We the people are the problem, and it starts with personal responsibility. We are a lazy society as a whole, the internet helps us along this route. On the federal level our voice will never be heard, besides there are bureaucratic jobs at stake. They vote too. A law like Englands would make more of these jobs and government bigger. We can form local clubs, attend city council meetings in local municipalities, quit bragging of valuable (non historic) finds on the internet, not support television shows or bash archeologists publicly. We can get new people interested and show them the ropes, including ethical responsibilities, this will keep people involved. This is a hobby for me, for the side making laws it is a job, and they can use my money (taxes) to fight me. Head to head, doesnt seem the route to take. Making a big deal out of a string of small occurences seems to be their strategy, I only need to handle what is in front of me! . Right now, I can receive permission, hunt, keep what I find, not pay taxes on the finds, report what I deem necessary, that is alot of freedom. Sure, I would like to be able to hunt on all publicly owned land, but dont think Britains law allows that either.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Re: We The People !.......It's time to change the laws!

illinidigger is spot on. You do NOT want the English system here. For starters, you are misunderstanding it. The English do NOT hunt publically owned land there (fed park land, state parks, city parks, etc...) They hunt private farmer lands (with farmer's permission, of course). But when it comes to federal parks over there (whatever their facsimile to that is), no, they can not hunt those sites, just like we can't over here. So their "system" would not "open up federal land" as your post laments that you want done

You have to understand that even pre-dating metal detecting, the British system mandated that whatever natural resources are under the land, belongs to the crown. This is not un-like other countries too. So for example: if you discover rich oil deposits on your land here in the USA, you'll be rich, right? But in England, it would belong to the crown, and presto, you might get some sort of token compensation, but no, it's not "yours", since it was under the ground as a natural resource.

Over here, if you find a cache on a farmer's land, it's all yours and the farmers to dream up what you want to do with it. But over there, you gotta go through a complicated process of declaring it, and so forth.

But camo, even if there WERE some sort of way that fed land could be "opened up" for all us md'rs to hunt, be serious dude! In this economy, with all the problems that govt. has right now with all the bigger fish to fry, do you REALLY think anyone is going to concern themselves with such a niche thing as this? The LAST thing they are going to do is start down some rabbit trail of allowing us "yahoos" to go "digging" around on national parks. Because then it just opens the pandoras box of un-limited endless clarifications on staying away from obvious excepted historically sensitive spots (to which none of us would object, of course, since we can all agree that some sites are just cool to have un-molested, like Bodie, Shiloh, etc....). So to make it easy, the system just evolved to be all fed. land.

So just go hunt other levels of public land to your hearts content. Oh, and by the way: not all federal level land is off limits. I think it's just the park system of federal parks. As an example: the fed. army base near me is not off-limits.

 

[homefires]

Re: We The People !.......It's time to change the laws!

Remember this little thing?

Tenth Amendment





Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.



The LAST thing you want is the Farel Government to get involved in anything.

 

[camo]

Re: We The People !.......It's time to change the laws!

I truly understand your point Tom, but it's the inconsistency of small municipalities that bring ordinances against us simply because they can! California and Oregon , in my opinion, are more progressive then states like Alabama, Washington, Florida and Georgia, to name a few. I don't mean politicly, I mean that it seems that the government in some states are out of touch with the people they serve. Our antiquities laws are Federal and and will be changed on the Federal level. Comparing our antiquity law with Germany, France and Spain, I would say that "I can't complain", that's where the apples and oranges are all about. Just ownership of a detector in France, is frowned upon. The 10th amendment is federal like our antiquity laws are. New York, in my understanding, has a ''permit system", like a fishing license. (?)

From city to town, state to state, it's different. To put this at a primitive level, I don't want my rights taken away because someone was digging up a park ten years ago that ruined some park managers day.

ILLnidigger stated that We the People are the problem! He's right! In Great Britain the People presented a "United Front" and dragged their government and archaeologists to the table without lobby money, bribery or corruption and won! That can be done here. I don't fully understand the public/ private / Crown system in the UK , I do know they have a permit system in some of the Public lands and river banks (Thames) but generally the essence of P.A.S. can be worked into our law. As far as U.S. Federal lands, It's our land. To many times I have read that it's "Government land" or "Federal land".

The part of P.A.S. that I would like to see is "if you find it and the government wants it they have to buy it'', They(England) have very little Federal land in proportion to us and I think it's time for a change.
(I have to get to work, Thank you for your replies. camo)