But, if you're not doing anything to break the law in the first place, the Police would have NO reason to question you at all anyway. And if they ask for a drivers license, they are simply trying to determine whether a person carrying a weapon has a record or not that they need to be aware of. If you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear from the law.
1. The Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination is
intended to protect the innocent. Three cases all say the same thing. They say it in different ways; they elaborate on it differently. But, they all say it expressly or arrive easily at that conclusion:
Miranda vs Arizona,
Ullman vs US,
Ohio vs Reiner. To say otherwise is to say the Founders included the 5A right against self-incrimination only to make it harder for government to do its job with no benefit to good guys.
2. A non-profit group called the
Innocence Project has obtained the exonerations and release from prison of roughly 250 people. Mainly by pushing through for DNA testing with updated technology that wasn't available at the conviction. These are cases where the DNA evidence proves beyond any doubt that these wrongly convicted people could not possibly have committed the crimes for which they were imprisoned. Now, if the DNA evidence proves the accused could not possibly have committed the crime, how on earth did the cops convince themselves they had the right guy? Meaning, what sort of shabby, incomplete, fallacious logic were the police using? What uncertain indications did the police twist into solid certainty to justify caging another human being? Remember, after the updated DNA testing, there is
no doubt these people, some of who were on death row, could not possibly have committed the crime.
3. Professor James Duane of Regent University Law School gives a list of very good reasons not to talk to police in his video. Among other things, under the rules of evidence, nothing you say can be used to help you at trial. If police wrongly conclude you are their target, or you mistakenly committed an offense you didn't realize was an offense, or you broke a
malum prohibitum* law intentionally, or even if the cop just doesn't like what you are doing and is out to get you, nothing you tell the cop--nothing--can be used in your favor.
4. If being investigated, the police are not your friend. They are literally your legal adversary.
5. The Blue Wall of Silence proves that even good police will protect, and at least enable, the bad ones. You have no way to know whether the cop confronting you is a good cop or a bad cop at the inception of the encounter. And, if you talk to them, you may not find out its a bad cop until it is too late. And, nice-ness and politeness are no sure indicators. Some of us can still recall the police dashcam tape where two cops were oh-so polite to an OCer; but back at the patrol car, one cop said to the other, "There has got to be
something we can get him for."
6. It took almost half a millenium--roughly 475 years--for the right against self-incrimination to be recognized in English law. I am counting from the roots in King Henry (II?) in the late 1100's to John Lilburne's final aquittal in about 1650. Along the way countless people were imprisoned, fined, exiled, forced out of the clergy for standing on their conscience, and, during the reign of Bloody Mary Tudor a little under 300 people were burned at the stake! This right was
very expensive to obtain.
7. Since the Founding, literally over a million Americans have died defending our rights.
I am not going to spit on the graves of those Americans, nor the graves of all those who suffered before them, by waiving one of those rights and thereby also place myself in unnecessary legal jeopardy, risking my freedom and finances.
"No offense officer, I know you're just doing your job, but I don't care to answer any questions without my attorney."
"You said, 'cooperation', officer? Oh, yes. I am a patriotic American. I will cooperate with you to the
full extent required by our laws, sir." [followed by silence]
The court cases and video mentioned above are linked here:
http://forum.opencarry.org/forums/s...-Your-4th-and-5th-Amendment-Resources-Here!!&
*
Malum prohibitum means bad because it is prohibited. Bad just because government said so. Contrast with
malum in se which means bad in itself. For example, theft, murder, and rape are bad in their own right. Whereas criticizing the government was bad just because the government said so under the federalist Sedition Act during John Adams' administration.