In the latest incident of anti-gun hysteria to erupt in America, a security guard stopped a man attempting to attend a court board meeting in Tucson, Ariz. and forced him to remove a machine gun-shaped tie clasp from his necktie for the duration of the meeting.
The incident happened on Tuesday at the threshold of a meeting of the Pima County Board of Supervisors, reports the Arizona Daily Independent.
The man with the dangerous tie clasp was Mark Spear, a semi-legendary local libertarian who calls himself “the “Man in Black.” He is locally famous as one of the organizers behind a successful 2015 ballot initiative to ban the use of speed cameras in Tucson.
The very small, metal, pewter tie clasp Spear chose to wear on Tuesday night is shaped like a 1921 Thompson submachine gun. It is a little over two inches long.
“If the tie clasp could hold bullets, they would have to be .0045 caliber,” Spear told Tucson talk radio host James T. Harris on Thursday.
“Of course we have to go through the metal detector so I have to take out my keys, my change and metal sunglasses container and put it all into a little plastic bag,” Spear explained.
He also removed the tie clasp, “a thing you put on your tie to fasten to your shirt.”
The security guard at the metal detector then refused to allow Spear to re-attach the Tommy gun tie clasp.
“I had to get a receipt for it,” Spear said.
“I usually wear what I call the tattered flag tie,” Spear added. “It is a flag that looks like it has been in combat. Then I have my Thompson tie clasp and one of the reasons is that it is big enough to cover a larger tie. So it is very functional.”
Spear noted that, before Tuesday night, he had experienced no problems wearing the super-tiny, decorative weapon symbol “except at the Tucson City Court, and usually the guys there tell me to put it in my pocket and not show it.”
“It is pretty funny that these guys have to take the ‘no-tolerance’ concept to the point where they almost need to look at it like a micro-molecular theory,” he added.
Spear attended Tuesday’s Pima County Board of Supervisors to challenge a proposed ordinance against texting while driving.
“The ordinance says ‘hand-held electronic device.’ I have a whole bunch of things in my house that could be. A watch with digital buttons on it, a shaver,” Spear told Harris, the radio host. “It could be your GPS, which I showed them when I talked, and that is something that you use to get one place to another while you drive. It could be a whole lot of things.”
Spear lost the challenge.
The board of supervisors voted unanimously on Tuesday to ban “any handheld electronic device for any purpose other than to initiate, receive, or engage in voice communication” while driving, according to the Arizona Daily Star.
Spear did get his tie clasp back after the meeting.
No one was injured.
Follow Eric on Twitter. Like Eric on Facebook. Send story tips to erico@dailycaller.com.