Washington, D.C. is a famously unfriendly place to carry a weapon — which, in a city built as a monument to American freedom, has always carried its own irony. This week the District added a novel entry to the list of things you can’t bring to town: a guillotine.
What Actually Happened
On Tuesday, U.S. Capitol Police spotted a pickup truck illegally parked on East Capitol Street — the block that runs alongside the Supreme Court, steps from the Capitol. In the bed sat a 10-foot wooden guillotine with a real metal blade. Officers arrested the driver, Philan-Tam-Duy Le, 35, of Julian, California, and charged him with carrying a dangerous weapon. Asked whether it actually worked, Le reportedly said it was “the real deal.” He’d driven it roughly 2,500 miles to get it there.
So: not a prop, and not smuggled in. A functioning execution device, hauled across the country and left in plain sight next to the nation’s highest court.
The Absurd Surface
Part of this is undeniably funny. “Carrying a dangerous weapon” is a charge you’d expect for a pistol or a knife, not for hardware, which was last in fashion during the French Revolution. Nobody robs a liquor store with a guillotine; there’s no concealing the symbol of the Terror and no discreet way to deploy one. On its face, it reads like the setup to a very strange joke.
The Part That Isn’t
Then you look at what Le put online himself. In videos from an account that appears to be his, he says he built the guillotine, that he doesn’t know “who these people are,” and that he’d been “working on a solution.” One clip, filmed outside the FBI building, is captioned “Guillotine adventures” and “Capitol Hill next.” He also insists the device is “strictly for self-defense” and that he harbors “no ill will or intentions of violence toward anyone” — a claim that sits uneasily next to a homemade execution machine at the Supreme Court.
Capitol Police say they’re still working out why he came, and the backdrop doesn’t help him: the department fielded nearly 15,000 threats and concerning communications against members of Congress in 2025, up 57% from the prior year, and arrested a man with a handgun at a Capitol barricade just last month. Le pleaded not guilty Wednesday; a status hearing is set for September 24.
Where That Leaves the Free-Speech Question
Unsettled — and anyone calling it obvious in either direction is running ahead of the facts. If this were purely symbolic protest, a provocative and ugly political statement, there’d be a real First Amendment argument, however distasteful the message; Americans are allowed to stage things that make other people deeply uncomfortable. But symbolic protest and credible threat aren’t the same thing, and a working blade driven cross-country to the Supreme Court’s doorstep, paired with “Capitol Hill next,” is exactly the ambiguity a courtroom exists to resolve. That’s what September is for.
The Bottom Line
D.C.’s weapons laws earn plenty of criticism, and TTAG hands it out freely. This isn’t the case to build that argument on. A guillotine isn’t a firearm, “carrying a dangerous weapon” isn’t an unreasonable charge for a functional one left at the Supreme Court, and Le’s own videos make the “harmless protest” reading a hard sell. File it under strange-but-serious, and let the facts come out before anyone declares him a free-speech martyr.
He hauled it across the country, in plain sight, ~2,500 miles, from California to Washington, DC., then through the streets of DC, and has said its “strictly for self-defense purposes”, didn’t get stopped one time or asked about it by any law enforcement officer over that entire distance until he parked it where he did.
I swear there is a joke in that some place, its almost like its teasing you with a punch line it will not spit out.
So if I put a gallows on a flatbed and parked it in front of DNC HQ, that’d be fine, right?
Well, considering its the Democrats then a means of self defense is justified.
If he would have brought a “Sledgeomatik” he could have said the gulliotene was a DiceNSlicer.
“Robes on high, I’m here for your heads,,,,,,,, of lettuce.”
“My cabbages!”
“So: not a prop, and not smuggled in. A functioning execution device, hauled across the country and left in plain sight next to the nation’s highest court.”
And then :
“Then you look at what Le put online himself. In videos from an account that appears to be his, he says he built the guillotine, that he doesn’t know “who these people are,” and that he’d been “working on a solution.” One clip, filmed outside the FBI building, is captioned “Guillotine adventures” and “Capitol Hill next.””
Any reasonable person on a jury would consider that a reasonable threat, he should be prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced for the felony crime of threatening a Federal judge/official.
Get it done…
So, just a normal left-coaster from near San Diego out for a scenic drive.
Any way you slice it, when the Capital Cops get to the bottom of this story,
HEADS WILL ROLL !!
I was waiting for this exact thing to be said!
Is DC a no Guillotine zone?
Driving across the country to be a dick.
Either he’s insane or some tik tok douche who makes a living being a social media asshole.
Should be locked away in either case.
Nothing of value to society.
Nothing of value? I didn’t know a guillotine could be made into a mobile device. He showed that it can be.
I’ll never use that information, but still; I ask Alexa, Siri, and the Google thingie dumb questions all the time. I’m just trying to see how much stupid shit I can store in my cranial circuitry before I die. It seems I still have freespace in there, even after this crazy thing.
“Nothing of value? I didn’t know a guillotine could be made into a mobile device.”
I know they exist in Islamic Sharia law criminal courts, the small ones are used to cut the fingers or hands off of those convicted of stealing, for example.
I sh!t you not, it’s supposed to be more humane than relying on the skill of a swordsman.
“Under the traditional legal frameworks of Islamic law (Sharia), the scriptural punishment for specific types of highway robbery or theft (Sariqa) involves the cutting off of hands or fingers. While most modern Muslim-majority nations do not implement this literally, Iran explicitly utilizes a mechanical guillotine machine to execute these judicial amputations.”
hps://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/07/iranian-officials-must-be-held-accountable-for-amputating-the-fingers-of-two-men/
If an execution failed, the person was set free. One particular day, about 15 French aristocrats walked free as the blade failed to fully fall.
The next guy up was an engineer. “Head up or down?” He was asked.
“Up!”, he exclaimed.
As he lay there waiting for the blade to drop he said, “Wait! I see the problem!”
I’m knot telling
There was no intent, so there was no crime. Henny Penny just got upset is all.
Coast to Coast Mobile Guillotine Service…we come to you!
On to something enjoyable…
https://youtube.com/shorts/aKgAXZnrTps?is=WF0yXxNTCptiPiN8
Is that Little Peep and the Strangled Cat Band?
BS charge. Not a weapon. No direct threat against anyone.
So he drove across the country with it, took pictures in front of some .gov buildings.
Still no crime.
From this article it sounds like an expression free speech. Which he has the right to even if it’s offensive to some people.
Personally I find it somewhat funny but I have a dark sense of humor.
Well I guess he was parked illegally. Give him a parking ticket.
Being stupid is not a crime. If it was we would need a lot more prisons.
Let’s see if this gets ghosted like the one I left here yesterday.
While it’s true that “stupid is not a crime”, we DO need a lot more prisons, and a lot more criminals taken off of the streets and put IN them where they belong.
There’s toooo many in prison that should have met a rope years ago but…….
That “CURE” is the proper prescription for the UNIPARTY..