When Visiting Washington, D.C., Remember to Not Illegally Park Your Guillotine

It’s been observed before, but it’s always equally true: Washington, D.C., is a city with a magnetic pull for the addled and deranged. Because it’s the seat of government power, and filled to the brim with legislators, bureaucrats, lobbyists and one demented President who just sent toilet paper prices soaring through the roof, D.C. automatically attracts the disgruntled into its orbit. Some of them are agitators and activists, trying to win hearts and minds for political purposes. Some of them are purely schizophrenic, and sadly exist as a persistent reminder of how poorly our country cares for those experiencing mental health crises. And some are perplexingly in between, the kind of people who would load an antique guillotine into the back of a pickup truck, drive it to the Capitol and then be arrested for possession of a (convoluted) weapon while saying their guillotine was there, and I quote, “strictly for self-defense purposes.” Now that is a sublime specimen of deranged Americana.

All of this played out yesterday in our nation’s capital, as the Capitol Police announced that they had arrested a Southern California man by the name of Philan-Tam-Duy Le for “illegally parking” (seriously) a pickup truck with what appeared to be a functional guillotine in the bed outside the U.S. Capitol. Hell of a photo op for those Capitol cops, you have to admit. Le was charged with “carrying a dangerous weapon,” although this actually opens up a bit of a can of worms in whether a guillotine can truly be considered a “weapon,” much less one to be “carried.” Was this purely symbolic, a publicity stunt? Or did this guy intend to make heads roll? Those questions will no doubt show up in court at some point.

As CNN’s senior legal analyst Elie Honig put it: “Generally speaking, a person has broad rights under the First Amendment, including speech that is aggressive, distasteful or controversial. The decisive question is going to be was the object operational or a symbol. Could a person actually have been harmed? How did he display it? And what did he say about it?”

Cop walks up to car with a guillotine in his truckbed.

“Excuse me sir, you are parking here illegally. There are parking spots over there.” (points in the direction toward Washington DC)

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— Piston Developers 🍿🥤🐸🧞 (@pistondeveloper.bsky.social) 10:16 AM · Aug 26, 2026

As for the latter question, it’s genuinely difficult to tell if Le’s public comments on social media in the build-up to his arrest should be read as satirical trolling or genuine delusion. Earlier on Tuesday, hours before he was arrested, CNN reports that someone appearing to be Le posted on an Instagram account from a DC area pizzeria, saying that he was “Outside the FBI building, just eating some cheese pizza,” followed by the words “Guillotine adventures, Capitol Hill next.” He had apparently been posting in that manner for weeks, generally angry at the government and saying that he was enraged by “unelected officials making all the decisions of this place and getting us involved in international conflicts and forever wars.” He cites grievances with “people above” controlling the government in secret, people whose names “our government decided to retract,” and then issued the following proclamation: “I am not okay with not knowing who these people are, and you shouldn’t be either. The last few months, however, I’ve been working on a solution. I built a guillotine. I’m gonna drive this f**ker to Washington, DC.”

That all sounds like a fellow with genuine intent to do some harm, yeah? But just in case you might interpret “I’ve been working on a solution, I built a guillotine” as a man saying that he wants to chop heads off with his homemade guillotine, he then apparently disabuses the viewer of that notion by saying the device is “strictly for self-defense purposes … I harbor no ill will or intentions of violence towards anyone.”

Uh, what? What is this, MST3K‘s death ray that was built for “peaceful purposes only”? Meanwhile, the suspect’s brother Kelvin Le told The Los Angeles Times that the pickup truck did indeed belong to his brother, but that he hadn’t intended to harm anyone, although he was generally “unhappy with the state of politics” and apparently hated many figures such as Donald Trump and California Gov. Gavin Newsom. The guillotine, meanwhile, was just something he believed his brother intended as a classic “symbol of disapproval.” Which, uh … yeah, I can’t exactly dispute that. If someone parked a guillotine in my front yard, I would indeed conclude that someone disapproved of me.

Regardless, you really can’t blame Capitol Police for taking action when someone like this shows up, because hell, maybe he did intend to just start dispensing Reign of Terror justice on people. Threats against members of Congress have indeed spiked in the last few years, with Capitol Police reportedly responding to almost 15,000 “concerning statements, behaviors, and communications directed against Members of Congress, their families, staff, and the Capitol Complex” in 2025. That was a 57% increase from the year before. That said, members of Congress weren’t even present when this guy illegally parked his truck on the edge of the Capitol, given that they’re now in recess. One wonders if he was aware of this.

What are you doing this weekend?

Not much. Just going to drive across the country with a guillotine in my truck. Then sort of prowl around DC for a while.

Cool. Cool. Pick up a MAGA hat for me. See if you can find time to check out Ben’s Chili Bowl. I hear that’s pretty good.

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— ThornyOpinion (@thornyopinion.bsky.social) 9:38 AM · Aug 26, 2026

Regardless, the fact that someone would do this certainly feels symbolic in its own way of the general sense of outrage people are feeling toward our institutions. Americans are very clearly fed up, very clearly disgruntled, and very clearly blame Congress for some share of our collective problems. We just don’t all have the carpentry skills to construct a guillotine, or the dependable 4×4 vehicle to move one.

In that vein, the aspect of this story that I arguably find most fascinating isn’t necessarily the motives of the suspect but the absurd logistics involved in all of it. This man DROVE A PICKUP TRUCK WITH A GUILLOTINE IN BACK, all the way from southern California to Washington, D.C.! How many days and how many miles did he travel? What kind of fascinating conversations did his French Revolution-era execution device spur with locals along the way? Was he eating in Route 66 diners with this bad boy parked out front? Did no police officer along the way have questions about this thing? Did he have to carefully calculate the route to not go under any low bridges or tunnels? What kind of gas mileage do you get while hauling an 18th century beheading device? And what the fuck did he think was going to happen when he finally rolled into the city of crazies that is DC? A ticker-tape parade, perhaps?

I have endless questions on this one, but none worth losing my head over. That said, if you have any loved ones who have been laboring on a homemade guillotine recently, you might want to inquire as to their plans for it, and find out whether they’ve familiarized themselves with the parking laws of Washington, D.C.