The People of the Gun are getting jumpy. And no wonder. They’re getting jumped. Post-Newtown, more than one hundred pieces of state and local gun control legislation are wending their way through their respective legislatures. New York’s done deal—the ironically named SAFE Act—is the most egregious infringement on the Second Amendment in this country’s history. Then there’s California, Connecticut, Colorado, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island. While the western and southern states remain steadfast in their opposition to civilian disarmament, residents can’t ignore the possibility that the feds will sell out their gun rights. Gun confiscation, formerly as credible as alien invasion, seems somehow inevitable. In fact, it’s already underway . . .
From bloomberg.com
Wearing bulletproof vests and carrying 40-caliber Glock pistols, nine California Justice Department agents assembled outside a ranch-style house in a suburb east of Los Angeles. They were looking for a gun owner who’d recently spent two days in a mental hospital.
They knocked on the door and asked to come in. About 45 minutes later, they came away peacefully with three firearms.
Right. Peacefully. ‘Cause when NINE cops show up at your door asking for your guns “making a fuss” isn’t really an option. Although, strangely, it is.
Merely being in a database of registered gun owners and having a “disqualifying event,” such as a felony conviction or restraining order, isn’t sufficient evidence for a search warrant, Marsh said March 5 during raids in San Bernardino County. So the agents often must talk their way into a residence to look for weapons, he said.
Hi! See these NINE cops with guns? Good! Do you mind if we come in and have a little chat, maybe look around? Thank you.
According to this article, all of the people getting the proverbial “knock on the door” are gun owners who’ve lost their legal right to own guns. So it’s a bit of a stretch to suggest that California’s financially reinvigorated gun getters are trampling the Second Amendment by chasing the 20k people who have broken the law.
That said, I don’t believe that felons and people suffering from mental illness should automatically lose their gun rights. More generally, watching a law enforcement team confiscating firearms from private citizens gives me the heebie-jeebies. And for good reason . . .
“What do we do about the guns that are already in the hands of persons who, by law, are considered too dangerous to possess them?” [CA Attorney General Kamala] Harris said in a letter to Vice President Joe Biden after a Connecticut school shooting in December left 26 dead. She recommended that Biden, heading a White House review of gun policy, consider California as a national model.
Notice that little phrase “by law”? There’s your trouble. What happens when the legal definition of a prohibited gun owner gets a little . . . fuzzy? Or the confiscation process lacks accountability?
Six days ago, Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey re-introduced a bill that would bar citizens on the FBI’s “no-fly” terrorist watch list from purchasing firearms. How do you get on the list? How do you get off the list? How do you even know you’re on the list? There’s no public protocol.
It’s not that hard to imagine a time when gun owners—who consider themselves law-abiding Americans—receive a visit from a California-style (trained?) gun confiscation team.
Not anymore it isn’t.