Sunday - November 24, 2019

New York Gestapo Red Flag Insanity

What transpired on Saturday was exactly what advocates of red flag laws have asked for. A militarized police force, ignoring due process completely, confiscated the property and the civil rights of a U.S. citizen because of nothing more than the opinion of an associate.

If the current legal landscape allows for citizens to have their Second Amendment rights stripped from them without any legal opportunity to dissent, what are the next rights to be taken?  After all, our rights to speech or religion, or even due process itself, have no obligation to be respected by the government without the right to bear arms.

Every gun law, including the ones you agree with, is an infringement on our constitutional rights.

On Friday, police showed up to a young man’s workplace and tried to arrest him over social media posts reported to them by an old army buddy of the 28-year-old Afghanistan veteran.  This man, known as Alex and popular on Instagram under the handle of WhiskeyWarrior556, slipped out of the back door, hurried home to check on his family where he found out police had already forced themselves into his home and confiscated his legal firearms after threatening his wife with calling child protective services to remove her newborn child. Alex then barricaded himself inside his own attic, unarmed.  Law enforcement officers followed him, blocked off the road to all traffic and a seven-hour standoff began.

When it was over, the Putnam County Sheriffs, SWAT team and local police, armed with their own automatic rifles with 30 round magazines, arrested Alex for possessing a “high capacity magazine” for his legal AR-15.  In New York, “high capacity magazines” are defined as any magazine that can hold more than seven rounds.

Agreed. I’m against Red Flag laws, period. But if they have to exist, then they have to have some kind of immediate judicial oversight. County judge X is on call 24-7 to render a decision, and the laws must demand more credible accusations than “some guy on social media said so”.

hat tip to Wardmama

On a somewhat related topic, I was reading yesterday that President Trump is pushing hard for national CCW reciprocity. While many may view this as a good thing, others see it from the other side, and argue properly that reciprocity will even further empower state’s control of your rights. “Constitutional carry” is the right answer, across the whole country, but it’s going to cost “the gun show loophole” to get it, if it ever happens.

There has to be a way to keep guns - at least legal ones - out of the hands of mentally imbalanced people and those with significant criminal records. Banning person to person firearms sales without NICS approval might be the way. But why ban it when NICS could easily be involved? There is no reason that it costs anything, or anything much.

Heck, there could be NICS kiosks at the mall. Hand scanners take your fingerprints, along with your personal data that you enter, and run it through all the systems. If it comes back good, the machine prints you out a purchase approval form, with a serial number and an expiration date, then erases all your data other than that which is on the form.

You don’t have to run right out and buy a gun. You can get several of them a day if you want. OK, maybe it should charge you $5 per on your credit card. But if you add the approval form caveat, then the “gun show loophole” evaporates, and you still have your freedom.

All we would have to do is to trust that the kiosk actually is erasing the data afterwards. And yeah, your fingerprints would be in the system somewhere. So? Mine have been since I was in my early 20s. Not that I’d done anything wrong, or even applied for a gun permit. No, someone had planted a bomb in the store I worked in, so we all had to get fingerprinted to remove us from suspicion. Paper records in those days, but who can say if some cop clerk didn’t take every old set of prints and enter them in the system when that department went digital a couple decades later? 

Posted by Drew458     on 11/24/2019 at 11:23 AM   
Filed Under: • Guns and Gun Control •  
• Comments (0) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

DISCLAIMER

THE SERVICES AND MATERIALS ON THIS WEBSITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE HOSTS OF THIS SITE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF SATISFACTORY QUALITY, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, WITH RESPECT TO THE SERVICE OR ANY MATERIALS.

Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

1. Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
2. Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
3. Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
4. Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere

It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

THE INFORMATION AND OTHER CONTENTS OF THIS WEBSITE ARE DESIGNED TO COMPLY WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THIS WEBSITE SHALL BE GOVERNED BY AND CONSTRUED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND ALL PARTIES IRREVOCABLY SUBMIT TO THE JURISDICTION OF THE AMERICAN COURTS. IF ANYTHING ON THIS WEBSITE IS CONSTRUED AS BEING CONTRARY TO THE LAWS APPLICABLE IN ANY OTHER COUNTRY, THEN THIS WEBSITE IS NOT INTENDED TO BE ACCESSED BY PERSONS FROM THAT COUNTRY AND ANY PERSONS WHO ARE SUBJECT TO SUCH LAWS SHALL NOT BE ENTITLED TO USE OUR SERVICES UNLESS THEY CAN SATISFY US THAT SUCH USE WOULD BE LAWFUL.

Copyright © 2004-2015 Domain Owner