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My Question About Cops and Guns
I know Ricochet has members who are current or former police officers, and many of you have family or friends on the force. I’d appreciate you sharing your perspective on this topic. I’ve seen Beto O’Rourke talk about how the police will enforce his ban and confiscation plan for “assault weapons.”
I’m not going to get into his recurring lie that the AR-15 was invented for warfare. I’m not going to get into his stupid claim that the founding fathers could not have envisioned that we would one day have guns that could be reloaded faster than muskets (good grief, we had private ownership of cannons at the time), or his assertion that this ban would be in compliance with the Constitution.
I just want to talk about police confiscating guns from people with no police record. In 2013 the Colorado legislature passed a bunch of gun restrictions and the vast majority of Colorado’s county sheriffs said they would not enforce those laws. I’m wondering if we wouldn’t see massive resistance to enforcing Beto’s “assault weapons” ban. I suspect that a whole lot of our men and women in blue personally own weapons such as the AR-15 themselves. What do you think? Are the police officers you personally know supportive of such a ban?
Published in Guns
The answer to this question is remarkably simple: some cops will join in a gun confiscation, others will not. Cops aren’t special or endowed with any magic powers. They’re people working a job like everyone else. Some are very good, some are very bad, most are perfectly average. Some are ideological, some just follow orders when given. This notion that Beto has cooked up in his head that everyone will fall in line is idiotic. But then so is the civil war porn wing of the NRA. The real answer is nobody has any idea what kind of chaos would or would not ensue if nitwits the likes of Beto the furry had their way. Let’s hope we never find out.
Real 22s and sometimes bigger stuff. Mostly to kids, and almost in Pelosi’s back yard. Did my heart good (sniff).
They closed that range several years ago, yet another demonstration that I did the right thing by getting the [CoC] out of there.
Which is why city cops may go along with confiscation, country cops won’t. Suburban officers will have the most difficult choice.
Again, I’m not sure.
It’s not really about whether rank-and-file cops will be willing to do whatever their superiors tell them they must. It’s about scarce police resources being redeployed away from other activities to focus on taking formerly-legal guns from peaceable people even as taxpayers pony up for (and endure the attentions of) thousands and thousands of extra uniformed and armed agents of the government, even if these are guaranteed to be the pure, non-racist, non-violent police officers that progressives appear to believe can be conjured out of thin air. And it is about whether Beto’s Little Woke Peeps are going to overlook the inevitably disproportionate effects of draconian gun laws on black and brown citizens. War on Drugs…mass incarceration…ring any bells?
These aren’t ideological arguments but practical ones. You don’t have to be a 2A absolutist to find them persuasive.
Would they even have to do anything? Is there an actual precedent for non-Feds showing up at your door to confiscate things because of a federal law – absent subpoena?
No one is, and that’s why the left may be in for a bigger surprise than those on the right.
Don’t know of any. However, the left doesn’t care.
I agree with your assessment but the most popular rifle in the US is the AR-15 or one of its many variants. There are still far too many so called “Assault rifles” to make that work.