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If You Think They Won’t Seize Your Guns…
Unbelievable. Stephen Nichols, an 84-year-old Korean War veteran who served on the Tisbury, MA, police force for 60 years has had his firearms seized. Here’s what happened:
He was eating breakfast in the local diner, Linda Jean’s, when he commented to a friend that the school resource officer was often seen leaving school in the mornings. When he’d investigated it, he found out that the resource officer at Tisbury school was leaving — after children were present — to get himself a coffee at the Xtra Mart nearby.
Nichols pointed out that anything could happen while the school security guard was gone. He said that somebody could come in and shoot up the school while the guard was gone. Nichols described the situation as the school guard ‘leaving his post.’
And that’s it, folks. A dangerous, violent threat.
A waitress overheard the conversation and called the Tisbury Police Department, and the Police chief and another officer arrived and told Mr. Nichols to get into their police car; they took him to his home where they confiscated his guns. They have taken away his gun license, which he’s had since 1958. He’s been fired from his job as a crossing guard. Nichols was told that he could have been charged with a felony for what he said, but that he wouldn’t be.
After confiscating his guns, they didn’t give him a receipt for them, although Nichols’ son-in-law, who owns a gun shop, has been told he can take possession of the guns and sell them. Mr. Nichols has 11 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren. He was quoted as saying, “I would never, ever, ever, harm a child.”
I hope he gets a very, very good lawyer. Beto O’Rourke should be proud.
Published in Guns
Love this, @dougwatt! Thanks for the information!
Sheriff is an elected position, police chief’s are appointed by the mayor or city manager. There are some anomalies involving a county sheriff. Broward County in Florida comes to mind.
Politics in police departments usually start at Lt’s. Sgt’s are left alone unless they express the desire to move up the promotion ladder. The most resistance in a police department would come from the unions that represent the rank and file street cop.
Beto is out of his mind if he thinks most western states are going to cooperate in gun buy backs or confiscation of firearms.
Gabby Gifford’s husband is running for Senator in Arizona, he is not a supporter of the 2nd Amendment. This is going to hurt his chances of winning a Senate seat, or getting a second term if he wins the first time around.
Just want to second this.
Having spent several of my formative years in a location very close to the one in question, I can attest that these villages are very backwards places, and many times the people who actually live there year-round are much different than the famous and glamorous residents/tourists who only come over during the summer.
Surprisingly, the year-round locals (at least in my time there) were some of the most pro-gun New Englanders I’ve ever met, just behind the residents of the forests of northern Maine.
I’ll bet dollars to pumpkin spice donuts that there’s actually a lot more interpersonal drama involved than what we’ve been told so far, and that the “threatening conversation” was really just a pretense for several people to act on long-standing grudges that have little or nothing to do with gun ownership.
Bottom line: if there’s any community that shouldn’t be used as an example for a “this is the state of affairs in America today” vignette, it’s the year-rounders on a Cape Cod island.
I suspect you’re right, @mendel, about these year-rounders. But I’m not sure about your comment about “this is the state of affairs in America” today; this clash between the locals and the intruders probably takes place in one way or another all over America. And if grudges are involved, that happens all over America, too. I’m not trying to pick on Cape Cod–obviously I fully support Mr. Nichols and a lot of people there do, too. But these splits do happen all over the country.
The day is coming, and I weep for it, that then police will be gunned down by citizens. Tyrants always think they have all the cards until they don’t. The British thought they could just March around MA. The old north bridge taught them different.
Beto talks about shootings at schools and malls every day. I wonder if someone will charge him a felony….
I can’t help but wonder if this is exactly what’s going on.
I’d be happier if I knew the source of the original “here’s what happened” story and the actual words used at the diner.
This link from an earlier comment gives more detail:
https://www.mvtimes.com/2019/10/14/stephen-nichols-reinstated-crossing-guard/
And California just enacted a much broader red flag law that significantly enlarges the pool of people who can get a judge to order guns to be confiscated. That greatly increases the probability that someone who doesn’t like you can prevent you from defending yourself.
I expect that when dealing with individual cases, the rank and file are likely to go along with their higher echelons. BUT . . . when Robert O’Rourke’s demand for door-to-door searches to find whole categories of firearms, the rank and file with refuse.
I wish I had your confidence, @fullsizetabby. I keep seeing signs of people caving in, people who I’d never have imagined would do so. It’s so much easier to just go along, rather than fight the powers-that-be. Time will tell . . .
I saw that. I was wondering about the source of the initial quote in the OP, which seemed a bit tendentious to me. It also strikes me that quotation marks around what Mr. Nichols actually said in the diner would be helpful.
We had this issue in the New York town in which we used to live when the police department got automated license plate readers. The police department went around town (including driving up and down the aisles of shopping center parking lots) to find cars with recently expired registrations to impound (the police literally left a young mother and her children at the side of the road by impounding her car because the registration had expired four days earlier).
Enforcing regulations against basically law-abiding people is much easier and lower risk for the police than enforcing real laws against real criminals. And provides lots of statistics to show how much work the police are doing, so the police higher-ups can brag to the town council.
The Democrats alway go violent if they do not get their way. That is how we got the last civil war. It will be how we get the next one.
Maybe, but most Americans will bend the knee as long as they continue to get their government issued free stuff.
So they can just seize your property with no due process based on the say so of a waitress? Make sure you tip well, people, otherwise . . .
That’s my expectation too. In isolated cases the officer doesn’t have enough support to act (or refuse to act) contrary to commands. Not every line cop will even have the inclination to do so, rather most will go with the majority of their fellows. It might take a critical density of disarmament orders, to get to a critical density of refuseniks, to create a real resistance in the “rank and file.” The left likes to pick around the edges; they’d start very gradually.
After they do buyback there will be a few “accidental” killings of gun owners that “resisted”. After that the majority of people will step in line. The few stragglers can be handled individually.
Yeah, I noticed that the “feel good” resolution article @susanquinn linked to above gushes over the individual’s reinstatement to his job, but at the very end it is noted that his firearms (and apparently his license to carry) are permanently gone. Forever. Even though the individual has been exonerated, the police are apparently requiring the disposal of his firearms, and preventing him from ever getting them back. I do not consider that a “feel good” resolution.
Only took 1/3 to push the strongest empire I the world out.
Getting his crossing guard job back is nice, especially since he seems to show more concern for the school’s safety than the cop working there. But they took his stuff. Without a trial. Without even charges being filed. That is not what the founding fathers had in mind.
Even more scary, @vancerichards, is that the potential exists for guns to be seized for any reason, whether it makes sense or not, whether it’s legal or not, whether it’s fair or not.
If the son-in-law holds onto his guns for the time being, and Nichols gets a good attorney, there’s hope. It ain’t over yet.
Laws rigidly enforced like this makes the citizenry suspicious and fearful of the police. It’s also the stuff of a police state . . .
And those stragglers will react with violent resistance, given the example killings done earlier.There may be cops out there who want to be feared, but most officers want respect and admiration from the general public.
I don’t think the majority will grab their ankles and step in line. The majority will go to great lengths to secure their weapons until sanity can be restored to the government.
My mother’s family has been living on Nantucket for over a hundred years now, which makes them new comers. I mention that because my family is from Nantucket and we don’t mingle with “those people” on the Vineyard.
But I hear rumors about them. And I suspect that although they are much more cosmopolitan, they are still a small island and I suspect that everyone knows everyone there, much as in Nantucket.
And my suspicion is that this elderly man’s family and neighbors are honestly trying to keep this old codger from hurting himself.
But then again, this is Massachusetts. And sometimes small, isolated communities gang up on neighbors. It could be that he didn’t use clear plastic trash bags and separate his trash into the mandated four separate containers and someone just doesn’t like that.
2. Until they machine it, drill all the little holes, it is considered a block of metal with no serial number and no background check required. That is the “ghost gun” they are trying to make illegal but the cat is out of the bag with 3D printers.
3. back to para 1…what will you do with it? Build one for yourself. Charles CW Cooke wrote recently about the joy he had building one. I cheated, bought a complete lower with stock, firing mechanism, pistol grip, and buffer tube/spring already attached for my first one. Next time, I will build from scratch. Why? For the fun of it. I can pick out every piece and customize it to suit my tastes. People love building them. It is quite addictive. Why own them? Forget the demagoguery. It is a great gun for women and children, especially those with arthritis or who are afraid of gun recoil, because it has little. The design that helps reduce it is why it is an AR.
4. What is the point of all this on a gun confiscation thread? Anything you can put together, you can take apart and hide. The only question is how far you have to go taking it apart to hide it and how quickly you will need to put it back together. AR gun owners know this. If they don’t want the government to find their gun, the government won’t find it. Guns won’t be confiscated, people will be. Gun laws won’t stop criminals or we wouldn’t be having a gun problem now. Gun laws will make criminals of patriots, which will lead to widespread distrust and even hatred of the federal government, and even local government, if it chooses this path. The unintended consequences of “doing the right thing” and “common sense” often are worse than the problem the government wants to fix.
This is an example of why we can’t trust government, and therefore should not have red flag laws. Any time you take away someone’s rights, needs to require due process first.
Outstanding points and suggestions, @eherring. I will pass this on to my husband!