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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
I think you would see a lot of “Irish Democracy” :
“Okay, according to our records, you have an impressive gun collection. Which I have to confiscate.”
“Well, you see officer, I went out on a friend’s boat, figured we’d show off our collections. We had a little too much to drink, and all of the guns went over the side. It sucks losing your guns in a stupid way.”
“Oh I understand, trust me. I’ll mark them down as out of your possession.”
I have learned that state and local police can choose not to enforce federal laws. Sanctuary cities and states can work for gun laws as well as immigration laws. The ATF is not capable of doing anything more than they are now. 85% of the counties in the USA voted GOP in 2016. I do think that most cops will not bother with a federal law. However, blue states will always push the envelope and cops in NY, et. al. will get fired.
I think the farthest a Dem would go would be to use some kind of emergency power to suspend selling of guns and ammo nationwide. They would use some health/epidemic law as a pretense. Or, there could be some kind of excise tax that makes guns and ammo unaffordable. A big squeeze would look impressive to the base and be easy to enforce.
Personally, I don’t think guns and ammo should be taxed at all – any rise in price that comes from the government is an infringement.
I suspect there would be a large carve out to allow LEO to keep weapons.
The police will take guns if so directed. They already do so in some states. I states hostile to gun rights they take glee in bending the law to maximum effect against gun owners.
I think police with prior military service are considerably less likely to be so indifferent to the Constitution they once swore to uphold than the civilian variety.
Over time the type of individual who joins the police would change. Cops who decline to enforce the law will move to jurisdictions where the laws they enforce are more in line with their beliefs.
There are plenty of people who would be happy to join the police and enforce bad laws. Eventually you wind up with less lawful jurisdictions. (probably lining up more blue than red).
When people move to a new area they always look at the schools for their children. maybe in the future you will look at the record of the police in the new neighborhood as well.
Sorry, just rambling……
Wow.
Other than the fact that Beto is a man-child, immature, self-absorbed, and entitled, and woefully ignorant of many things to include two Supreme Court decisions concerning firearms.
District of Columbia v. Heller-Summary
States have some leeway when it comes to laws concerning firearms. If you live in a state that is woke then you might have a problem. If you live in a state that is awake concerning the 2nd Amendment, and individual liberty you will be just fine.
What I’m waiting for is some really bright reporter to ask Beto whether—while waiting for the national ban to kick in— he would be in favor of mass confiscations in jurisdictions that already make it almost impossible to legally possess a firearm. New York City, for example. Or Chicago. Surely the police should prioritize neighborhoods with high rates of illegal gun possession, given that their citizens are the ones most affected by gun violence?
Maybe the police could, y’know, stop people on the streets in these neighborhoods and frisk them for weapons?
I don’t think the left has a conception of the issue. There are something like 600,000,000+ guns in the US. Those are probably owned by about 100,000,000+ people. Instituting some sort of gun confiscation scheme on a population that large with that many weapons is just plain not feasible. You can’t make that many people criminals. All you will succeed in doing is instilling less respect for the law and our institutions than you have now.
If I’d dated him in high school, I’d be embarrassed to admit it now. He talks like a thirteen year old girl.
There really aren’t plenty of people who would be happy to join the police, period. Full stop.
Hiring and retention are perennial problems for law enforcement agencies.
Beto wants us to imagine chagrined deplorables in wife-beaters, handing over their ARs under the stern and humiliating gaze of the woke robo-cops of his fervid imagination.
But we already know what this looks like. We know, from existing “anti-gun” jurisdictions there will still be plenty of guns and plenty of gun violence (New York, Chicago, Baltimore, Washington, DC) and that shootings will continue to be most prevalent in welfare-dependent neighborhoods disproportionately inhabited by black and brown people. Beto won’t like the optics of gun enforcement in these neighborhoods. Since the real problem is the welfare-dependency and its sequelae, together with lousy mental health care, the problem of gun violence will not be solved and therefore police work will go right on being difficult and dangerous. Police officers will still end up having to shoot suspects and, Beto’s politics being what they are, the police will still be thrown under the bus by progressives desperate to prove their “ally” bona fides.
Who would want to be a cop under those conditions?
When I rode along with some police officers in San Francisco ten years or so ago, they told me that the hiring boards considered prior military service (oh, and having played football in high school) as a mark against a candidate. Leftists don’t live in reality, and Beto is no exception.
They will not go for all guns at first. They will go after “assault rifle” and keep redefining “assault rifle” to take more and more guns.
A bit of gun trivia here. “Assault rifle” were originally designed by the Germans during WWII. They were given that name German word Sturmgewehr (which translates to “assault rifle”)by Adolf Hitler. The term is used to describe a selective fire (between full auto and semi auto fire), intermediate cartridge (not high powered), detachable magazine short barrel rifle or carbine.
Potential candidates for law enforcement agencies are far more selective now about the agency they will be willing to join. Portland has a little over 100 positions that they cannot fill. Portland like Seattle has two city council members that not only dislike police officers, they hate them.
I guess if playing high school football is a mark against a candidate in San Francisco I would have been out of luck getting the job since I played full contact competitive ice hockey. The oral interview would have ended my chances if I told the oral board that no verse in the Bible says the meek shall inherit the ice. Mentioning the Bible would have been another strike against me as well.
You might see some sheriffs “deputize” entire counties.
San Angelo Times story:
You would see massive resistance by gun owners and the refusal of most law enforcement officers to enforce such a ban, Federal or statewide. However, door-to-door searches are highly impractical, so the left would really need a national registration scheme in place first (as has happened in other places).
No, Robert O’Rourke is a moron if he thinks law-abiding citizens will roll over and turn in their weapons to his goon squads. Look at how well the “Do Not Call” has worked . . .
They are though. At 10 or 11% depending.
Exactly. When you pass a law that you know won’t be abided or enforced, you’re just planting one more seed in the minds of the public that laws don’t need to be obeyed. It works against the spirit of law and order.
I think you would see similar reactions all across the Rocky Mountain states and the South. Hopefully nearly everywhere.
That’s right. They really haven’t brought that up much in the Democratic Presidential debates, but I’m sure they all know that the practical way to do this is to first roll out mandatory Federal gun registration with the promise to never use it to find guns that are later outlawed. Then a few years down the road you violate that promise because It’s a National Emergency!
I question the automatic assumption that the average man or woman in blue will support the citizen over the government. If and when large-scale bans are put into effect, policemen will act according to their own perceived best interest (like all humans.)
Sure, many LEO’s personally own various rifles including the AR-15. What is that point supposed to imply, that they’ll feel some weird kinship with us?
“Hello fellow gun owner! I see that like me you have an AR-15! You are one of us! Never mind the law, I’ve got your back! Come over for Sunday lunch, we’re having plucked goose, uh, fried chicken.”
Stories of LEO misconduct regarding seizure of personal firearms are perennial and come from all over the country. Following a gun ban, tens of thousands of cops would personally own millions more rifles.
That’s what’ll happen in most cases. Anybody who depends on the virtue of law enforcement officers to save their guns will be disarmed.
So, we would make a plan to devote enormous resources to collect weapons from the people least likely to use them, which targeted class of weapons account for a tiny fraction of gun crimes. Simultaneously, we do nothing that would alleviate the epidemic of gun deaths in the inner cities.
Maybe a Beto bumper sticker that makes up in candor what it lacks in catchiness:
Harass rural white people and let urban black people die. Beto 2020
Well consider this for starters:
We no longer have decent pain meds. Suggesting to someone whose spine is deteriorating and who suffers chronic pain that yoga or stretching exercises will solve their pain is crazy.
If you object to that program, as you have already tried it, and it didn’t do much for pain, then the medical professional cheerfully states: “We can give you ativan for your pain. Or effexor. Whichever one you want.”
Both of the above are psych meds. Since the general population now seems fine with the idea that anyone who carries the label of being a psych patient should not ever have a gun, the situation has been handled nicely. (In terms of satisfying the Soros, Communistic take over.)
So now the police are not just going in and taking the gun(s) away from just anybody. They are taking them away from a person that society has deemed should not have a gun – not ever.
So the PTB have killed two birds with one stone. They are moving the chronic pain population off a drug that was extremely cheap, over to drugs that are much more expensive. Ka Ching!
And the problem of gun ownership for that vast number of people has been taken care of as well.
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I live near Utica, NY and they just did one of these:
https://www.wktv.com/content/news/More-than-130-guns-turned-in-at-Utica-buy-back-program-563401241.html
Check out this gem from the A.G.: “overtime it takes a lot of guns out of circulation and it makes the community a safer place overtime.”
It does take a certain level of cajones (and stupidity) to commit a violent crime (I know that sounds weird, but bear with me here….). The type of pathetic milksop that would actually turn in their gun to one of these programs is such an emasculated, spineless coward that the thought of violence under any circumstance would never even cross their mind. So keeping guns out of these pansies hands prevents… what exactly?
And it bugs me to no end that my tax dollars are going towards confiscating private property and severely undercutting the citizen while they’re at it.
@caroljoy, do they really give people Effexor for pain? That is a very creepy drug—I wouldn’t recommend it.
@jamessalerno , I can imagine drug addicts swiping guns from their family members and selling them to the gummint for cash for their next fix.
I used to teach a rifle class in the Bay Area, and at times had families show me their old guns to see if they were ‘any good’. I’d advise them to take the non-functional ones and real beaters to the next ‘buy back’ and use the $ they received to buy ammo for the good ones or to purchase something decent. Yup, kept the community real safe by sending those junkers to the scrapper – I’m a giver!
My doctor went on sabbatical a few years ago. The only doctor whose schedule was free enough to see me at the Adventist Health clinic was a staunch 7th Day Adventist. She was horrified that I had used vicodin for 30 years. She didn’t care that usually I got one prescription for fifty pills that was set up to last for 365 days that year. No excuses – even if I lost the vial of pills the day after I filled the Rx, it would not have been filled for a year.
My back had been X rayed and it had been determined that my spine was eroding. One specialist said in 2009 that I’d be in a wheelchair in 5 years.
Anyway this woman doctor imposed her religious beliefs on my prescription. Only thing she recommended was Effexor. I went home, looked at the 2 page list of adverse side effects, and refused to take it. My real doctor returned in three weeks and I went back on vicodine.
And good news: as far as my spine, my spinal deterioration has gone away. A program of swimming for 45 minutes three times a week has ended my struggles with usual back pain. This is not because swimming ends pain. But rather, this occured because consistent exercise over a period of years will sometimes build up the bones in the body, due to increased immune system enhancement, increased circulation and other reasons as well.
BB or Airsoft?
Pure genius.