When push comes to shove, who will the police side with?
In Louisiana following Katrina, they confiscated people’s means of defense. And now in Canada? Same shit, different moose:
A flurry of recent stories about police knocking on – and sometimes knocking in – people’s front doors have raised alarms in both the U.S. and Canada about whether the home is still constitutionally protected from increasing police power.
As WND reported, High River, Alberta, has become a recent focal point of the controversy, when it was revealed Royal Canadian Mounted Police entered the flooded town after a mandatory evacuation, broke down doors and began confiscating “several hundred” firearms.
[…]
In High River, RCMP and province officials assured citizens the only guns taken were those “improperly secured” and “in plain view” – to be stored for safekeeping and returned to residents after the evacuation ended.
But Michael Coren of Canada’s Sun News says the authorities are “lying, because we know the police actually broke locks to get into cupboards to find out if there were guns there.”
High River resident Cam Fleury believes his house, which sits at a high point free of floodwater, was targeted by the RCMP. The following video shows his front door was broken down, and police made a bee-line for his gun cabinet:
The RCMP’s actions drew a rebuke from Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper, whose office issued a statement: “If any firearms were taken, we expect they will be returned to their owners as soon as possible. … We believe the RCMP should focus on more important tasks such as protecting lives and private property.”
Yet civil rights and gun advocates in the country warn that’s not good enough.
Faith Goldy, who has been following the story for Sun News, is concerned about the information authorities were able to gather by invading people’s homes: “Now they’ve got [firearm] serial numbers, they’ve got addresses and there is no mechanism put in place for us now to force them to abolish what has basically become an emergency, back-door [gun] registry.”
“There’s absolutely no way, no how you can justify going into people’s homes and taking their property without a warrant,” asserted Tony Bernardo of the Canadian Sport Shooting Association. “This is Canada! We have laws here!”
“People are protected from having an unwarranted search and seizure,” Goldy added, “[yet] that’s exactly what happened here.”
Gun grabbing nothing new in the U.S.
Americans are similarly protected by the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, which states, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
Yet the Fourth Amendment was sorely tried – or outright ignored, depending on your perspective – when the residents of New Orleans faced similar floodwaters.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, thousands of weapons – legally obtained and owned – were simply grabbed from citizens after New Orleans Police Superintendent P. Edwin Compass III announced, “Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons.”
Just to make sure the message was loud and clear, the city’s Deputy Police Chief Warren Riley told ABC News: “No one will be able to be armed. We are going to take all the weapons.”
Then they did exactly that.
One man at a post-Katrina meeting assembled in conjunction with the National Rifle Association said, “The bottom line is this. Once they did it, they set a precedent. And what we’ve got to be sure [of] is that the precedent stops here.”
Whether it’s Dudley Dooright or your neighbor the fat cop who joins the HOA because he just can’t get enough of that sweet sweet authoritah, doesn’t much seem to matter in moments of crisis.
As my buddy said in an email, “from a psychological point of view, the entire authoritarian command and control structure of the military, and paramilitary police organizations, is specifically engineered to get people to do things they would never otherwise do (e.g. kill people, take extreme risks to their own life, etc.).”
My advice? Dig a hole in your yard, fortify it, camouflage it, and when you see cops coming for your house in evacuation situations, just keep with you your cheapest disposable handgun. Give it to them while expressing your outrage and displeasure. Get their names.
And then when things calm down, make it your life’s mission to have them removed from any position of authority, along with those who ordered the action, bringing in whatever second amendment group’s legal help you can manage to interest.
Or I suppose you could feign dumb and at the first sound of someone trying to break in your door, pull a Biden on them and then, assuming they don’t follow in and shoot you, tell them the Vice President told you to do it.
(h/t Guido)
Related thoughts from Roger Kimble:
key bit:
On the bright side I suppose, it isn’t really moralizing if it doesn’t involve sex drugs or booze. So there’s that.
I fervently wish for a time when mothers wash out their children’s mouths with soap for saying “Bloomberg.”
No “Lifebuoy” though. Don’t need a generation of blind kids.
I had this argument at Ace’s a day or so ago. We used to respect the police because we trusted them not to roust us. That trust, which was not based on their carrying a firearm has eroded. They “order” things just to see if the public will comply like sheep. If they get caught, it’s laughed off or attributed to “rogue elements.” Bottom line, they know most people will submit to the bullshit. Thus does liberty die.
Here’s an interesting bit from Encounter Books’s item description:
One among the many reasons the Zimmerman trial is gripping (with regard to our political liberties) can be summed in the expression of the non-emergency police operator who spoke to Zimmerman the night of his misfortune: “We don’t need you to do that.”
In the metaphorical sense, George Zimmerman is any free citizen on the ground being beaten senseless by his (moronic teenaged self-presuming) rulers, knowing no other way to turn. Yet put in this corner, the State takes offense when Zimmerman puts his right to continue living to the test, i.e., from the State’s point of view there is no justice in his further existence.
Today, merely making the correct noises and parading one’s essential decency by having the correct opinions has become a substitute for individual moral actions.
It’s called “collective salvation.” It certainly eliminates the problem of actually analyzing a philosophy and understanding it oneself. I mean, there are cocktail parties to organize for Mayors Against Guns, dontcha know.
Most cops I’ve known in my life are, have been, always will be assholes carrying a big stick but lacking any grace to speak quietly. First time I ran into the authoritay complex was back in the 70’s when a Sunday School teacher told us ‘guys’ how cool it was to be a Philly cop, rounding up juvies in the police van on a Saturday night, cuffing them behind their back, sitting them on the bench that ran lengthways along the van, then slamming on the brakes repeatedly for no other reason tham these arch criminals would slam into the walls/floors and get all bloodied up. Yeah, good times. Assholes.
I’ve dealt with a lot of cops over the years and would only characterize three as in any way unprofessional — and none of them were the one who drew on my friend and me in Sacramento years ago. In fact the three in question were on traffic enforcement and I never wondered why.
I’ve probably just been lucky.
probably
My experiences with the boys (and girls) in blue over the years have been sufficient to convince me that the polizei exhibit the same spectrum of behaviour that the rest of us do. Poor behaviour by armed authority, however, rightly comes across as worse.
Oh, OT, but pessimism is bad for one’s health, because epigenetics.
And should never be excused or forgiven. If a sworn officer crosses the line then s/he should be booted forthwith. That doesn’t happen, obviously; but bright lights make department heads uncomfortable, so thanks! to all the ‘little people’ who have and can successfully use their lights…
So, Deputy AJ Ross, of the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Department, why do you still have your badge and gun?
Something strange happened there, serr8d. I read the words ‘Murfreesboro’ and ‘MTSU’, and felt some sympathy for the deputy. Didn’t last long, though.
One among the many reasons the Zimmerman trial is gripping (with regard to our political liberties) can be summed in the expression of the non-emergency police operator who spoke to Zimmerman the night of his misfortune: “We don’t need you to do that.” –
The thought that I’ve had is that society is increasingly trending toward the idea that the people must simply put up with and accept the violence and crime around us. The take-away from the trial is that Zimmerman DARED to try make his community safe- this won’t be allowed anymore. Trayvon was obviously only a petty criminal at this point, so how dare Zimmerman be alert to his presence? That was the in-your-face reaction from Trayvon, which black activists are cheering.
No, the only acceptable place for people to be is cowering in their homes.
There’s only one thing that can stop it. The people who elected the bozos who allowed this apparatus of intimidation to form must be the people who stand up and replace them. All of them. Now.
I beg to disagree with Minogue on this point. There are other things that can stop the creeping totalitarianism we face. They’re not nearly as neat or painless as protests and elections, but they can be just as effective.
I thought we all lost our guns/etc while canoeing?
Alas, but the Mounties recovered all those weapons and planted them in our houses just in time to confiscate them again.
Armed or not — since authorities that are not armed command authorities that are.
In a moment of genuinely perceived danger, a trained cop is driven by precisely the same imperatives as any rightfully armed person: survival. That was why the deputy drew on my friend and me, to ensure that the danger he perceived us to pose did not result in his not going home at the end of his shift.
Fortunately for my friend and me, he grasped why we were carrying those big, heavy items on that dark street even before he finished the pat-down, which was, to prevent perceived danger from becoming actual harm. And when he gave them back to us he offered advice on how to use them if we had to.
We went down that road once before in the 70s. The result was Inspector “Dirty” Harry Callahan, Paul Kersey, architect, and ultimately, Bernhard Goetz, subway vigilante.
It’s Roger Kimball you’re disagreeing with, in point of fact. Kenneth Minogue is the guy elaborating on Lord Acton’s theme from whom Kimball quotes.