Holiday Tweener News Links

We have fortunately arrived home. Unfortunately, I must have picked up someone’s flu along the way. I guess the real difficulty of holiday season travel is that everyone has to go home, no matter how sick they are. I didn’t think to get some of that hand gel until the fever started. But so far it’s mild, knock on wood. I’ll bet gas pumps are a pretty significant disease vector this time of year. But through the haze of a cocktail of drugs, here’s the news:

Our savior.

Stop, fondle, go. TSA: Teaching kids it’s OK to let strangers touch you.

NYSRPA update on SAFE Act lawsuit. If charging a 20 dollar tax on every purchase of ammunition is constitutional, the Second Amendment might as well not even be in the Bill of Rights. This is not about stopping criminals. It’s about discouraging citizens from exercising their rights.

Who needs more than seven or ten rounds for their firearm?

Isn’t bargaining one of the stages of grief? This is a good sign their movement is on the ropes. They know they can’t shove it down our throats, so they want to negotiate. No. I’ll get all those things they are offering without having to bargain for it.

People are less supportive of universal background checks when the implications are explained.

Hickenlooper has a modest 2014 agenda. Of course he does. He has to convince the rubes he’s really a moderate.

Interesting case on whether gun ownership can trigger a no-knock raid for a non-violent offense. I’d generally prefer to see no-knock raids reserved only for hardened, violent criminals.

5 thoughts on “Holiday Tweener News Links”

  1. I’ve been an LEO for 38 years and a SWAT member for several of them. The mere fact of someone in the house lawfully possessing should never be a reason for a no knock entry. We always based that decision on the known history of the occupants of the house. If there was no history or expectation of violence, we suited up, had the tools ready but did a knock and announce. If they had a violent history then we used no knocks.

    1. The thing is, no knock raids are terrible tactical missions. Why bust into some ones house in the middle of the night where the guy might be armed and give him and his friends time to grab weapons, instead of waiting for him to leave and surprise him where he doesn’t have the tactical advantage.

      No knock raids should be banned for the unconstitutional acts they are.

  2. Lower courts rejected Quinn’s objection to the “no-knock” entry on the grounds that because police had information that guns were present at the residence, they were justified in making a forced and unannounced invasion into Quinn’s home. Although established Fourth Amendment jurisprudence dictates that police officers entering a dwelling must knock on the door and announce their identity and purpose before attempting a forcible entry, police may disregard the knock and announce rule under circumstances presenting a threat of physical violence or a danger that evidence will be destroyed.

    So does that mean that if you own guns in a state where registration is required, registering your guns essentially waives many of your 4A protections? I wonder how long until owning a registered gun can qualify as “exigent circumstances” and allow entry without a warrant at all?

    Seems that perversely it may be safer to NOT register your guns, make it harder to justify the no-knock, and at least give your dog a chance at survival.

  3. For the last one, no-knock raids are RARELY done for hardened violent criminals. SWAT members might get shot at! Instead they choose more intelligent tactics like calling the house and telling them they won free stuff, and need to go to a location to pick up the loot.

    No-Knock raids are almost always done against soft targets and later used to justify the insane budgets used to keep SWAT teams in ever smaller towns.

  4. ” SWAT members might get shot at! Instead they choose more intelligent tactics like calling the house and telling them they won free stuff. . .”

    One of my Old Stories from my late teens, in the pre-SWAT early 1960s, is that the cops were working a scam on my crowd of friends, setting up a frame to get them to rat out each other on who knows what. One of my friends who had already been picked up overheard a conversation in the cophouse, that they wanted to bring me in next. But in those days, out in the country, we had our own backyard rifle range from which the cops heard gunfire almost every day. So one detective said to the other, “Go pick him up.” The other said, “Why don’t you go pick him up?” Then one of them said, “You know what? Maybe we ought to send out a couple patrol cars to pick him up.” A patrolman said, “Here’s an idea; why don’t you just call him up and ask if he would come in?”

    Which they did. And I came in. And they placed me under arrest for a crime that had never actually been committed. And I went dead silent. So, they took me to their puppet judge, to have bail set, at which time my parents spotted that they hadn’t filled in any charges on the papers, and were leaving that open. So my mother grabbed me by the arm and said “We’re getting the eff outta here,” and we all walked out the door as the cops stood there with their jaws hanging. And that was the last I heard, personally, about that little scam, though a number of my acquaintances at the time ratted out each other for everything they had done, or said they had done, back to First Grade. (Fortunately, I hadn’t ever done anything, at least, that they knew about.) I was fortunate in having a street-wise father and mother, rather than the Good Citizens the other kids were blessed with.

    But the point of the story is how reticent those pre-SWAT cops were to use force, when there were guns known to be waiting on the other side. In that scenario, all sides became downright civilized.

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