by Bob Unruh
Is it possible – or even imaginable – that in the United States of America, police could go door to door and confiscate citizens’ legally owned firearms?
To many, such a concern is conspiratorial and evidence of paranoia. They might be surprised to learn that not only has outright gun confiscation of legally purchased weapons already occurred in a major way in the U.S., but public officials in some areas are right now attempting to pass legislation to allow more of the same.
Alas, with the national furor over multiple new gun restrictions being proposed by President Obama via “executive action,” in Congress, in state legislatures and in municipalities, the plan being forwarded by officials in Guntersville, Ala., this week drew scarcely a mention in the media.
Mayor Leigh Dollar says that in case of an emergency or crisis, she wants police officers to have the authority to “disarm individuals, if necessary.”
“We are not trying to infringe upon anyone constitutional rights whatsoever,” she says. “It’s just to protect the workers working out there in a disaster.”
The ordinance is up for debate at the city council meeting next week.
Such blatant grabs for guns are not new in the U.S. Less than a year ago, the Second Amendment Foundation fought a court battle over a North Carolina regulation that banned firearms and ammunition outside the home during any declared emergency, and won.
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And just days ago, it was revealed that a provision in a new Washington-state gun-control bill was so draconian that even its sponsors backtracked or denied any knowledge of it when they were confronted about it.
As Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat reported , the “Orwellian” measure would allow the county sheriff to inspect the homes of owners of so-called “assault weapons” to ensure the weapons were stored properly.
In the post-Newtown debate, Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke speaks for many of the nation’s sheriffs in saying such firearms seizure plans are flat-out unconstitutional and they won’t enforce them.
“The people in Milwaukee County do not have to worry about me enforcing some sort of order that goes out and collects everybody’s handgun, or rifles, or any kind of firearm and makes them turn them in,” he told radio talker Alex Jones. “The reason is I don’t want to get shot, because I believe that if somebody tried to enforce something of that magnitude, you would see the second coming of an American Revolution, the likes of which would make the first revolution pale by comparison.”
Is such a scenario even imaginable in the United States of America – the scene of officers pounding on your door, or worse yet, inside your home throwing you up against a wall and pounding on you because happen to have a legally owned weapon for self-defense?
Although many Americans don’t know it, that is exactly what happened in New Orleans 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.”
In a series of videos, the NRA has documented the stunning weapons grab by police in New Orleans, assembling videos that show them physically taking weapons from individuals, including one woman who was stunned when officers threw her against her kitchen wall because she had a small handgun for self-defense.
The police actions – many of the victims describe the gun confiscation as out-and-out theft – left New Orleans’ residents, who had been prepared to stand their ground and defend themselves from thugs and looters running amok, completely defenseless.
Richard Thompson, president of the Thomas More Law Center, told WND such plans “start smacking of a non-The United States of America” and more of “some Third World country.”
The government, he said, appears to want ever more control over people’s lives, which “is crippling the ability of people to defend themselves … in situations like a Hurricane Katrina where the police were nowhere around and people were taking up arms to protect their property.”
He noted that since the U.S. Supreme Court has determined police do not have a constitutional obligation to protect people from crime, self-reliance often can be the key to survival.
Gun confiscation schemes, then, mean “we’re going to have a citizenry that is helpless in the face of lawless people.” And that, said Thompson, is simply unconstitutional.
Herb Titus, a nationally known constitutional attorney and law professor, told WND government’s claim always is that such draconian powers will only be used “in an emergency situation.”
But there are so many “emergencies,” he said, that “all of our rights are in jeopardy.”
“It’s typical of the government to do this, typical of this age. You see the government believes it can make the decision for you better than you can make it for yourself. There’s a lot of this from the Obama administration,” he said.
The result? Government “as our master, rather than servant,” he said.
The danger is great, he added, noting that all the major scourges around the globe – Hitler, Mao, Stalin – started with weapons confiscation from victim populations.
Mathew Staver, chairman of the public interest law firm Liberty Counsel, told WND Americans “should be shocked and rightly concerned” at attempts to ban and confiscate guns.
“This is a significant threat to our freedoms,” he said. “When the government takes away the ability to defend yourself, it crosses the line.”
Recorded testimonies from the NRA videos are stunning, including these statements from law-abiding residents of New Orleans who were subject to the c
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