Veterans with distinguished service history end up with SWAT teams called on them:
He saw about 25 officers in full body armor and Kevlar helmets, carrying M4 assault weapons. SWAT and explosive ordinance disposal teams were on all sides. Streets were barricaded for blocks. The veteran knew how to surrender with the least chance of being hurt. He put his hands over his head and spun around so they could clearly see he was unarmed. “I looked down and saw 10 jiggly red dots all over my chest,†he said, appearing afraid at the memory. “I crumbled.â€
All for the crime of having three pistols in the District of Columbia, an act that in the rest of America, is not remotely a crime, and is supposedly constitutionally protected.
“They immediately zip-tied me tighter than I would have been allowed to zip-tie an Iraqi,â€Â Sgt. Corrigan said, pulling up his dress shirt cuff to show his wrist. “We had to check to fit two fingers between the tie and the Iraqi’s wrist so we weren’t cutting off circulation. They tied mine so tight that they hurt.â€
Read the whole sad thing. This is going to be a multi-part series from Emily Miller. Got anyone in the office or a family member who loves themselves some gun control? Show them this article and ask them if this is the America they want, because what happened to Sgt. Corrigan is what gun control is. This is exactly what it boils down to.
You’ll never get the gun grabbers to admit it …
And Emily Miller needs to get an award from the NRA for daring to document the crap DC residents have to go through to exercise an enumerated right.
It sounds as if the hotline operator, for whatever reason, stopped listening at the mention of “gun” and then turned around and told the MPD that there was a crazy ex-military guy with a gun in a house. After that, the rest was on autopilot. At a minimum, that operator should be canned and the rest given remedial training.
And I’d guess that all involved have watched one too many movies of the “Jacob’s Ladder” genre.
The worst part is that for sure, many vets who could really use a hotline at 3am after five sleepless nights now won’t, with tragic results.
Worse, never, ever mention guns to anyone in the mental health field, and almost certainly in medicine; in this case as you indicate the guy called a “confidential” VA hotline because of insomnia, according to what he was reported to say in the first or second article.
When it comes to guns, the VA has shown time and again they aren’t the friends of veterans; don’t know how bad other organization’s hotlines are.
Exactly right. Where there is no trust, there is no relationship. Vets are on their own and they know it. Same old story.
When in a gun-grabber state / territory, never admit to owning a gun unless you absolutely have to.
Fixed it for you.
If anyone other than your lawyer is talking to cops, you are doing it wrong. A lawyer will never admit that you committed a crime. As far as he is concerned, that gun fell from a passing aircraft.
The article says he knew he was supposed to register his guns, but the process was too convoluted and he didn’t see any way to legally do it since he already owned guns when he moved to DC. I don’t doubt this is true. DC is set up so you can spend weeks to months of your time to buy a new gun but even then there are times you are quasi-legal and subject to arrest (as Miller’s earlier reporting showed). This is why I view it with skepticism any time somebody in DC, Boston, Chicago or other such places is arrested with an “illegal gun.”
Also, the hotline operator did a tremendous disservice to all servicemen, since this kind of thing gets well-known quickly and will discourage anyone with mental health issues from getting help.
This is an example of thee other kind of “registration leads to confiscationâ€. They can forcibly confiscate all guns that aren’t registered.
I’d submit this had little to do with gun control, per se, other than as a pretext for a raid. The sergeant sticking bubble gum under the seat of a chair would have served as well for an excuse, for paramilitary troops who spend too much time all dressed up with no place to go. Coming to their attention is the key crime.
I hope he sues the dogsh*t out of them. What fantasy land to people live in to make them think that they want to live in a country that treats it’s citizens– nay, it’s very defenders– in this fashion? Beyond despicable.
why in the hell did they use zip ties in the first place?
Tom, in a situation where you have to secure a large number of suspects you can carry more zip ties than handcuffs, and they don’t make keys for zip ties. Thus, they have become standard equipment for tacticool mall ninjas with a badge.
And have been for decades. I remember a cop coming to my middle school c.1986 and showing us, among other things, “plastic handcuffs”, which were nothing but a large zip tie. I’ve never had the pleasure, but I sure hope that the “handcuff” model has rounded off edges compared to the regular kind.
Ironic that the capital of the United States is more like Canada than it is like America.