This is what gun control means, at the end of the day, and all over a single empty shell casing:
Police based their search on a charge made by Mr. Witaschek’s estranged wife, who had earlier convinced a court clerk to issue a temporary restraining order against her husband for threatening her with a gun, although a judge later found the charge to be without merit.
After entering the house, the police immediately went upstairs, pointed guns at the heads of Mr. Witaschek and his girlfriend, Bonnie Harris, and demanded they surrender, facedown and be handcuffed.
In recalling what followed, Mr. Witaschek became visibly emotional in describing how the police treated him, Ms. Harris and the four children in the house.
His 16-year-old son was in the shower when the police arrived. “They used a battering ram to bash down the bathroom door and pull him out of the shower, naked,†said his father. “The police put all the children together in a room, while we were handcuffed upstairs. I could hear them crying, not knowing what was happening.â€
This is what gun control means. It means guns being pointed at you and your family. It means sixteen year olds being dragged out of the shower naked because their father is in unlawful possession of a hunk of inert brass.
And for the gun control folks out there, and I know you guys lurk, I actually want to see you justify this. Tell me, is how we should treat citizens in a free society? Do we need to call out the gestapo over brass and a forgotten dud shotgun round? Because this is what you advocate, and you should face the ugliness of the reality you advocate, rather than to only revel in the idealistic fantasies you invent to justify it all.
Is This What Gun Control Advocates Want?
Yes. The only thing the hard core ones are upset about is that this is not happening on an even more widespread basis. Joan Peterson would shed a tear of joy if SWAT teams shot a thousand dogs tomorrow.
Joan Peterson has said that sure reducing crime is nice and all but as long as gun control laws hurt the gun culture then she’s a-okay with it.
http://www.weerdworld.com/2013/quote-of-the-day-joan-peterson-5/
Joan would see this as perfectly cromulent, as it sends the right message to all the proles.
reading this I became I’ll. How can we help?
Oh, most would deny it emphatically, but then again, they have abandoned the logic and reason which would inexorably lead them to conclude that their views do indeed mean that they support this.
“This is what gun control means.”
Actually, to be fair, it is what coming to the attention of the police means, and has always meant. But of course gun control gives them another tool, and another excuse, and if anything, things have been getting worse for a long time as the police have been militarizing.
I don’t disagree. There are plenty of other laws on the books I don’t think are worth SWAT teams pointing guns at people, but I pointed them all out I’d be Radley Balko with fewer readers :)
Emily Miller once again reporting the story that usually goes unreported. The real costs of gun control!
That’s why we fight so hard. We understand it’s our own necks at risk. We are the target of so-called “common sense gun-control”.
And reporting it with details that don’t ordinarily get reported, in a way that ensures most people who aren’t complete monsters are revolted.
in a way that ensures most people who aren’t complete monsters are revolted.
I’d wager that at least a third of the country would be a-ok with how the victim was treated. In parts of the country, like the Occupied Tory Territories (NY, MD, DC, etc) the percentage is likely higher.
If you are a gun owner living in a Tory dominated territory, the writing is in the wall. You need to move or go underground. The legislatures have spoken. The executive authorities, state and local and federal, will enforce these laws. The courts will not help, generally speaking. Worst of all, socially speaking, your neighbors want you dead or in prison.
Choosing to live in DC as a gun owner is like a jew deciding to take a job in Berlin in the 1930s.
It might not be right, nor Constitutional, but its reality, and if you don’t want to end up dead or in prison, with a terrorized family, wrecked house, and a ventilated dog — GTFO.
I lived in DC as a gun owner for years…pre-and post heller. Here is the funny thing. Pre-Heller, owning a long gun was not that big of a deal. Okay, it seems like a big deal if you are from Vermont, but it was doable. The firearm registration office opened up at 7:30 AM and the process was straight forward.
After Heller it got worse for long gun owners as they applied the uber strict handgun rules to long guns…which required training (including live fire). I explained to my Council woman that requiring handgun proficiency to own a shotgun was like requiring someone learn how to drive a motorcycle to get a license to drive a car.
The real story here, IMHO is how in a post 9/11, mega Homeland Security budget world, every warrant is served with a such a large team of commandos. It is all about spending, justifying the money they get from DHS.
I think DC will eventually get better for gun owners. Unfortunately, there will be a lot innocent people getting dinged before they do.
The problem is that this drive to control goes waaaaay deeper than just guns. There is a substantial percentage of the population on this planet that firmly believes that they are ENTITLED to the fruits of YOUR labor. Maybe it’s because we are a cooperative hierarchical species of monkeys.
Such an arrangement works fine when you’re in a small tribe of 100 or so, where essentially everyone is related or knows each other. Sharing pretty much everything makes absolute sense in that world, but I would point out that in that world, everyone is also doing their fair share of the work. The advent of the industrial revolution did not eliminate the evolutionary advantageous trait of cooperation in us.
The folks who are comfortable with the state using its “legal” monopoly of force to go forth and confiscate the people’s arms are usually the same people who are perfectly comfortable with the state using that same monopoly of force to go out and make sure that every productive citizen pays its tribute (taxes) to the state. You’re either liberty oriented or you’re not. There isn’t a whole lot of room for in-between in my book.
Sebastian, as principled as your challenge is to advocates of gun control, it falls onto deaf ears.
Those are the sorts of people who have always accepted the premise that you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs, and that the suppression of unpopular rights of minorities is an acceptable cost for utopia.
Furthermore, individuals who operate on their own authority even to the point of taking life and death decisions into their own hands is deeply frightening to them, and so therefore, in their minds, such people are righteously deserving of such treatment.
That IS their proposition, laid out plain to see, connected dots that forms a line in the dust. You won’t be changing any minds with this challenge, but you will be illuminating who the opposition is and what they ultimately stand for.
Not that they would ever recognize or accept the premise. Lots of folks spend their lives entirely in denial of the consequences of their axioms.
Bingo!
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
C. S. Lewis
It’s been said before. It’s still true. Geek has it just right.
Having grown up in DC, and endured those ramifications (example: each year my motorcycle was rejected at the DC vehicle inspection station for the headlight “being too bright” despite BMW having embossed the federal DOT approval number on the headlight lens, all of which required a trip downtown to the DMV with a copy of the federal regs and approval paperwork…) anyone who is a gun owner in DC and not a drug dealing gang member is just stupid. I moved out after they passed the latest round of draconian gun registration laws in 1976, the same laws that put Mr. Witaschek behind bars for “possession of unregistered ammunition” and a piece of empty brass.
But…and it’s a slim “but” – played right, this is another trip to the Supreme Court for Mr. Gura, and I suspect it will be a really damn successful one. In the meantime, if one wants to own a gun one really, really should plan on not living in DC, and great thanks to Emily Miller for keeping up the heat on this stuff.
Alright, I gotta defend DC here. I’ve lived there of and on from the dark years of the late 80s until very recently. It has changed leaps and bounds for the better. If you are a city person, it is a great place to live. Crime is a fraction of what it was. I really miss the quality of life we had in our Cap. Hill neighborhood. Much (but not all) of the issues you had with dmv have been solved. It’s not perfect, but it is much better than other cities I have lived.
Yes, some things really suck…including the gun laws, but they have gotten better (no thanks to NRA BTW. They don’t give a rats ass about helping DC gunowners).
Beatbox, the DMV crap was just the tip of the iceberg, and the iceberg goes way deeper than just owning guns. Try being a contractor – of any type, mine was a technology outfit – and dealing with DC gov’t. I did, first as a DC resident trying to get permits, pay the extra taxes, etc., then as a Virginia resident with whom DC had contracted for services. I’m hard pressed to say which experience was worse. As for “improvement,” that should have been easy; there was pretty much no place to go but up. I’ll also assume from your comment that you don’t have to deal with DC agencies very much in daily life. Consider that a blessing.
Yes. You are correct on that.
The question is how long until something breaks one way or the other?
:-|
I am flying this week. Guh…TSA. But I also know I have a thin red line. And if I am ever in a TSA inspection line and see one of those MoFo’s abusing and terrorizing a 4 year old child to tears. I’m going down. They will have to taze me. But I will make sure they leave the little kid alone. Cause I will say ENOUGH!!!!
Our government is fast approaching a level of ethics in which the agreement to honoring them is null and void. Doesn’t mean I am going to go out and seek trouble. But damn it, I am not going to turn a blind eye either.
Don’t forget about incidents like this
http://www.mrcolionnoir.com/news/deputies-kill-13-year-old-who-was-carrying-fake-rifle/
News reports are usually wrong. This story only has one side; there is no mention that the author has any idea of the police or wife’s side of the story. Don’t go all “Justice for Trayvon” out of the gate and immediately believe a story just because you are predisposed to believe it.
That! DC gun owners owe a lot to Emily, but she does like to come out strong with the hyperbola.
Hyperbole…Emily prone to exaggeration, not drawing geometric shapes.
They had a warrent based on hearsay, ex wife wanting a restraining order is not evidence, they invaded this guys home with excessive force, they arrested him for his daughter having a single, empty, casing with a used primer.
If ANY of the stated things are even partially true, there is no possible justification for a “other side”.
10,000.00 wort of damage, they found a holster, one live 12 ga round that was a misfire, one fired 270 case, and a box of muzzloader bullets. If you dont know what those are, they are inert projectiles only, as dangerous as a ball bearing. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/23/miller-dc-businessman-faces-two-years-jail-unregis/
and a box of .40 cal ammo
Unregistered and unlicensed .40 cal ammo. (Not that they license the ammo, but he doesn’t have a DC license to possess guns OR ammo in DC … you know what I mean.)
It’s not that he wasn’t in violation of the law. It’s that the law is pointless and unconstitutional; and that the methods used in its enforcement are far more dangerous than the violation was to begin with; and that it’s not being applied equally to all. Well-connected liberal darling David Gregory was not arrested or charged with his possession of a 30-round magazine – illegal in DC – even though millions of witnesses clearly saw it on national television. If Wayne LaPierre had picked it up off the table during that interview, you can bet the Attorney General of DC would have wanted some “words” with him over the “unlawful transfer and possession.” But David Gregory? Not so much.
(And don’t get me started on Dianne Feinstein’s illegal display of “assault weapons” while stumpting for more “gun control.” She had to get them from somewhere. Just sayin’.)
See, that is where Emily gets it wrong. There was nothing “illegal” about DiFi’s display of the weapons. They technically were in possession of the cops the whole time. The thrust should have been how the police were selectively helping out anti-gun politicians.
I haven’t read all the comments so forgive if someone else already brought this point up, but the premise that these people want to live in a free society is not one I am fully prepared to believe they share.
Someone could have been hurt by that brass.
Nearly as bad as a Lego to step on, you know.
For the children.
Nah. Legos are worse. Spent brass doesn’t have all those sharp corners and pointy edges.
Plus, they’re expelling kids from school for Lego guns now. That just proves how bad they are!
Here’s an idea: Ban all Lego products. They are a clear-and-present danger to bare feet and schools everywhere, not to mention the choking hazard for toddlers. It’s common sense.
Like you said: For the children.
“Is this what gun control advocates want?”
Yes. Absolutely.
In their honest moments (honest to themselves, most of all) they’ll admit it. Usually they won’t.
They want exactly this because it makes owning a firearm legally difficult, oppressive, and dangerous. That discourages people from owning firearms. That means fewer of those dangerous souls who dare to own guns and actually believe in liberty.
It’s a long game they’re playing. They’ll never give up the goal, only the means to get there. They’ll wrap it in “common sense” or “for the children” or whatever tag line gets political traction at the time. But the end goal is always the same: to disarm the civilian population.
In their heart of hearts, most of them don’t really think of the implications of that. They see guns as “icky” and things that only “rednecks” and “mouthbreathers” have, not civilized folks like themselves; they and everyone they know is better than that. The idea that ultimately government itself is the greatest threat to liberty doesn’t register in their minds; government is “us” and they only want what they define as best for us (they are stuck on the civics book idea of gov’t “of the people;” naive to the end). Never matter if you don’t agree with their vision; you own a gun and your opinion doesn’t count. You’re a redneck mouthbreather, don’t you know.
And let’s not forget the cops involved: not a one of them had a problem with terrifying kids and sticking guns in faces and tearing up a house for a matter that SHOULD have been done with a knock on the door followed by “Sir, we have a warrant to search.”
I’m gettin God-damned sick of reading about crap like this, committed by badge-carriers who seem to think they’re in bloody Kandahar Province instead of screwing over the citizens.
The difference, Firehand, is that we’re not allowed to treat the Afghanis like that. No commander would approve a raid like that. Not one.
The state attorney who takes this to trial is an idiot because he will lose the case big time then the victims of this armed home invasion can go after the dirt bags that did it. (And they are maggots and dirtbags) This case has to become a national fightfor American Patriots right to freedom and the gestapo thugs must have their noses rubbed into that freedom.