QED.
(nothing to add)
I don't think this quote especially applies to Denver or Aurora PD, and certainly not to Los Angeles, Baltimore, Chicago, New York City, Boston, or any other liberal big city police force.
Denver PD conducted a violent arrest of a symbolic, peaceful protestor, an image I will never forget nor forgive. It would have been enough for them to have one officer put his hand on the man's shoulder and announce, "I place you under arrest." But no, a bunch of officers jumped him, tackled him and, with knees to the neck and back, and in what might even have been a choke hold, put handcuffs in the most violent way possible. Despicable and unforgivable. The 98% who give the other 2% a bad name.
One does not need to ‘take’ your guns. The Gov’t simply creates so many laws, that joe will eventually brake said law and will become a ‘criminal’ who will be denied their right to carry such a gun.
There in fact aren’t many units in police or military that can do the type of sweeps that would be required under gun confiscation. Most are trained for dynamic entry and most of the rest for field engagement. Problem is that once the word gets out they are going house to house, you won’t just be dealing with dynamic entry, you will have field engagement in an urban setting, arguably the most difficult of all engagements.
To imagine the difficulty of that, Walmart, the biggest non-govt employer in the U.S., has about 800K employees in the CONUS. IF, and it’s a big if, we could muster that level of troops for sweeps, imagine your local Walmart employees armed and trained to go thru the community and confiscate guns? Do you REALLY think that few people could accomplish such a task?
There is the ‘Mogadishu Line’ where you are so outnumbered on so many sides that no matter how good you are, you are just overwhelmed. That is what we’d have in a gun confiscation scenario. Keep in mind that many resisting gun confiscation would also have significant military combat experience from a number of different wars.
Please, Lord, let Hussein try to take our guns away. Please.
In Printz v. United States, (June 27, 1997), Judge Scalia for the Court stated:
...”Finally, and most conclusively in the present litigation, we turn to the prior jurisprudence of this Court. Federal commandeering of state governments is such a novel phenomenon that this Court’s first experience with it did not occur until the 1970’s, when the Environmental Protection Agency promulgated regulations requiring States to prescribe auto emissions testing, monitoring and retrofit programs, and to designate preferential bus and carpool lanes. The Courts of Appeals for the Fourth and Ninth Circuits invalidated the regulations on statutory grounds in order to avoid what they perceived to be grave constitutional issues, see Maryland v. EPA, 530 F. 2d 215, 226 (CA4 1975); Brown v. EPA, 521 F. 2d 827, 838–842 (CA9 1975); and the District of Columbia Circuit invalidated the regulations on both constitutional and statutory grounds, see District of Columbia v. Train, 521 F. 2d 971, 994 (CADC 1975). After we granted certiorari to review the statutory and constitutional validity of the regulations, the Government declined even to defend them, and instead rescinded some and conceded the invalidity of those that remained, leading us to vacate the opinions below and remand for consideration of mootness. EPA v. Brown, 431 U. S. 99 (1977).
“Although we had no occasion to pass upon the subject in Brown, later opinions of ours have made clear that the Federal Government may not compel the States to implement, by legislation or executive action, federal regulatory programs. In Hodel v. Virginia Surface Mining & Reclamation Assn., Inc. 452 U. S. 264 (1981), and FERC v. Mississippi, 456 U. S. 742 (1982), we sustained statutes against constitutional challenge only after assuring ourselves that they did not require the States to enforce federal law. In Hodel we cited the lower court cases in EPA v. Brown, supra, but concluded that the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act did not present the problem they raised because it merely made compliance with federal standards a precondition to continued state regulation in an otherwise pre-empted field, Hodel, supra, at 288. In FERC, we construed the most troubling provisions of the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978, to contain only the ‘command’ that state agencies ‘consider’ federal standards, and again only as a precondition to continued state regulation of an otherwise pre-empted field. 456 U. S., at 764–765. We warned that ‘this Court never has sanctioned explicitly a federal command to the States to promulgate and enforce laws and regulations,’ id., at 761–762.
“When we were at last confronted squarely with a federal statute that unambiguously required the States to enact or administer a federal regulatory program, our decision should have come as no surprise. At issue in New York v. United States, 505 U. S. 144 (1992), were the so-called ‘take title’ provisions of the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Amendments Act of 1985, which required States either to enact legislation providing for the disposal of radioactive waste generated within their borders, or to take title to, and possession of the waste—effectively requiring the States either to legislate pursuant to Congress’s directions, or to implement an administrative solution. Id., at 175–176. We concluded that Congress could constitutionally require the States to do neither. Id., at 176. ‘The Federal Government,’ we held, ‘may not compel the States to enact or administer a federal regulatory program.’ Id., at 188.
“The Government contends that New York is distinguishable on the following ground: unlike the ‘take title’ provisions invalidated there, the background-check provision of the Brady Act does not require state legislative or executive officials to make policy, but instead issues a final directive to state CLEOs. It is permissible, the Government asserts, for Congress to command state or local officials to assist in the implementation of federal law so long as ‘Congress itself devises a clear legislative solution that regulates private conduct’ and requires state or local officers to provide only ‘limited, non-policymaking help in enforcing that law.’ ‘[T]he constitutional line is crossed only when Congress compels the States to make law in their sovereign capacities.’ Brief for United States 16.
“The Government’s distinction between ‘making’ law and merely ‘enforcing’ it, between ‘policymaking’ and mere ‘implementation,’ is an interesting one. It is perhaps not meant to be the same as, but it is surely reminiscent of, the line that separates proper congressional conferral of Executive power from unconstitutional delegation of legislative authority for federal separation-of-powers purposes. See A. L. A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U. S. 495, 530 (1935); Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan, 293 U. S. 388, 428–429 (1935)”....”Even assuming, moreover, that the Brady Act leaves no ‘policymaking’ discretion with the States, we fail to see how that improves rather than worsens the intrusion upon state sovereignty. Preservation of the States as independent and autonomous political entities is arguably less undermined by requiring them to make policy in certain fields than (as Judge Sneed aptly described it over two decades ago) by ‘reduc[ing] [them] to puppets of a ventriloquist Congress,’ Brown v. EPA, 521 F. 2d, at 839. It is an essential attribute of the States’ retained sovereignty that they remain independent and autonomous within their proper sphere of authority. See Texas v. White, 7 Wall, at 725. It is no more compatible with this independence and autonomy that their officers be ‘dragooned’ (as Judge Fernandez put it in his dissent below, 66 F. 3d, at 1035) into administering federal law, than it would be compatible with the independence and autonomy of the United States that its officers be impressed into service for the execution of state laws.”
I'll bet ya won't see any of these "good guy" cops refusing those arrest warrants or springing targeted citizens taken on the street by surprise.
Nah, Hitler got excellent cooperation from the police and most all of the military, as did the Soviet Communists when they superseded the Nazi command structure.
All the cops had to say in their defense was "I vas onlik folloink orders".
Government attempts to intimidate the population with shows and demonstrations of force will be applied blindly and indiscriminately. That's bad because innocents will be punished along with everyone else. The government goons will succeed in creating more enemies than friends. Liberals and Leftists will be targeted because this is now a civil war. It will not be pretty and there's no guarantee that Obama’s thugs will prevail.
Civilians should be allowed to have whatever weapons law enforcement is allowed to have, for the exact same reasons law enforcement has them.
Either the world is dangerous, and people can arm themselves as they see fit, or it is safe and we can have law enforcement unilaterally disarm “because nobody needs a weapon like a........”
This is the fundamental flaw in the liberal gun grabbing argument.
In todays environment police are arming themselves with every MORE potent weapons, including sniper rifles, automatic weapons along with armored vehicles.
Why should law-abiding citizens not be allowed the same tools as the police?
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - The Gulag Archipelago
bump
Bullshit..... LEO....ALL LEO have been enforcing blatantly unconstituonal
laws and regulations for decades. When they are offered the choice of
enforcing any new anti 2A laws and unemployment they will do what they
have always done....tell their massa’s who sign their paychecks “yessa bossman, right away”.
98% of LEO’s will do what they’re told and not even complain much. If you’re relying on cops to protect you or your rights, you’re naive. Besides, direct confiscation is unnecessary. A $10,000/yr possession tax enforced by the IRS with compounded penalties would scare 90% of the guns out the hands of Americans. We’ve seen from obamacare that the SCOTUS will stomach any sort of tax.
I can foresee something like this being attempted. However, I do not think any local LEOs would be tasked with this.
IMO it would be non-local uniformed personnel of some Gov't agency tasked with this. If it happens, this is how, IMO, it will be staffed.
"People that spend $500 on a nice handgun are almost never the problem when it comes to violent crime. It's the ones who pick up a junk gun for $50 on the street."
"Levying new taxes on all handguns like the tax stamps on class three weapons" would likely prevent new guns from being purchased by most violent criminals
How stupid is this guy? 'The expensive guns bought legally aren't the problem, so let's make the guns bought legally more expensive.'
Anyone who thinks cops, especially in the cities will not follow whatever orders they’ve been handed from above is delusional, and hasn’t been paying adequate attention.