Perhaps there was some predicate that many/most of us would agree justified law enforcement activity.
Perhaps the owner’s ex-wife made up a bunch of stuff in a custody dispute.
Perhaps the feds didn’t like the shop owner’s politics.
Perhaps the feds are making an example of someone to intimidate others, on unsettled issues like “pistol braces” and “ghost guns”. A massive gestapo raid is a tell that this was for show.
The point being that the government does deserve the benefit of the doubt. They need to provide facts to the public immediately lest negative assumptions rule.
No, they don't.
Most government officials want ordinary citizens disarmed and unable to even think about resisting criminal predators. They are very plain spoken on this point. The facts and the restraints of law simply do not matter to them.
Government officials have a long history of harassing gun owners and anyone supplying gun owners. They use a tangled web of "gotcha" regulations and "laws", every one of which is flagrantly unconstitutional.
"Unconstitutional"? I don't think that word means what you think it means. (Apologies to The Princess Bride)
We don't have the backstory in this case. When no information is available, you go with the odds. They don't favor the government being honest or truthful.
Innocent until proven guilty suggests to me that the arrested person deserves the benefit of the doubt, not the people arresting him.
And I am sort of giving them the benefit of the doubt, I didn’t call them Jack booted government thugs. Who have a history of storming political opponents. With SWAT teams
Far as I’m concerned unless I’m there viewing it myself the government never deserves the benefit of the doubt in these situations. Not after Ruby ridge, not after waco, not after the little Cuban boy in Miami that they kidnapped. Respect for the government has to be earned and they’re doing a piss poor job of that
“The point being that the government does deserve the benefit of the doubt.”
How quaint. That used to be the case when America was still America. Didn’t need no stinkin’ 4473’s or whatever.