Protecting the wrong people

Sarasota Herald-Tribune ("SHT" for short) ^ | 12/29/2003 | some unnamed lackey

[Joe Brower]

Protecting the wrong people
NRA proposal could hamper police, help criminals
Sarasota Herald-Tribune editorial
12/29/2003

The National Rifle Association is so obsessed with slippery-slope, Second Amendment theories that it's pushing for a change in state policy that inadvertently could assist criminals.

Unfortunately, the NRA has the clout in Florida to get the policy change proposed as legislation.

State Rep. Lindsay Harrington, R-Punta Gorda, is sponsoring a bill that would prohibit police departments from keeping permanent records of gun owners who sell or pawn their weapons at pawnshops.

Police have long maintained databases of pawned items to make it easier to locate stolen property. The Broward County Sheriff's Department has included pawned guns in its database. Besides helping recover stolen guns, this has in some cases allowed the department to easily link guns left at crime scenes to the criminals who bought them.

That will no longer happen, however, if Harrington's bill, drafted by the NRA, becomes law. Harrington and the NRA say the policy amounts to gun registration and the profiling of law-abiding owners.

At a legislative hearing on the bill, Broward County's Sgt. Edward Sileo complained that the bill would force police to give up an effective tool.

"We're being punished for being efficient," Sileo said. Instead of letting officers use a computer database to find a weapon left at a crime scene, he said, the proposed bill is "trying to force us to search through millions of paper records. It's crazy."

There's no legitimate reason to treat guns differently from other pawned merchandise when police create a database. Such inclusion in no way violates the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

Police have a hard enough job. Harrington and the NRA shouldn't make that job even more difficult.

[Joe Brower]

I wonder how these buggers would react to a law-enforcement database being built to track their subscribers. "For the children", of course.

MWLWN LABE

[Joe Brower]

I am currently working on a letter to the editor to rebut this recent agitprop in my local spews-paper (a wholly-owned subsidiary of the NYT -- no surprise there).

And and all constructive advice, talking points, and suggestions would be most welcome.

[eastforker]

Those gun transaction are already tracked by the feds.

[coloradan]

To the extent the purpose is tracking stolen goods, people already can record the serial numbers of their own guns and keep the lists themselves. Should the guns be stolen, there is nothing keeping the victims from reporting the make, model, and serial numbers of the stolen guns to the police, who are then fully empowered to identify the stolen ones without also knowing about every non-stolen gun every non-criminal also has. The fact that this solution isn't acceptable to the author of the article suggests that identifying stolen property is at best only tangential to their primary intention. Given that this involves police knowing all the guns owned by all the citizens, one can only speculate about what the main intention might be. Confiscation, perhaps?

[davisfh]

"I wonder how these buggers would react to a law-enforcement database being built to track their subscribers."

I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that such a database already exists.

[coloradan]

There's no legitimate reason to treat guns differently from other pawned merchandise when police create a database. Such inclusion in no way violates the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

There's no legitimate reason to treat abortion recipients differently from other medical cases when police create a database. Such inclusion in no way violates the woman's right to choose.

[the gillman@blacklagoon.com]

These people are about to get their way big time, when next fall, in response to some real or imagined threat, we get a new expanded extreme version of the AWB that includes probably everything but single and double shotguns.

[philman_36]

Instead of letting officers use a computer database to find a weapon left at a crime scene, he said, the proposed bill is "trying to force us to search through millions of paper records. It's crazy."
If the weapon is left at a crime scene then there is no need to have a computer database in order to find it is there? It should be at the crime scene and eyes seem to be the better tool to utilize than a computer database.
Besides helping recover stolen guns, this has in some cases allowed the department to easily link guns left at crime scenes to the criminals who bought them.
There is the cover for the slip and reemphasis of "the intended purpose" of the database.
And the sheep went "Baaaaaaa"...

[ExSoldier]

About six weeks ago I wrote to the Miami Herald on this same topic and they printed the letter. The key point that will (I hope) resonate with the electorate is this: This legislation isn't anti-law enforcement it's Anti-Police State and that's a distinction that liberals and Democrats have never been able to make. That the people can is why the Democrats keep losing on this issue.

[Hat-Trick]

"We're being punished for being efficient," Sileo said. Instead of letting officers use a computer database to find a weapon left at a crime scene, he said, the proposed bill is "trying to force us to search through millions of paper records. It's crazy."

Red Herring alert!:

The privelege of continued liberty demands that we be vigilant to detect and prevent government and it's law enforcement agents from making and keeping lists of those who have the tools to remove them from positions of authority that they temporarily occupy.

Hat-Trick

[blackie]

Be Well ~ Be Armed ~ Be Safe ~ Molon Labe!

[The Old Hoosier]

Keep it to under 200 words.

[TigersEye]

What percentage of crimes are solved with lists of pawnshop firearms transactions? Don't pawnshops have to keep the same record of a transaction that lisenced gun dealers do?

[Joe Brower]

Gun-folks,

Many thanks for the ideas. Below is the letter I just emailed the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. With any luck, it will see print. I just can't let this sort of agitprop go unchallenged.

***

From the beginning title to the very end, the editorial in the Herald-Tribune's Dec. 29, 2003 edition, "Protecting the wrong people", presents a viewpoint so slanted that, despite the obvious derision of the term, it constitutes a "slippery slope" all it's own. By the very words "the wrong people", the thinly veiled allegation is that anyone who would be so crazy as to own a firearm in the first place must be "the wrong people", and are therefore unworthy of any lawful protections of their privacy. After all, every gun is just a crime waiting to happen.

For the record, the NRA provides more firearms training to police across the nation than any other private organization. The notion that the NRA would promote legislation that would hamper police efforts in solving crimes is absurd. And the "slippery slope" is very, very real. Study the history of firearms laws passed since the 1930s -- decade after decade, firearm rights have been steadily and purposefully eroded.

Regardless of how "long standing" databases of pawned items may be, the whole concept is an upside-down idea. Stolen items are reported to police and entered into FCIC and NCIC databases. Transaction forms are delivered by the pawnbroker to police within 24 hours of a pawn or sale, and the information from the form is checked against the databases of stolen items. Property found on these forms that was reported stolen is investigated. Over 99% of all pawned property is legally owned and NOT stolen. And criminals cannot "buy" firearms -- it is already illegal to do so. Any felon pawning a firearm will be arrested under state or federal laws.

So what's the real purpose? To create a back-door firearms registration system. Anyone who doesn't think so is either naïve, duped, or deliberately deceitful.

[ExSoldier]

VERY VERY WELL SAID! And, of course, Amen.

Let me know if they print it. Don't be surprised if it is printed in a truncated form and don't be surprised if the last few sentences are left out. The media doesn't like anybody to think that's even possible.

[PhilDragoo]

Word count at 299.

We discontinued the Santa Fe New Mexican after years of skirmishes with the editorial page editor over printing our letters intact.

Even conforming to specification for letter form and frequency, it was too obvious that the bottom line was content.

And the bottom line was: they lost a subscriber.

Your letter is succinct and hard-hitting, but the coneheads will never let the last para onto their op-ed page.

If the bureaucracy would publicize rape cases, abortion patients and doctors, sex offenders, and DUI state legislators as readily as they do gun owners, it would be a different debate.

"Here, let us keep a list of registered gun owners, surely you cannot object to that--"

Publicize the party registration of your reporters and editors--surely you cannot object to that.

[2nd_Amendment_Defender]

I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that such a database already exists.

Huge lists of firearm owners already do exist. Federal Firearms Licensed Dealers must keep records of every firearm they sell. If the F.F.L. Dealer ever leaves the gun business, he must turn over all his records to the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms. Don't let anyone lie to you about there being no firearm registration lists.

[TigersEye]

Good job!