Posted on 05/16/2008 10:17:49 AM PDT by neverdem
It’s not often you watch a video where a frail, 98-pound grandmother is slammed into the wall by a burly police officer, handcuffed and dragged from her home — all because she refused to surrender her firearm and leave her home.
She was not a felon, drug dealer or other miscreant but was a homeowner in New Orleans immediately after Hurricane Katrina.
This somewhat brushed-over bit of history is reappearing in discussion on talk radio and other locations as we await the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court on the District of Columbia’s wholesale ban on handgun possession. In following the arguments and questioning by the justices in that case, I’ve found there are some unsettling similarities and actions by local government in New Orleans that clearly demonstrate the overused lawyer’s phrase of “a slippery slope.”
Perhaps the first ever wholesale government seizure of firearms in the modern age took place as municipal authorities were in the process of evacuating survivors of Hurricane Katrina and forcing many from their homes. What began as a confiscation of weapons from empty residences flowed to a removal of firearms from evacuees headed toward shelters and became an order to disarm the populace in the name of public safety.
Many in New Orleans at the time were attempting to protect themselves from looters and criminals taking advantage of an overstretched police presence. Some felt the police were not doing enough to protect them and they may have had a point. In October of 2006, the city fired 51 police workers for abandoning their posts during the hurricane and its aftermath; more officers had resigned.
It is not hard to see why some of the citizens felt they needed personal protection. This leads us to our grandmother, Patricia Konie, who was being filmed by a television crew explaining her decision to try and remain in her home and holding a rather antique looking revolver by the cylinder. We then see a large police officer lunge into the frame, slam her against the wall and take her into custody.
Now, the lack of the officer’s public-relations awareness is frightening enough. But instances of this sort prompted a lawsuit to be filed in federal court by the NRA and the Second Amendment Foundation, alleging that the mayor, the superintendent of police, the sheriff and various unknown deputies engaged in a pattern or practice to deny the citizens their constitutional rights under the Second Amendment and equal protection under the law.
This lawsuit resulted in a consent order and injunction from the court, ordering the defendants to stop confiscating lawfully possessed firearms and to return those that had been confiscated to the rightful owners. This incident prompted the state of Louisiana, as well as a number of other states, to pass laws preventing their state and local governments from across-the-board seizures of firearms from people otherwise entitled to possess them in times of emergency. In October 2006, President Bush signed the Disaster Recovery Personal Protection Act into law.
Poor planning and a lack of leadership often lead to desperate measures. The District of Columbia also has been in a tempest of crime and in 1976 enacted the nation’s most repressive gun ownership ban, banning handgun ownership outright for everyone but law enforcement officers, and forcing the owners of long guns and shotguns to render them functionally useless for self-defense.
This measure was in place as Washington became the murder capital of the United States, which makes the connection between the regulation and its purpose extremely weak.
So now we wait for the first comprehensive ruling on the meaning of the Second Amendment since a 1939 case that sidestepped the personal-rights issue altogether. When we get that, maybe we’ll know a little more clearly if elderly women have a right to possess firearms to protect themselves.
Actually, this is two separate issues. I agree that gun confiscation is wrong, but the other issue is “What do you do with a suicidal 98 year old woman willing to drown instead of leave her house?”
Before you can shrug and say if the old woman wants to die, then let her, be aware that her surviving relatives can then sue like rabid wolverines for letting the “poor, helpless old lady die like an animal” in a flood.
And even if you point out, after the fact, that the poor, helpless old lady was packing both a .44 automag and a 12 gauge loaded with buckshot, and cursing like a longshoreman, they would insist the poor old dear was daffy, and they should have disarmed her before gently taking her to safety.
If Katrina wasn’t a “mandatory evacuation”, I don’t know what is. And yes, there was a number of really stupid people who wanted to see what a hurricane and flood looked like up close. “Yeah, I’m hardcore!”
And most certainly, the police really screwed up by taking away guns. No argument with that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-taU9d26wT4
How do you highlight a link?
It means you're perfectly within your legal rights to kill them.
How does it prevent the courts from believing their lies or siding with them even if they know they are lying?
If they can't talk, they can't lie.
L
Wasn't this police officer one of those who had volunteered to 'assist the citizens of New Orleans' from out of state? California I believe was his home state.
The well-known phrase “hue and cry” comes from medieval laws that REQUIRED that everyone within reach to join the chase (termed “hue and cry”) to stop and detain a thief. And the concept of a “jury” originated in the practice of appointing twelve men of the community to monitor the behaviour of a miscreant whose crime didn’t deserve hanging. (No-one got “jail time” in the sense we know it today. There were no jails in the modern sense. You either got executed, or you got remanded to the custody of a jury.)
Thus, everyone in the village or town had a hand in the apprehension of a criminal, and in the management of the justice appointed to him, unless it was death.
In modern times, since the invention of “police”, we citizens have almost totally abdicated these responsibilities to “professionals”. I doubt that one person in ten thousand even knows the facts I just wrote about.
And this has naturally led to the situation we have today. At most, the “pros” should be here to assist the citizens in the performance of their citizens’ duties. But we instead find that the “pros” want an exclusive franchise on the task, and in our ignorance and laziness, this suits most of us down to the ground.
Having abdicated our citizens’ responsibility, natural selection has created an institution of “policepersons” who are attracted to the job because they are 1.) natural bullies, or 2.) aware of how they can make money using the power the job gives them.
Regulation of these “police” we have abdicated to politicians, who, sadly, have the same motivations. Does anyone wonder why both groups want us disarmed?
Our nation’s founders knew all this. America was distant enough from the oppression of monarchist Europe to have recognized that citizens could be responsible for themselves, could be counted on to do the right thing most of the time when it came to personal defense and the management of criminals, and that their right to keep and bear the tools necessary to do so must never be infringed.
We’re violating all those principles whenever we allow a “police” organization to exist which is so detached from the people that it bullies citizens like this.
We need to stop that. If we take back our local governments, put in people who will confront these bullies and back them down, we may be able to live free a little longer.
Re: “The well-known phrase “hue and cry” comes from medieval laws that REQUIRED that everyone within reach to join the chase (termed “hue and cry”) to stop and detain a thief.”
In Scotland, the phrase used was “hot trod” (hot pursuit)
>Think about this, if you are walking down the street and an officer comes up and starts whooping your ass, do you have the right of self-defense? Do you even have the right to resist the attack?<
John Steinbeck issued a warning that all should remember:
“Don’t pick a fight with an old man. If he is too old to fight, he’ll just kill you.
Those are my exact feelings. I am an old man. Abuse me physically and I’ll do my damnedest to put a bullet in under your chin. Now if that means the first one has to go through your knee or in your crotch, I’ll do it. The second round will be less than half a second behind the first one. If I am not instantly satisfied that the attack has ceased, I’ll spend another 34 cents and put a third round into your head.
Any civil servant wearing a badge who physically mistreats someone, especially the elderly who offers no physical threat deserves to die on the spot. Not after a long, slobbering trial but right then. That CHP officer who shoved that tiny women into the wall and then to the floor should have been shot. I don’t give a damn that she was holding the old H&R revolver in her hand. She had it but the cylinder and was not in the slightest bit a threat to him.
(Format got messed up in the previous posting)
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00000242——000-.html
Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or to different punishments, pains, or penalties, on account of such person being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.
LEAVE HER ALONE.
On just what does one justify a "mandatory" evacuation anyway? Can you name any real danger to the State or the population if an elderly lady stayed in her home? No. No. And again, NO. The only thing you offer is the risk of the State being sued by some land-shark attorney. Solution, (and one is needed) isn't to bully old women, it's to put a stop to lawsuit lotteries. Now, if she'd ASKED to be evacuated, and they'd refused her, or neglected their duty to act to evacuate her, THEN you might have cause for a lawsuit.
I don’t see it being enforced.
***Actually, this is two separate issues. I agree that gun confiscation is wrong, but the other issue is “What do you do with a suicidal 98 year old woman willing to drown instead of leave her house?”***
What the heck does that have to do with anything? She probably knew her home wasn’t in danger of being flooded, but they went in there anyway, and committed a crime.
Filo, just page Henry Bowman. He’ll help me out.
Not me, you***************
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-taU9d26wT4
Thank you for the address called a URL.
How do you highlight a link?
If you mean make a link, there are a few ways on this forum. The easiest is to just enter the URL by itself, with no further comment. Try it. Just check it with the "Preview" function before you "Post" it.
You can open a link in the same window with additional text and comments by following the instructions for Links at HTML Sandbox. Scroll down the page slowly until you find it. It's not that far from the top.
Enter how to open a link in a new window if you want to make it like my first link. That's good for linking other threads on this forum, especially when you don't want to hijack a thread. When you make a link outside this forum in a new window you're subject to pop-up ads.
Thanks for the text & link.
That's because the police consider themselves to be above the law.
To date, the courts appear to agree.
Police in Gun Searches Face Disbelief in Court the thread
Police in Gun Searches Face Disbelief in Court the whole article from http://www.havegunwillvote.com/index.php?sec=news
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