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.
No pit in Hell is deep enough or hot enough for brutish thugs like that. I can't publicly state how I feed after reading that, but it is a prime example to show why 2nd Amendment rights are needed to allow individuals to protect themselves from rogue elements or an organized police state.
I'm so worked up that I shouldn't be typing right now.
Dang, I was hoping to get my smartaleck comment in before you corrected it!!
Unfortunately, too many LEO’s will have to lose their life before citizen’s 2A rights are properly recognized. It’s real easy for a police chief to say their officer made a mistake in judgment, but how will that sound when the mistake cost the officer his life? The bottom line is that we are not adequately protected against the overzealousness of some LEO’s. 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?
That is the way it has become. They can kill you or beat you and their is nothing We The People can do as it is the same as the SS and KGB.
NO. We do not have any rights and they can kill you or beat you and nothing will be done as they will LIE every time.
“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.”
Where are the “we’ve got too many people in prison liberals” on this? And if they are opposed to it, then why did they enact the idiot laws to begin with?
Didn’t the NO police chief come out after the consent decree and say that he would ignore it and confiscate citizens’ firearms again?
Sure you do, but will it be recognised by tyrants, hell no...
like you said, the only way to enforce our rights will be by fighting back...
IIRC, that's correct. I wish I had the quote.
We have the war on drugs by and large to thank for that. The police have been taken to task from time to time, usually when they are caught on their own videotape.
I wonder if this is one of the offficers who stole Cadillacs from a local dealer in order to have something to drive around NO in order to enforce the law?
SCOTUS has already decided otherwise.
See US v. Cruikshank.
L
The Court specifically held that the Enforcement Act did not apply to private individuals, but rather only State actors.
L
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