Only answers some of the questions related to the letter requesting "voluntary" cooperation and police procedures used to get the gun owner info from gun shops and pawn shops.
Direct evidence that Form 4473 constitutes a defacto gun registry. The storage requirements alone exceed any legitimate use except as a registry. I am amazed that no one has brought forth a challenge along that line.
You've got to be joking.
I see police work happening here. If a brand new BMW 335i was used to run over a few kids and all they had to go on was the make and color of the car of course they are going to go to the local dealership and ask who bought that make model in the past year. Or, should justice be denied the innocent because we don’t want intrusion into our lives by government? In this case the cops are using reasoning to limit their search to certain areas given the specific elements of the crime.
On what authority? If I were a gun owner - I would sue because my privacy rights had been violated.
Only in a police state can they expect the killer to show up for the test, or all but the killer to show.
The other 15 or so gun owners who did not show up will be checked by the OSBI to see why they didn't volunteer for the test firings.
So does their lack of cooperation constitute probable cause towards obtaining a search warrant to seize the guns in question?
I would not have volunteered to have my weapon checked. Depending upon the “heat” police are getting from the local area, anything could happen in that testing room. My gun which hasn’t been fired in a year or more could suddenly be declared the murder weapon. So the public is satified, the police are heroes and I am innocent and screwed. No thanks. We are watching our federal govt, lead by our own president, persecuting marines as “war criminals” for Gods sake. Such despicable abuses of power do not lend themselves to a warm fuzzy feeling about ones potential treatment at the hands of the powers that be.
They do now.
“The other 15 or so gun owners who did not show up will be checked by the OSBI to see why they didn’t volunteer for the test firings.”
So much for volunteering.
Profiling is sooo un-PC in the Brave New World, remember?
Fully 75% of those contacted complied, either by letting the police test (and register, no doubt) their guns or by giving up whoever they'd sold them to.
That leaves a maximum of a 25% non-sheep population among this group - and these are gun owners! Probably a few more will fold when the police show up at their door "persuading" them to be good little subjects and "volunteer" for the tests.
If 75% of (a certain group of) gun owners in a red state let the government have their guns because they got a letter asking for them, I'm left with little hope for the population at large. Obama is seeming more likely than ever.
What about having an certified independent testing firm do the test firing, make the ballistics comparison, and then return the firearm and the bullet to the owners if there is no match without making any permanent records? Would that satisfy all the interests in this case? I would suspect that the results of the police testing will instead find their way into some permanent federal database.