Posted on 12/02/2009 4:27:18 PM PST by Still Thinking
Not only should we be careful in what we wish for, but we should be ever so diligent when drafting pro gun legislation. One of the greatest evils against the Bill of Rights is legislation that doesn't pass the constitutional test. This can happen even when the legislators have the best of intentions.
Alaska police officers regularly disarm law abiding citizens, taking their firearms and running the serial numbers through the system. This in itself is a violation of the fourth amendment. No surprise here, officers that have taken an oath to uphold the constitution are regularly breaking this same oath.
What's the big deal, you have nothing to hide, right?
Before you read anymore please watch this video. You will be shocked at what you witness.
A harmless traffic stop ending with a citizen being subjected to an illegal search and seizure, even worst absolutely no assurances that his firearms haven't been entered into a registration scheme. NCIC or National Crime Information Center by its own admission is a computerized index of criminal justice information and is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice. Most alarming once your firearms serial number makes it into NCIC, it's there forever.
(Excerpt) Read more at examiner.com ...
Dont believe it happens?
Watch “Alaska State Troopers” on Nat Geo. A guy in last week’s episode was pulled over on suspicion of DUI. He had two single action sixguns in the car. The cop took the guns and ran a serial number check on the wheelguns before giving them back to the guy.
The motorist even put a cherry on it by making an anti-gun comment.
I’m wondering what former Governor Palin thinks about this in Alaska. I would like to hear her take on it. I mean, she had to know about it (I would think so) and should have had an opinion on it, as to whether that was okay or that it should go and not be required.
Does anyone know what former Governor Palin thinks or thought about it?
Can someone please inform this dude that under Terry v. Ohio they can take your gun off of you everywhere else(in public) too? Once they have it, there is NO protection against the serial number being run, as it is now in “plain view”. If you’re in the car, under Carroll, they can search the area around you in the car as well. Gee, let’s all run around in circles with our hair on fire! At least the Alaska folks can CARRY their firearms, unlike so many other places. Note: any place that has a conventtional CCW scheme in place, when the cop runs your license, he’s going to know about the CCW and pull any weapons you are carrying.
It’s probably her brother-in-law the “rogue” trooper (wonder if that’s a good or bad thing now). She did her best to set him straight while she was in office.
The 4th amendment is another of the many glaring errors in our Constitution. Even the fixes to the Constitution couldn't fix it. The Bill of Rights is troublesome.
Well, it's conceivable that he's right and SCOTUS is wrong, especially the way they've been ruling the last century or so. When they say something, it means that is the binding interpretation of the law till someone can get them to reverse themselves, but if they ruled that the moon was made of green cheese it would have no effect whatsoever on the chemical composition of the moon.
I think you need to re read Terry and Carroll again, maybe even do a search on some of the recent USSC case law where they have started to limit the scope of those searches because in their words, law enforcement has tortured and twisted them beyond their original meaning to the extent they justify improper and sometimes illegal searches with them.
The courts said that all the conditions of each ruling must be met for them to apply, that most of the time law enforcement wrongly applies them when only some of the conditions are present.
And they (thankfully) ruled passengers are no longer subject to the above when the driver is stopped for a traffic violation including a DUI.
Seems some enterprising cops were stopping folks for felony tag lights violations and launching into ID and searching everyone in the car, no can do anymore.
My experience in Florida is that they’ve matured enough that they often do not bother with firearms held by citizens during MV stops.
Carroll's not getting reversed. IIRC, Scalia and others held a similar ruling. It;s funny that the Carroll case was a prohibition case--prohibition agents searching a bootlegger's car. Modern cases that have upheld the same ideas mostly arise from drug war cases. That's why Scalia likes them. He's more anti-drug than he is originalist. I don't have time to look up the name of the case....a suitcase on a public bus? It's searchable. Heat recognizing technology looking for grow lights from the sky? Totally reasonable, say the drug warriors.
I am from Alaska and I never understood this law to apply to motor vehicle stops. I knew you had to declare you were carrying a concealed weapon, but I was not aware that carrying a weapon in your vehicle was considered concealed. I have not read the law, because I didn’t think it applied to me do to the fact I do not carry a concealed weapon. I have a feeling that law enforcement is taking a law that was designed to allow every citizen to conceal carry and expand its meaning to allow them to conduct unlawful searches, but there is one thing more. If someone willingly declares they have guns and willingly submits to a search then the officer is within his or her rights to conduct the search. I personally opposed this law because I think people should read the rules that apply to concealed carry, but when the law was passes it was widely considered pro-gun. Alaska and Palin are pro-gun and if you don’t believe that support Mitt.
The cops stops a vehicle with them in doesn't run the serial numbers.
You don't get your guns back the bad guy gets to keep them.
An error? You think the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, papers and effects . . . " is an error?
What would you replace the Constitution with?
Talking about Terry, Carroll or Miranda around here is a waste of time. Let the ignorant suffer their own pain for their refusal to learn.
Alaska and Palin are pro-gun and if you dont believe that support Mitt.
Well, Alaska and Palin being pro-gun is precisely why I was wondering what Palin thought of this law that allows this to happen. Apparently some others who are also pro-gun don't think this is really pro-gun (at least not in terms of Constitutional rights, anyway). So, that's why I was wondering if Sarah Palin was against it because it wasn't really "pro-gun" after all...
But, in regards to Mitt, I didn't realize he was an Alaskan... LOL... Are there actually any of the Mormon cult group up in Alaska?
And, even from a pragmatic vs. principled point of view, it's STILL not worth it. Let's say you get pulled over 25 times in your driving life, and it takes two hours to inventory and check every serialized thing in your car at the time in addition to the loss of privacy. I'll bet the average person doesn't lose 50 man-hours worth of goods to theft in a lifetime.
Plus, if merely stopping a car for 10 over or whatever constitutes reasonable cause to assume random stuff in the guy's possession might be stolen, why not just go door to door and run the serials on peoples' TV's and other stuff?
I can buy more guns; where do I go to buy more Fourth Amendment?
Though you freedom minded folk might like to put in your two cents.
No, I think thermal imaging is out. We FINALLY found something that violates 4A (until the technology is in general use by the public). The analogy used was that a cop wearing glasses and looking at your house doesn’t constitute an intrusion because lots of people wear glasses; thermal imaging isn’t that widespread. Isn’t it nice to know that the BOR comes with an expiration date?
I got stopped for running my radar detector one late night on the way back to NC.
Four hours from home. Horse and 25 hounds on the trailer. Hunted all day and walked until after dark to find a lost young hound, worn out and with that long ride ahead of me and that @$$hole held me up while he ran the serial on the radar detector and on my gun.
I was not speeding. I was in my lane. In fact, he was meeting me and did a U turn to stop me so there was no questions about how I was driving.
Add to it that at the time I was 73 years old.
It takes a real hard ass cop in my opinion to treat a guy twice his age that way.
It certainly did not make my trip any more safe because it made the night a lot longer.
Point is, cops in more than one state do it.
They ask first and my question has always been what happens if you do not give them permission?
I chose not to test them that night. Horse and hounds turned over to some idiot who would charge an arm and a leg to get them back, plus in VA they vaccinate them for every thing ever heard of in the vet school and run a huge huge bill up on you before you get them back.
But traveling just in my truck, I may test them on it next time.
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