Replies

“Are you seriously defending treating everyone on a roadway as a criminal based on the exceedingly thin possibility that there might maybesorta be bad guys there somewhere?”

No. lightman commented in post 6 that “Everyone should carry a copy of the Constitution AND commit to memory the Bill of Rights.”

I responded by quoting the Fourth Amendment in the BOR emphasizing the word “unreasonable”. After that I mostly asked questions concerning reasonableness.

As far as “treating everyone on a roadway as a criminal”, that’s a different aspect of the matter that I have not addressed. “Everyone on the road” should not be treated as a criminal even if the search is conducted with a proper warrant. Of course, you might say that the act of searching is treating like a criminal, but that doesn’t necessarily have to be true.

“How does that differ from the behavior of treating every gun owner as a criminal?”

I don’t know that it does.

Now, are all of you seriously stating that the police should not have made the effort to search for the criminals they believed to be in the area, that they should have casually let them go to rob again? You do understand that we are discussing bank robbers, people who took the property of others, people who show contempt for the rights of others, people who undermine our society? (Yeah, I know...the last two points apply to too many LEOs.) Aren’t we supposed to help with the apprehension of such people when we can? Isn’t it in our interest to do so?

And something else: these were bank robbers, but what if they weren’t? What if they were kidnappers who had abducted your child or spouse? Would you still object to the search as conducted? If not, why not? What’s the principle involved?

“Please explain.”

I want people to think more and (optimistically) better.