What if they passed a law and no one obeyed? What if they passed a law that required 10’s of thousands of people, maybe 100’s of thousands to register certain types of guns and those people simply refused? I’ve been reading a number of threads about gun registration and magazine limits suggesting many different scenarios from the enforcement side and from the resistance side. Can a mass act of civil disobedience break the momentum of these totalitarians?
How do the cops know who’s “holding”? If they don’t know, what measures can they legally take to find out? They need at least probable cause to get a warrant to search your home. If you’ve kept quiet in any public forum and gun sales data are not available, how would the cops develop probable cause?
Assuming, for the sake of argument that they can piece together a number of cases by investigative methods, what do they do next? Is refusal to register a felony or misdemeanor? Do they need to go before a grand jury to prosecute? Or can the local detective sign a complaint?
OK. We’ve gotten this far. Now comes crunch time. They’ve issued a warning notice that you have so many days to register. The time has expired. A warrant is issued for your arrest. They come to your house. You commit a simple act of civil disobedience and tell them that you have no such weapons and you do not intend to register any such weapons. They take you “downtown” and they book you. You make bail or are released on your own recognizance.
You prepare for trial. What is the likelihood of having the charges thrown out as unconstitutional? You make your pre-trial motion. The judge, being a good employee of the same authority that is prosecuting you, denies the motion, citing the facial, presumptive validity of legislative action. The regulation of your gun rights under the constitution are a reasonable, measured response to a matter of public safety, or so they say.
You are convicted. If you have no prior record, you probably get probation and a fine.
OK. Now what? Has there been any great public outcry or impact? Does the media pay any attention? I think not. Not unless this scenario happens on a grand scale. But without that first step of probable cause, the prosecutorial authorities are not going to have a large number of cases.
The answer might be something bold: all those gun owners would publicly proclaim their ownership of the weapons, after losing them on a fishing trip. They would state their refusal to comply due the violation of their 2A rights. That would open the floodgates. Would the law enforcement apparatus pick and choose who they are going to prosecute? Or would they have to charge everyone and thus, completely overwhelm the system?
“They’ve issued a warning notice that you have so many days to register. The time has expired. A warrant is issued for your arrest. They come to your house. “
They never get to the house- they get as far as the sidewalk and that`s it.
Just like we don did to them during prohibition-
We drove em off then and we`ll do it agin coz we got 500,000 armed people up here with 5 million weapons and millions of ammo.
We are ready for these SOB`s anytime anywhere-
as soon as one house we sound the alarm
we spot em via cel n radio
- we all go there and surround the f`in sob`s
coz our the sheriff will lead us/-
Get ready for a mountain time shoootin war you never laid eyes on since 1814 u`pn here coz we are sick of these commies— and we are trained to kill commies from our youth as marksmen
wait n see for the Sons of Liberty!!
Our sights is wetted.
I ain`t f`in kiddin` neither.