Most people who are not firearm enthusiasts are surprised when I mention that the city of New Orleans enacted a campaign of illegally seizing privately owned firearms in the aftermath of Katrina.
Think about that for a moment. With the looting, the breakdown of order, and the sheer overwhelming job that the police and authorities faced when it came to providing aid to those who needed it, disarming law abiding citizens who needed their guns to protect their homes and loved ones was still deemed top priority.
It was conducted like a military campaign. National Guard troops were under orders to break into homes to find guns, and they were ready to shoot any who resisted.
Sounds like some paranoid right wing conspiracy novel, doesn’t it? But all you have to do is watch this video to hear them freely admit it. Note the images of innocent home owners, flex cuffed and lined up by the side of the road like they were terrorists.
One of the most egregious example of police overstepping their authority was caught on video.
Do you think that cop needed to tackle an old woman, in her own kitchen? God only knows what they would have done to her if the cameras weren’t rolling, considering how she is such a terror and all.
This was all three years ago. Why am I bringing up this ancient history?
Because New Orleans has finally agreed to return the guns they seized illegally. It seems that the city has been extremely reluctant to return the private property of the residents, even requiring a sales receipt. Considering that it takes more than a century for regularly maintained firearms to wear out, and many firearms are family heirlooms passed from one generation to the next, this is a ridiculous burden that was enacted by the city to avoid obeying the law.
It has been a long time coming. Let us hope it doesn’t happen again.
I have been following this since it happened.
Never before, have I heard of such a mass violation of a populations rights. And never has there been a time that the population so desperately needed to exercise those rights, during the immediate aftermath, and in the lawless period that followed.
I just hope the government has enough money to bailout New Orleans when the class action suit ends. I hope every gun owner in New Orleans sues the city, state and anyone else they can.
I wonder how many gun owners were robbed, raped,assaulted or murdered, in LA, while the state left them defenseless????
If anything, at least this all highlighted the issue, and this is perhaps less likely to happen the next time. I also believe that a few court precedents were set from the resulting law suits.
All political power comes from the barrel of a gun. Remove their guns and the people have no political power. Liberals know that their plans will be wildly unpopular with some people. You can’t make a omelet without breaking the eggs. And you can’t break the eggs if they are heavily armed.
The second amendment is all that really stands between us and becoming an omelet.
Most people may find this view extreme. But it is historically correct. Working forward from the year 1000 ad, kings lost power when they were forced to rely on their nobles to fight wars. And both the kings and nobles lost power when they were forced to rely on low born peasants to fight the wars. And once the peasants were armed and trained to fight together, they took political power from the kings and nobles and created democracy.
Today, too many Americans avoid military service and our democracy is losing its backbone. Today we seem to look to our government to provide us with the most basic necessities – just as 1000 years ago our distant ancestors begged food, shelter, health care, and safety from their Lords.
Freedom can be an awful burden because it requires self-reliance. Sadly, too many people would beg for food, shelter, healthcare and safety from Obama (and kneel before him, placing their heads in his hand and call him Lord) rather than realize that they can give these things to themselves.
Unfortunately, McCain also wants to be a Lord. Neither candidate reminds us that the state did not create us, we created the state. Neither candidate reminds us that we did not create our current catastrophe, the state created it with high taxes, stupid laws and disastrous regulations. The solution to our problem is not more laws, more rules and more people telling us what to do. The solution is to get the government off our backs so that we can repair our civilization before it crumbles into ruins.
What I would like to know is – Do the authorities now clearly understand that such seizures are illegal?
Do they realize that they are putting their people at a completely unnecessary risk and into a dangerous situation by ordering them to violate the Constitution?
Or will they attempt it again?
To what point can a citizen legally resist such an illegal seizure? Doesn’t the Bill of Rights make that that an oxymoron?
> To what point can a citizen legally resist such an illegal seizure? Doesn’t the Bill of Rights make that that an oxymoron?
And what part of “If you kill a cop you are f***ed” is hard for you to understand?
These people don’t care, they are “the ones in power” in their minds. They cannot grasp the idea of THEM being the ones hunted, imprisoned, and outlawed. And such a situation is not going to be easy to create, since it will almost certain involve some kind of open insurrection.
Time to start hiding guns, folks. Especially if you’ve let them be aware of the fact that you have them.
And what part of “If you kill a cop you are f***ed” is hard for you to understand?
Theory verses practice is precisely the disconnect I was trying to highlight. Put another way, anyone who does not respect the Constitution essentially holds a trump card over your rights. All they have to do is cause a confrontation. (Of course they will use some other stooge as a surrogate.)
It’s pretty sad that citizens might have to resort to hiding, deception, lying, and viewing law enforcement as adversaries in order to retain and exercise a fundamental Constitutional right.