Ready to get spitting mad?
The elderly Ted increases my blood pressure a few points with this article. Seems like some petty tyrant has issued a curfew due to crime. Said tyrant doesn't think anyone has any reason to be outside at whatever time he feels they shouldn't.
“Now if somebody wants to sue us, they have an option to sue, but I’m fairly certain that a judge will see it the way the way the citizens see it here,” Mayor James Valley said. “The citizens deserve peace, that some infringement on constitutional rights is OK and we have not violated anything as far as the Constitution.”
Raged induced emphasis, mine.
This is what we fight against. Not just restricting our rights to own arms, but the petty tyranny of bureaucrats. This is where "pro-law" people fail miserably when they fail to question the validity of the laws. No, freedom cannot survive in anarchy, so laws are required for maintaining a functioning society, but there's a limit to the number and severity of the laws that end up curtailing freedom as well.
Now, let's stoke your ire a bit more. Kevin at The Smallest Minority gives us this gem of a story
Then I heard one of them say he had some papers for me or needed to speak with me,so I got up to speak with them 6 or 7 officers in full assault vests, etc. and NO ONE in uniform. Four heavily armed police came into the house while at least two others walked around outside of our home. ... That being said, the young Trooper told me I "should" voluntarily register all my weapons or this would happen again... because the "system" flagged me. ... The point here though, is that Police came to my home without a warrant, dressed to kill, trying to intimidate me about something that is NOT illegal !! This was not an Interview it was an interrogation under duress. Funny the last thing he said to me before leaving was "... Mr. Curtis, sorry to have HARASSED you, you have a good night."
Then I heard one of them say he had some papers for me or needed to speak with me,so I got up to speak with them 6 or 7 officers in full assault vests, etc. and NO ONE in uniform. Four heavily armed police came into the house while at least two others walked around outside of our home.
...
That being said, the young Trooper told me I "should" voluntarily register all my weapons or this would happen again... because the "system" flagged me.
The point here though, is that Police came to my home without a warrant, dressed to kill, trying to intimidate me about something that is NOT illegal !! This was not an Interview it was an interrogation under duress.
Funny the last thing he said to me before leaving was "... Mr. Curtis, sorry to have HARASSED you, you have a good night."
All because he bought ammo in a quantity they didn't feel was appropriate.
Had this happened to me, I'd be in jail right now because the instant I realize the sons of bitches didn't have a warrant, I'd have closed the door and gone back to bed. Tyrants don't like the peons getting all uppity, so I'm sure the trooper would have considered someone using their rights as "probable cause" to smash down the door, shoot my cats, and zip tie my daughters' hands behind their back (those 6 & 3 year olds can be deadly).
The problem is one of disparate force. Yeah, that's a good time to start shooting, but all you would do is end up dead while putting your family's life at risk when the troopers in SWAT gear simply pump lead into any surface available. Even if you survived, you'd be labeled a kooky gun nut and since you raised a finger against a cop (even though, at that point they stopped being a cop and turned into a criminal) you'd be put into FPMITA prison for the rest of your days. And then the government would crack down even harder on gun owners, making everyone else's life more miserable (see recent hunting
Grrr.
The problem is that very few people care about these things. Mostly because it doesn't affect them, but also because it's a lot of work to care and then actually DO something. I can't do much because I don't live in either area and my voice doesn't carry weight with those particular tyrants, but what I can do is try to get people to respect and understand their rights and hopefully, when it does happen in my neck of the woods, those people are incensed enough to kick the idiots out of office. Or to rise up together and shoot the bastards, but that's going to take a lot more than waking someone up to harass them.
I agree with Tam on this subject. We're winning ground in the realm of gun rights, but losing every other right during the interim. Eventually, it will be easy to ask for permission to have a gun, but we'll have to provide our GPS coordinates to the authorities at all times if we go outside the view of the security cameras inside our houses.