Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Between the Lines

"Can we come in for a minute?"

The answer ought to always be no. The principle of British common law, that a man's home is his castle, was basic in the thoughts of the Framers when they gave us the second amendment and the fourth and the fifth. We have a right to keep and bear arms and to be secure in our domicile without fear of our government probing into our activities.

Read this, and question the justification, then the bureaucracy and finally the portents for the future:

Trailer Trash, a Pastor and a Cop

Did you catch that about the Houston ATF district extending to the border? That's a lot of territory and a lot of gun owners in Texas. Makes you wonder how many door knocks are coming.

Did you catch that about the minister bought two handguns "of a type drug gangsters prefer..."? What the hell are those? Is that about color, caliber, grip size, or action type? What kind do drug gangsters prefer?

How about "on this day they weren't wearing raid jackets or combat boots..."? So, a couple of guys in bulging sport shirts come knocking at your door without warrants and want to know what kind of guns you've got. Are you going to let them in? Are you going to tell them you've got five loaded handguns in the house, a cache of ammo in the back closet and a tactical shot-gun under the bed? Given the country from Houston to the border and the expected response time of the local gendarmerie, that wouldn't be an improbable scenario for a prudent homeowner.

The pretext of tracking guns which showed up in Mexican crimes as justification for such activity in the US is flimsy. The Mexican police haven't demonstrated much in the way of accurate record tracking and US federal law prohibits quite specifically the maintenance of gun owner databases as reported in that news item. So, how do they know that "more than 7500 firearms" came from specific states?

This is going to get worse. Remember, the answer at the door is "NO!"

And Molon Labe.

1 comment:

MagiK said...

Agreed, always "No" and if you want to ask me questions you can call me during business hours. Although the Cops excuse was pretty flimsy it does seem to indicate that if they are worried about fully automatic weapons they should check law enforcement, their the ones who have it easiest when it comes to making high end purchases.

I learned last year that Maryland uses a Database meant to track felons and State resources to also keep track of gun owners...so guess that little thing about Databases is already being overlooked.