Preemptive Offenses

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Where The Eye Does Not Focus...

...is often more important than where it does:

New Jersey police and Dept. of Children and Families officials raided the home of a firearms instructor and demanded to see his guns after he posted a Facebook photo of his 11-year-old son holding a rifle.

“Someone called family services about the photo,” said Evan Nappen, an attorney representing Shawn Moore. “It led to an incredible, heavy-handed raid on his house. They wanted to see his gun safe, his guns and search his house. They even threatened to take his kids.”

Don't think for a moment that this was really about the safety or well-being of Moore's son:

Moore immediately called Nappen and rushed home to find officers demanding to check his guns and his gun safe.

Instead, he handed his cell phone to one of the officers – so they could speak with Nappen.

“If you have a warrant, you’re coming in,” Nappen told the officers. “If you don’t, then you’re not. That’s what privacy is all about.”...

Nappen told Fox News the police wanted to inventory his firearms.

“”We said no way, it’s not happening,” he said. “This is a guy who is completely credentialed and his son is also credentialed.”

The attorney said police eventually left and never returned.

“He has a Fourth Amendment right and he’s not going to give up his Fourth Amendment right or his Second Amendment right,” he said. “They didn’t have a warrant – so see you later.”

The police were there, not because there was any honest suspicion that Moore's son was at risk -- the boy has his own New Jersey state hunting license, after all -- but because it might provide them with a pretext for seizing Moore's firearms.

We will see more of this, for some very simple reasons. First, the backlash against legislative incursions on the right to keep and bear arms has swelled to a great height: great enough to put many a politico in fear of his livelihood. Second, the Democrat Party, which has attempted to leverage recent atrocities in Colorado and Connecticut into a new "assault weapons" ban, has pulled back out of fear of losing the U.S. Senate to the Republicans in the 2014 midterms. But the third reason is the most compelling of all:

“You can’t be prosecuted for making an allegation of child abuse –even if it’s false,” [New Jersey Department of Children and Families spokeswoman Kristen Brown] said.

"Child Welfare" departments operate, de facto if not de jure, outside the bounds of the Constitution and its protections of individuals' rights. If the accused:

  • Has no defense against an illegal search or seizure;
  • Cannot demand a trial by a jury of his peers;
  • And cannot compel his accuser to face him and stand responsible for the accusation in open court;

...then unless he's exceptionally rich and well connected, he's probably a sitting duck.

Shawn Moore was fortunate that the New Jersey police didn't force entry to his home despite their lack of a warrant. Under recent Supreme Court decisions, he would have had no recourse regardless of what happened next.

The anti-gun forces are the worst thugs in the political system. They will use your children against you if they can. If you're a firearms owner, keep that in mind.

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