Question about police confiscation powers.

[Gwokable]

Here are several instances of police confiscation. Although we all should know the theory; the idea of charging an object with a crime; it seems this is being abused more and more in this country. After Katrina, The Government had deployed Army and SWAT teams to the area to confiscate firearms from residents. In Illinois, gun confiscation has been going on for nearly half a decade; anyone with expired registration gets a visit from a fully armed swat team and is asked to surrender their firearms. Such programs have been prooven to compromise public security; Switzerland is one example of a county where everyone owns a gun and does continued military service and where crime rates are far lower than that of neighboring countries. Although it's pertinent to note anything can be targeted; drugs, firearms, homes, cars, money in persons wallets, and so on.

My question is, do you believe such confiscatory practices ultimately endanger the safety and professional appearance of America's Finest and put into question the rule of government as reasonable and further compromise public wellbeing? Or do you believe such practices are necessary?

Why?

Additionally, if your department believes such policies compromise their security and profesional appearance, what kinds of protections or policies have been put in place on a department level or higher where you are to ensure police do not get out of control?

[Redders]

The day that I am told to take a legally registered and posessed firearm from a law abiding citizen who uses said firearm for no other purpose then to have it and possibly use to defend themselves or another from a deadly threat or to simply collect or hunt with is the day I turn in my stuff and start walking into the woods with my family.

[Group 29]

Here are several instances of police confiscation. Although we all should know the theory; the idea of charging an object with a crime; it seems this is being abused more and more in this country. After Katrina, The Government had deployed Army and SWAT teams to the area to confiscate firearms from residents. In Illinois, gun confiscation has been going on for nearly half a decade; anyone with expired registration gets a visit from a fully armed swat team and is asked to surrender their firearms. Such programs have been prooven to compromise public security; Switzerland is one example of a county where everyone owns a gun and does continued military service and where crime rates are far lower than that of neighboring countries. Although it's pertinent to note anything can be targeted; drugs, firearms, homes, cars, money in persons wallets, and so on.

My question is, do you believe such confiscatory practices ultimately endanger the safety and professional appearance of America's Finest and put into question the rule of government as reasonable and further compromise public wellbeing? Or do you believe such practices are necessary?

Why?

Additionally, if your department believes such policies compromise their security and profesional appearance, what kinds of protections or policies have been put in place on a department level or higher where you are to ensure police do not get out of control?

To start with, you seem to confuse enforcement, with enactment and review. There is no law, popular, or unpopular, that police enforce, that was not proposed, discussed, debated, and then passed by legislatures, who were voted into office by the citizens to represent them. These laws, once enforced by the police, are almost always quickly tested throught the courts, and the system of judicial review that was set up by our founding fathers over two hundred years ago.

That is our system for enacting, enforcing and reviewing laws. That is the system you live under in the United States. You have three choices:
1. Live under the laws passed this way.
2. Attempt and change these laws in one of the ways prescribed by our founding fathers.
3. Go find a country that is run more the way you think one should be run.

That may sound callous. But, those are really your only options.

It is more than a little disingenuous to blame the police, and to say it reflects poorly on the police, more than on the voters, legislatures, and courts who actually do decide what laws there are, for laws you personally don't like or support.