quote:

“We’ll be checking on them,” Brown said, as well as the 15 or so registered gun owners who did not show up for the test firings.

Well that there just scares the hell out of me.

Isn't this something like a Dragnet...go round up the usual suspects and grill em till someone talks...or in this case fires the guilty bullet.

I'm NOT saying bad things about law enforcement here - really I'm not. But you can always tell when the police have no good suspects at all; seems they always go to the general public asking for leads. Same thing happened when my wife's cousin was murdered in West Nashville, and I can tell you with some confidence that there is a real good chance that the killer(s) will ultimately get away with it. Those old "crime doesn't pay" movies from the 1930s simply don't apply today. And I know I'm drifting here a bit, but stop and think about how many LEOs it would take to keep our society really straight. Right now I'm thinking that one cop for each "civilian" (50%) not be enough. I think it's gonna take a lot more private citizen involvement for things to get better.

FredT

If you haven't broken the law, you have nothing to worry about.

quote:

“We’ll be checking on them,” Brown said, as well as the 15 or so registered gun owners who did not show up for the test firings.

Better bring a warrant with you.

quote:

Originally posted by Psychobastard:
If you haven't broken the law, you have nothing to worry about.

You're kidding, right?

quote:

Originally posted by Psychobastard:
If you haven't broken the law, you have nothing to worry about.

A little sarcasm I'll assume.

Yeah....that'll happen.

As soon as my girlfriend...umm...

Morgan Fairchild shows up, I'll be right over.

Yeah...that's the ticket....

quote:

Here is the down side of not taking your gun in for the testing....

Your name is leaked to the national media as a person of interest, the national media stakes out your house, the national media offers money to any and every slime ball to tell everyone how you like shooting, and can't stand young girls. You get fired from your job, the police go over your life with a fine tooth comb, the police end up getting a warrant based on what some slime ball Nancy Grace paid to be on her show. Your computers are taken and so are your cars. Most likely the police find something you did unrelated to the original issue... Like your rifle barrel is too short by 1mm... I could go on but I won't.

Well, for one thing, if everybody who volunteered actually a) understood their Constitutional rights, and b) declined to volunteer, they'd have to just leak the whole list of names, and it would be incredibly obvious that they're just fishing and have no clue at all.

Is there no legal recourse, including the police issuing an official apology to the individuals falsely named in the media? If not then there dang sure should be, plus severe legal penalties for whoever leaked. Ruining someone's life for no good reason should not be done lightly.

The sooner people who volunteer like this start to understand they have nothing to gain and everything to lose by doing so, the better off the entire public will be IMO.

How do the authotiries even know it was someone who bought a gun in state via an FFL?

quote:

Originally posted by the_sandman_454:
Is there no legal recourse, including the police issuing an official apology to the individuals falsely named in the media?

Yeah. Like that's gonna happen. Just ask that mayor in Maryland.

quote:

Originally posted by the_sandman_454:
If not then there dang sure should be, plus severe legal penalties for whoever leaked. Ruining someone's life for no good reason should not be done lightly.

I agree. However, the news media and the sensationalist "journalists" (like Nancy Grace) do it all the time.

quote:

Originally posted by the_sandman_454:
How do the authorities even know it was someone who bought a gun in state via an FFL?

Now were thinking like the investigators should be thinking!
After all, we all know that criminals don't obey the laws and don't make all their purchases on the up-and-up. (Um... that's why we call them criminals, right?)

More feel good horse shit by incompetent officials,how about doing some police work and shake down some of the gang bangers .

Um, no thanks. There is absolutely nothing good that could come from that for me as an individual.

And come on, even the stupidest criminal isn't going to voluntarily submit the murder weapon for testing.

No Way Hose !!! Sometimes police and prosecuters are corrupt, looking for points, and will gladly convict a person they know is innocent.

Wow! I don't know what's more concerning.... the fact they asked owners to do this or that the majority of the owners showed up!

This is a hugely and deeply disturbing precedent. I hope this gets on the NRA's radar.

I'm of the "You want to see MY gun?"

"COME BACK WITH A WARRANT" school too!

quote:

Originally posted by sig228-gsr:
Your name is leaked to the national media as a person of interest, the national media stakes out your house, the national media offers money to any and every slime ball to tell everyone how you like shooting, and can't stand young girls.

That is when you hire a lawyer

quote:

Originally posted by LMControl:
Wow! I don't know what's more concerning.... the fact they asked owners to do this or that the majority of the owners showed up!

I'm wondering if the majority of those who complied did it out of a (misplaced) sense of civic duty... or out of fear of reprisal from the state.

That's a significant problem that I see with the lawabiding people ion this country. They are the ones who shoud be screaming in outrage at this kind of crap... & being heard. Not the trash that commits crimes & then complains when they get caught. The automatic response to this "request" should have been a resounding "Piss off."

I guess no one here has read "The Blooding" by Joseph Wambaugh. The circumstances and response by police (in England) were very similar. Several young girls were sexually assaulted and murdered in a rural, English community. The police had no active leads as to the identity of the serial killer, but did have a new technology- DNA identification. The community was outraged that "nothing was being done" to stop the killer of their children, so the police requested that all males living in the area submit voluntary DNA samples for comparison. They figured that:
1) The samples tested would eliminate males from the "suspect pool."
2) Those males who wouldn't provide samples could be more closely examined as the potential suspect.

All but two or three males in the community provided samples and the killer was identified as one of the men who hadn't. This was the first case in England using DNA evidence and it resulted in an otherwise unidentified suspect being located, arrested and convicted. Without the assistance of members of the community (men) who were willing to voluntarily provide their blood (hence the name of the book), this animal would have continued to kill children.

Was this a "misplaced sense of civic duty" as Psychobastard contends or was this something male friends, relatives, and neighbors did to protect their own kids and bring to justice a murderous threat before he could kill again? Sorry, but I don't blame the law abiding people for demanding that something be done. They lived there, their kids were being killed and they elected to do something about it by giving their blood for the cause. The police couldn't force them to do it, but if they felt community pressure to help make their community safe again too bad.

The police don't have a crystal ball to magically solve crimes and (IMO) getting real support from the community is sometimes the only way to deal with it. Yea, some people would always tell the cops to "Piss off!" just like they could legally ignore the cries of those 15 year old girls being raped and murdered. There's no law mandating people to call the police when they see a violent crime in progress, be witnesses or provide voluntary samples for testing. People can and do have the constitutional right to remain an assholes.

Usually, the ATF will fax you a bulletin stating everything they're looking/asking for, and they'll give you 24 hours to get it all prepared to fax back to them.

If it's urgent, they'll still fax it to you, but then pay you a visit the next business day to pick it up in person. I've had thm come by and pick up copies of 4473's.

This would be a convenient precedent. In the next "unsolved" crime a 9mm was used, can we get all the 9mm in town to test fire? Oh darn, looks like a .45 was used in this crime, can we get those too? And don't worry, we'll "destroy" all the information we get in a "timely manner", we don't plan on keeping any information if the weapon is clean. Riiiiight.

Maryland is a registered handgun state. If this happened here, no doubt in my mind - Get a warrant. Law abiding gun owners pay enough up front to get a handgun. And if they suspect your weapon specifically, that would require a warrant anyway. My question would be who is paying the cost of all this documentation on these volunteers who are bringing in their guns for test firing?