DC Continues Harassment of Legal Gun Owners…Rewards Tipsters that Report Legally Owned Firearms.
Thanks to our aware readers, Last Minute Survival is the first to bring you another breaking scandal.
In what we have come to expect from our growing Orwellian police state, the District of Columbia has now taken your tax dollars to pay neighbors to rat out and harass fellow neighbors with firearms. Disturbingly, DC is soliciting, via ads on metro buses (see photo), information on anyone with a gun. Even though the ads ask people to provide tips on anyone with an “illegal” gun, the implicit message is that ANY gun inside of DC “must” be illegal. This politically targeted campaign of harassment sets the stage for gross violations of both the 2nd and 4th Amendments of the US Constitution, destroys the notion of probable cause, criminalizes lawful behavior, and justifies potentially deadly police raids.
This “crime fighting” initiative is the latest form of harassment in the long history of the DC government refusing to recognize the Second Amendment right of its citizens. Even after the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution applies to federal enclaves and protects an individual’s right to possess a firearm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home, DC still continues to flagrantly violate the right of citizens to own and possess a firearm within DC. According to DC’s new initiative, if you see someone exercising what is not only lawful, but a constitutionally protected right, you must immediately call the police. Even better, you get a reward of up to $1,000. This initiative is analogous to telling the public to call the police if you see a reporter doing a story, a citizen speaking against a corrupt government policy, or someone worshipping in the religion of their choice. Of course we should recoil against the thought of these gross violations of our rights, but in the case of firearms, it now appears you are guilty until proven innocent of lawfully exercising a right. Just imagine having to buy ammunition covertly or as soon as you leave the gun store a “good citizen” is following you and providing your information to the cops to receive political bounties. If you can criminalize one right, how long do you really think before all of your other rights are meaningless? If you are thinking this is just a DC thing and doesn’t concern you, then allow this action to stand. Within months you will see this same initiative pop up across the nation and soon it will be your neighbors being paid to rat you out every time you target practice in your back yard or head to the range.
The DC initiative sets a very dangerous legal precedent by completely obliterating a citizen’s Fourth Amendment protections against illegal search and seizure. Specifically, someone can anonymously phone in a tip on an innocent person and that person will be taken down violently by the police. Also, there are no safe guards for someone abusing the tip system. How great would this be for a spiteful neighbor or anti-gun zealot to exact revenge and harass you? There is a huge difference between someone witnessing what they genuinely believe to be a crime in progress, providing their identity, and the police acting on the tip and the police detaining and or raiding someone’s home for exercising what is a totally legal and protected right. The Supreme Court is clear that anonymous tips in particular do not meet the 4th Amendment’s bar for probable cause, which is necessary for obtaining a warrant and executing a detention, search, and seizure. Further, the fact someone has a gun or something that looks like a gun in and of itself is not probably cause of a crime. Delving deeper, it would be nearly impossible for a citizen to know whether or not a firearm was owned “legally” in DC under the current laws that now DO permit firearms in the city. This sets the stage for perpetual harassment of citizens that legally possess a firearm to include many law enforcement officers that reside within the city.
Beyond the outright disturbing nature of DC paying people to rat out their neighbors and harassing citizens for exercising their rights, it sets the stage for far deadlier situation and a massive waste of limited law enforcement resources. Once these “tips” are made, DC police will act to “arrest” the offender. Arguing “officer safety,” police will most likely opt for a SWAT style raid of the home of the person alleged to have a firearm. These SWAT raids are extremely dangerous for all parties and have led to numerous deaths and injuries of innocent civilians to include children and babies to speak nothing of the terror it causes the person whose home was just raided. These raids also often mistakenly raid the wrong home. In the event of these “no knock” warrants, a law abiding citizen with a firearm may genuinely think their house is being robbed and go for their gun as their doors are kicked in. In example after example, the police then proceed to execute the surprised homeowner as they storm the home and use the justification that the officers were acting in good faith when they murdered the innocent homeowner to indemnify themselves from legal action.
Make no mistake; the DC initiative to have neighbors tip off police is no accident. It is a thinly veiled agenda by anti-gun elites such as former New York City Mayor Michael Rubens Bloomberg to circumvent the Constitution and criminalize not just the right to have firearms, but mentally condition the public that all firearms are bad. Together, we can expose this and stop it cold or we will all be facing this same “crime fighting initiative” in our home towns soon. You heard it here first at Last Minute Survival. Take action now.
By Guiles Hendrik
November 19, 2014
