Posts Tagged policing

Policing vs Expanded Gun Rights

This academic paper discusses how police will have to change due to the widespread acceptance of concealed carry.

This Article examines how the rapid deregulation and rampant possession of firearms
is likely going to impact policing, and the constitutional law that governs it. For the
longest time, lawful gun carry, concealed or open, was exceedingly rare. For a police
officer to see a gun was both to see danger, and a crime in progress. This link among
guns, danger, and unlawful possession has shaped much of the law of policing. But
now, this understanding of the world is in its last stages of unraveling.


In nearly all states, guns are no longer unlawful to own and carry by default. In many,
they are barely regulated. Recent Supreme Court Second Amendment decisions like
New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen serve only to hasten where
state laws already were headed. For police, however, the harm guns can do exists
irrespective of what the law has to say about the legality of carrying them. As a result,
the nation’s gun laws are on a collision course with the practice and law of policing.
This Article explores how the constitutional law governing policing is changing and
will change in the face of gun legalization.

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Socialist Magazine Jacobin Is Against New Gun Laws

From Jacobin:

Gun violence is a major problem in the United States, and calls for lawmakers to “do something” in response to lives lost are certainly understandable. Unfortunately, “doing something” tends to involve passing more criminal statutes, imposing longer prison sentences, or further empowering police officers. In many jurisdictions, police and sheriffs hold almost unfettered discretion in determining who can obtain a license to own or possess a handgun. Licensing requirements frequently rely on criminal records, which in turn reflect race- and class-based disparities in enforcement.

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Gun Control vs BLM

From National Review:

For decades, gun-control advocates promoted greater police power as well as known practices of institutional racism within police firearms-licensing divisions. Now that there are calls to “defund the police,” many leaders of the gun-control lobby, who are mostly white, should rightly fear that their history of siding with the police and promoting policies now deemed racist by progressives may make them the next casualty of cancel culture.

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Protests vs Riots

From Quillette:

This pattern of events is familiar because it has repeated itself numerous times over American history following acts of police brutality, especially in cases where, as with Floyd, the victim was black. First, large numbers of people protest peacefully, drawing attention to their cause and attracting national sympathy. Then, a smaller group turns violent, causing destruction in the community and sometimes harming innocent people. That smaller group sometimes includes people who exploit the chaos for their own ends. During the Baltimore riots of 2015, for instance, the looting of pharmacies led to opioids and other drugs flooding the market, likely feeding drug dependency, enriching gangs, and fueling more crime.

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Police Reform Is Needed

From The American Conservative:

Such killings would likely not occur without the sense of impunity conferred on police in much of this nation. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a top contender for Vice President candidacy for Joe Biden, was the chief prosecutor for Hennepin County (including Minneapolis) from 1998 to 2006. Klobuchar, who was nicknamed “KloboCop” by detractors,  “declined to bring charges in more than two dozen cases in which people were killed in encounters with police” while she “aggressively prosecuted smaller offenses” by private citizens, the Washington Post noted. Her record was aptly summarized by a headline early this year from the Twin Cities Pioneer Press: “Klobuchar ramped up prosecutions, except in cases against police.”  

Minnesota cops also benefit from their state’s so-called “police officer’s bill of rights,” which impede investigations into killings by police and other misconduct. 

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California Wastes Millions Trying To Confiscate Guns

From The Washington Post:

This is a slow, painstaking process, and it has fallen behind in recent years. After the Sandy Hook shooting in 2013, lawmakers gave the gun seizure program a $24 million infusion to fund more agents to knock on more doors. The goal was to investigate every one of the 20,000-some people who remained on the illegal gun owner list.

Part of the problem is that it is hard to keep up with the new people being added to the list all the time. Last year, agents conducted 7,573 investigations and seized 3,286 firearms. At the same time, 7,031 gun owners were newly flagged. The state has hired 18 additional agents to bolster its 33-person unit, and has been trying to staff up more.

California is wasting millions of taxpayer dollars and police officers’ time looking for “criminals” while real crime and police work is being avoided. Is it any wonder why people are leaving California in droves?

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The State’s Use Of Force To Enforce Law

This article deals with the recent death of a New York man which was the result of cops enforcing a cigarette tax.

On the opening day of law school, I always counsel my first-year students never to support a law they are not willing to kill to enforce. Usually they greet this advice with something between skepticism and puzzlement, until I remind them that the police go armed to enforce the will of the state, and if you resist, they might kill you.

I wish this caution were only theoretical. It isn’t. Whatever your view on the refusal of a New York City grand jury to indict the police officer whose chokehold apparently led to the death of Eric Garner, it’s useful to remember the crime that Garner is alleged to have committed: He was selling individual cigarettes, or loosies, in violation of New York law.

 

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Buffalo PD Searches Obituaries For Gun Permit Holders

From WGRZ:

Buffalo Police say they’re determined to get more guns off the streets and now they’re checking to see whether pistol permit holders have passed away and what happened to their gun or guns.

“We recently started a program where we’re cross referencing all the pistol permit holders with the death records, and we’re sending people out to collect the guns whenever possible so that they don’t end up in the wrong hands,” said Police Commissioner Daniel Derrenda.” Because at times they lay out there and the family is not aware of them and they end up just out on the street.”

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