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Do You Diggit? If so, please share!
Some people questioned what I meant when I said that the police have a responsibility to protect the law and not the people. The facts are that we used to have peace officers whose job was to serve and protect the peace. Now we have law enforcement agents whose job it is to defend the law.
A great many people live under the misguided impression that they will be believed innocent until such a time as they are proven guilty. This is an error in judgment that could be very costly and actually force citizens to unknowingly and unwittingly relinquish even more of their rapidly diminishing rights.
The presumption of innocence is now a thing of the past.
Even the Miranda rights are not necessarily applicable in all cases. In many cases, an innocent person can actually become a felon without the benefit of a judge, a jury of their peers or any benefit of the doubt. I can hear all the conspiracy theory cries already but again I ask you to look at the facts and examine the truth before you begin accusing me of being some nut case.
For the sake of this article, I will use one (legally questionable) congressional act.
The Lautenberg Act was passed into law on 28 September 1996. It became effective two days later on 30 September 1996.
The copy I have will be cleaned up as soon as I can find a better one but for now it should still serve to get the point across. So what does it say?
It says it is a crime for anyone convicted of domestic violence to be in possession of a firearm in any capacity. Even possession of a single bullet, regardless of knowledge or intent (Which still cannot be proven beyond any reasonable doubt by the way) will result in an instant penalty without the benefit of a judge or jury.
You are instantly guilty, do not pass go and do not collect two hundred dollars.
From Wikipedia:
This law bans shipment, transport, ownership and use of guns or ammunition by individuals convicted of misdemeanor or felony domestic violence, or who is under a restraining (protection) order for domestic abuse. This law also makes it unlawful to sell or give a firearm or ammunition to such person. This bill was only a one fourth page of 740 pages of the Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act of 1997 when added as an amendment.
Most Representatives and Senators did not read the entire bill. Those that did it, had to sign it as is, or no reparations would be funded to their states if needed.
Now apart from the obvious pressure and questionable legality of a federal legislative body holding individual states hostage as is implied in the last of that section, let us look at a hypothetical extreme that explains the full impact of this retroactive unconstitutional amendment.
Let us suppose that one of your not so distant grandparents served in WWI. That is World War ONE for those of you not keen on Roman numerals. They would be somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred years old now if they were a young man when the war ended.
Suppose that they attained officer status and were thus allowed to bring home their service issue .45 colt acp. He comes home all happy just to be alive. One morning his wife is apparently having a very bad day. She falls getting out of bed and bruises herself. Thinking it is nothing extraordinary; she goes about her daily routine and goes shopping.
When she is out shopping, she wrecks the brand new automobile they just bought. Coming home, she lies about it and when her husband sees it, he gets upset and yells at her, eventually slamming the door as he reenters the house. The neighbors being concerned citizens educated in a public school, feel compelled to call the police in case he is beating her up.
The police show up and seeing the bruise on his wife, are required to arrest him. (The law for this was not in place back then but it IS now and very real) He gets out of jail, upset but none the worse for wear and tear. He goes to court with his wife and laughs it off. He pleads guilty to a Class C misdemeanor charge of disturbing the peace involving domestic battery and thinks nothing more of it.
Fast forward to today:
This man is now about one-hundred years old, a veteran and never been a threat in any way. He is sitting at the table cleaning his service issue .45 colt acp when he hears a knock on the door. The police have come to speak to him about his neighbors or any other issue, the fact is that he has committed no crime but for whatever reason they are there.
Being an honest man with nothing to fear, he allows them into his home to speak with them and help if he can. They see the gun and feel compelled to run a check. Again, our man here has nothing to hide and gladly complies.
OOPS!
He is now a convicted felon, arrested immediately and subject to up to ten years in jail and substantial fines.
Huh?
Yup!
He was guilty of an act of domestic violence. Possession of even so much as one bullet even without his knowledge would have the same result. Again, the police are required by law to immediately arrest him. A failure to do so on their part would be considered an illegal act by the officers no matter how justified they would have been forgetting about it.
No matter what was right or wrong, this man is now a convicted felon.
He is now automatically relegated to the status of felon because of something that he laughed off maybe eighty years in the past; no judge, no jury, no trial, no benefit of the doubt, no presumption of innocence.
So he can fight it in court right?
The Lautenberg Act has never been successfully challenged by anyone to date.
There are many great cops out there with a really harsh job. I have the utmost respect for them and thank them for the job that they do. I have no respect for an illegal and corrupt federal system that puts them in unenviable situations like these and makes their already difficult jobs even worse.
Until we the people unite against injustices like this they will continue unabated until we have no rights left to defend.
Ward Tipton
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