Of course, it could be said that one reason the cops couldn’t keep order was all the well-armed citizenry running around shooting at each other, with bullets flying all over the neighborhood and into innocent bystanders.
It’s funny I should be taking this tack, because I strongly support gun rights, I own four guns myself, and I am also in the camp that says I would never voluntarily surrender my guns to the police in a Katrina-type situation. (By that I mean, if they showed up without some type of warrant and demanded them, I wouldn’t let them into the house and tell them to fuck off, before getting my ass kicked for my trouble.)
But I also think the OP is painting a very biased picture. I don’t know all the incidents he/she is referring to, but why would a little old lady just “show her pistol” to a bunch of officers? The police are trained to react at the sight of a gun; it’s their ass on the line, after all. From the way their reaction is described, it doesn’t sound like she told them what she was doing. Were they supposed to wait and see if she was going to shoot at them or not? It’s not as if elderly women have never been involved in police shootings.
The problems with law enforcement in both New Orleans and Louisiana are well documented in the aftermath of Katrina. I think I can even recall hearing that a significant number of officers simply abandoned their jobs altogether. I think it’s unfair to paint police in general with the same brush as the corrupt and incompetent police involved in Katrina.
He was talking about mass confiscation under martial law. It could be much more thoroughly done by utilizing government held records and databases and the records on file at gun shops than by utilizing only the NRA membership roles. It certainly could be started faster.
they could kiss my ass. none of our guns is registered, nobody knows how many we have, and they can not search my property without a warrent, and they probably couldn’t find more than one if they tried without destroying my property.
After the fact, they would get a lawsuit for abrogating my civil rights under the constitution. Nowhere does it say that the police can take away the guns unless I happen to be legally unable to own one [and last I checked I am not a felon nor am I mentally deficient.]
BATFE knows who made it or who imported it; they know who wholesaled it; they know who retailed it; they know who too. If you bought it on paper, BATFE knows about it. Sure going after NRA is a possibility, but you will miss a lot IMO as the membership is minuscule to overall gun owners/purchasers.
Not saying that the Katrina survivors were all well-behaved, but the reports of New Orleans that week as some sort of dangerous, lawless zone - haven’t they long since been debunked?
No, what you posted doesn’t make sense, because it’s not what I was saying. What I concluded was that local law-enforcement in the New Orleans area was especially bad after Katrina, any way you want to measure it. It was variously corrupt/incompetent/poorly led/poorly organized/undermanned, or possibly any combination of those things. But the OP asked about cooperating with police confiscating weapons where I live if a natural disaster like Katrina hit. My point was that however the police performed after Katrina is not a fair way to measure other law-enforcement organizations. Other police departments in other big cities might’ve done a hell of a lot better job, so saying something is or is not a good idea based on the conduct of the New Orleans police is not apt.
Did you take a course in writing straw men or something? ALL I said was:
I wasn’t in N.O. after Katrina; I don’t know if confiscating guns makes sense in general in that situation or not. But just because the N.O. police did not always act professionally does not itself make their actions illegal. It’s easy to criticize in hindsight the job someone else did, when you were never in that situation yourself.
So, what are you saying? Allowing the police to do illegal things is never a good idea. Relying on the police to do their jobs appropriately is never a good idea, either. Small town cops have their own issues, and big city cops have their own prejudices.
And why should cops be armed anyhow? The Brits do fine without guns.
If you read this thread you’d get some follow-up to that. It’s pretty clear at this point that the police screwed up and made up some back story to justify the mistake. Not a really convincing case for the police needing to be cautious around everyone.
