By Dean Weingarten
Arizona – -(Ammoland.com)- What is happening in California, as shown in this Fresno Bee article, is slow motion gun confiscation over time.
California has established gun confiscation squads that move through California confiscating guns that were registered.
As predicted in the essay “Gun Registration is Gun Confiscation” written in 2000, gun confiscation is not being implemented in massive door to door searches, though such confiscations have happened in recent history, such as in the Philippines in 1972, and even during a flood in Canada this year (2013).
The agents are part of the California Department of Justice’s Armed Prohibited Persons System (APPS), a program that takes firearms from people barred from owning them. The law says that group can include ex-felons and people deemed to be mentally unstable.
Because the agents are using registration lists, and it is illegal to sell a firearm in California privately (all sales must go through federal dealers), the “I sold it” excuse is not allowed:
Team members say they are dogged: They will press a prohibited person to allow them to search a home to look for the gun and ask to see the paperwork if they are told a weapon has been sold.
This is the purpose of gun registration and the requirement to report a gun as stolen. With these requirements, a person does not have the legal recourse to simply say the gun was sold, stolen, lost, or given away. The presumption of property rights in simple possession has been lost. Unless you can show that you have documented permission from the state, possession of a gun is de-facto illegal.
The agents are in full tactical gear, and claim that the job is very dangerous. I have yet to see a single article about a gun fight that resulted from these confiscation raids.
“It really is a dangerous job,” said Yo, a Marine Corps veteran of the first Gulf War. “Every time we make a contact, it’s a very dangerous situation.”
Even guns that are not owned by the prohibited person are confiscated:
Arrests don’t always follow the discovery of a gun. Agents visited a nearby home in Clovis in search of a firearm owned by a man who had been evaluated as mentally unstable. They found that he had access to a gun safe with several long guns as well as a long-barreled .50-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver valued at several thousand dollars.
Note that the man was evaluated as mentally unstable, a slippery slope that can be used to take constitutional rights from large numbers of people. If the evaluation was in error, which commonly happens, then a court case with significant costs will be required to prove that you are eligible to own guns.
Even enforcers sometimes feel guilty about what they are doing. From the LA Times:
Marsh said he once felt a little twinge when taking a gun. The man had been disqualified from ownership because of mental illness. Agents found him living in compound without electricity in a rural area near Crescent City. He was using his guns to shoot game to feed himself.
This is how slow gun confiscation worked in the English, and earlier, Japanese models. Make it illegal to own guns without a state sanction. Reduce the number of new legal owners by making it harder for people to buy and possess guns through increasingly difficult bureaucratic barriers such as background checks, safety classes, waiting periods, and mental evaluations.
On the other side, make it illegal for more classes of people to legally possess arms by increasing the number of classes that are prohibited and the broadening the definitions of the people who are in those classes.
In the end, the number of legal gun owners becomes small enough that it they are politically ineffective, and can be ignored.
To those who say, “it can never happen here”, well it already is, just point to California.
c2013 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
About Dean Weingarten;
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of constitutional carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and recently retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
they are politically
If the “Govt.” takes away our guns who then will defend us against them (meaning the govt.) ?? Our military and state and local police should rebel against orders that tell them to break their oaths they took to defend our constitution ! If they do then what will the govt do ? Import UN Troops ? I hardly think so. Come on Jarheads and dogfaces stop washington from becoming a NAZI STATE !! Where the hell are our Generals etc that would allow such bull ?? Wake up before it’s too late !!! STOP Washington .
Every single one of the so-called ‘gun control’ statutes are unconstitutional including this turkey. Moreover, the main goal of these gun confiscatin’ politicians is simply to totally disarm America.
Well that’s just great!.They wait until the worst epidemic in history arrives “Ebola” and takes away their right to defend themselves from the hordes of walking zombies that will inevitably be here in 18 months.Well California now knows “elections matter”. And for anyone left with a gun after confiscation.Don’t shoot until you see the “reds” of their eyes!…
This has been Obamas agenda from the begining. Look at Home land Security buy 12,000 tanks and then buying up all the ammo. It always starts in california and will move east. I suppose sense I commented my name will be on the list soon.
The Marine Corp veteran that said “it’s really dangerous” should be ashamed of himself for violating the oath he took to the constitution of the Unites States; not did he take the oath once but twice. Shame on you!!!
What can I do now? I want to sign a petition or something. I don’t want to sit back and wait for it to get to me. Even in California it affects all of us, if we continue to allow it. Why are gun owners and our organization for gun rights not screaming about all this. Starts slow, gains momentum, and then were all slaves. I like my freedom.
ONly a fool would try to take on a entire swat team alone. Live to fight another day.
I wonder how long it will be before they bang on the door of someone who actually is unstable. Or, for that matter, someone who is not so anxious to comply with an order to surrender their property because Big Brother says so. The fuse has been lit and the ensuing explosion is inevitable.
Yes, and they said a Communist/Marxist, foreign raised, bathhouse queen would never happen here also.
This has happened to a number people that I know, and those cops were not at all nice about it they busted the door down and took everything the man had even the primers for reloading his own ammo. Then they hauled him off to jail.
I would like to think that total gun confiscation will never happen in the U.S.,but I also know what has happened in other countries and am not naive enough to that it will never happen here. Especially since it already started in California. As I’m sure most of you are aware, whatever laws start in CA., whether there motor vehicle, education, etc., they usually spread through the rest of the country in a matter of time. It may not happen, but not for lack of trying. We all need to do our part to fight this.
This is EXACTLY the same type(s) of programs the Nazi policy inspired Democrats are utilizing in Colorado. First establish laws, rules and regulations seemingly not necessarily about firearms and then once in effect, link them to firearms and get the guns and at the same time expand the use of law enforcement to do this. The rules/laws once established can be
easily expanded and extended as time progresses.
These liberal Democrat politicians are very dangerous people and will get you and yours killed if necessary to advance their personal (not government) goals.
I don’t know about you…but stealing a person’s way to defend themselves doesn’t sit too well with me. You have a natural right to self defense by whatever means necessary. These clowns are violating natural law, making themselves lawless in the process by taking the means of self defense from such heinous criminals as someone convicted of FELONY DUI, whatever the heck that is. The founding fathers considered felonies to be HEINOUS crimes not BS crimes without victims. Cops doing this are typical psychopaths with no conscience. I feel sooooo much safer knowing someone who had been smoking an herb… Read more »
I agree with you Nailer45, but gun control really started big after the Civil War.Thats when the idea of big government gained a lot of traction. The southerners were unable to stand up to the Feds anymore as there respective states had to be re-entered and excepted back into the union.The federal law was considered supreme and the idea of states rights was all but abandoned. If you read the second amendment and understand it the way our founding fathers meant it,the states were the ones that were meant to have military weapons and everyone between the ages of 18… Read more »
More Gestapo police taking guns from law abiding citizens. Define Normal? Define mental illness? each court and state has a different answer for Normal and mental illness. It is just a back door way of taking your firearms.
we the people have failed our Founding Fathers Dream as we have not fought to keep our rights and liberty, ole George washington is spinning in his grave right now.
If our founding Fathers seen how we let America become a police state they would spit in our faces and call us cowards.
California is a mess