d-usa wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Just curious, how did the collection of gold go after it was made illegal?

Not well.

Many old school families kept their golds.

How did the government try to get it all back?

I look at it like this...

Did the Prohibition work at all?

I was just curious how it went. I know prohibition was a giant failure, but I don't recall ever really hearing about the efforts to get all the gold out of circulation.

 motyak wrote:
Can we not start the "Military will all abandon their posts and side with the resistance" "Military will put the resistance down like dogs" "Nuh uh" "Yuh huh" "Nuh uh" "Yuh huh"

Please. Its always one of the last steps before thread lock

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
They might run into a little hurdle as the people who framed the Constitution were pretty clear;
"A free people ought to be armed."
- George Washington

"The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."
- Thomas Jefferson (quoting 18th century criminologist Cesare Beccaria)

"Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion in private self defense."
- John Adams

"I ask sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people except for a few politicians."
- George Mason (father of the Bill of Rights and The Virginia Declaration of Rights)

"Americans have the right and advantage of being armed, unlike the people of other countries, whose leaders are afraid to trust them with arms."
- James Madison

"A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves ... and include all men capable of bearing arms."
- Richard Henry Lee

"The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms."
- Samuel Adams

 Frazzled wrote:

 Smacks wrote:
Confiscating guns probably isn't necessary. Most people want to stay within the law and will either relinquish their guns, or find a way to own them legally (applying for a special hunting permit for example). The guns that my dad owned in Ireland were deactivated voluntarily. It was during a time when there were troubles in Ireland with the IRA. A lot of people preferred to give up their guns rather than risk being associated.

You just had an armed standoff of dozens vs. dozens of federales over...unpaid rent. Do you seriously think that would happen here? It certainly isn't in NY and Conn.

 Vaktathi wrote:
The right to keep firearms is as much of a right as free speech is in the US, putting such a restriction on it like that either opens the door to putting similar (and far more widely less approved) restrictions on other freedoms (speech, assembly, etc) or the "slippery slope" aspect will keep any such restrictions from being enacted.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
So what we need for gun control is the resurgence of a centuries old sectarian campaign to rid a country of invaders, a huge upturn in terrorist activity, and the threat that law abiding citizens might be shot as soldiers are deployed to keep the province under control.

 sebster wrote:


So criminals in Europe are just culturally inclined not to bother to make a more effective weapon, just because. That's pretty silly, mate.

That's a difference driven by massive economic factors... which the US does not share with Venezuala.

Of course it would be difficult. But that is not the same as the claim that it would be completely ineffective, which is the bad argument

 Smacks wrote:
I understand what you're saying, it wouldn't be easy, but the point I was addressing is that it would be impossible. The slippery slope is quite a well known fallacy when used that way. It 'might' open the door, but it also might not make any difference.

I know a lot of people feel passionately about this, but people are also familiar with the idea of contraband, and there are already weapons that are restricted.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Yes, but many don't want to open that door, as closing it is far more difficult. Many don't want to take that risk. If you can infringe on one right, it makes it easier to do so with other rights.

Yes, but many people view those existing restrictions as an unconstitutional infringement as is.

 Smacks wrote:

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
So what we need for gun control is the resurgence of a centuries old sectarian campaign to rid a country of invaders, a huge upturn in terrorist activity, and the threat that law abiding citizens might be shot as soldiers are deployed to keep the province under control.

Okay seriously? what.. the.. hell...

You always take it too far. No one said you need more sectarian violence and terrorism (like that's a good thing?). I was just offering some insight into events that happened here. We had incidents like the IRA attacks and Dunblane which changed public opinion, America has its own incidents, such as Columbine and Sandyhook and whatever comes next. But I really don't know why I'm bothering now. I even added you as a friend the other day to try and smooth things over, but all you ever do is burst into angry hyperbole. Now you really are just going on ignore.

 sebster wrote:
Anyhow, that's what, six quotes that were completely false or misleading, and another one that was fairly misleading. Out of what, ten quotes in total - I think you'd have to concede that's not a very good strike rate. Do you understand how you can't just eat up everything you heart that supports your side, because that just leads to you coming in to dakka and making yourself look silly? Because there are people out there who are happy to lie for their cause, and they get away with it because people like you are happy to be played as a sucker.

Anyhow, issues of bad scholarship aside, you missed the actual point I was making. Thing is, gun laws have been passed before - there is a federal ban on fully automatic weapons, for instance. When those bans were put in place they were approved in the Supreme Court, who had full access to all the arguments you might want to put up, including the founding father quotes (true or otherwise). And yet those laws passed SC approval, because the understanding the 2nd was different. The idea that you can take something that's been in flux for generations and assume that it's current bare majority will remain forever is just really foolish. And once you realise that your side won't be in majority forever, then it becomes sensible to look to finalise as much of the issue as you can while you do hold majority.

 whembly wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Just curious, how did the collection of gold go after it was made illegal?

Not well.

Many old school families kept their golds.

How did the government try to get it all back?

I look at it like this...

Did the Prohibition work at all?

I was just curious how it went. I know prohibition was a giant failure, but I don't recall ever really hearing about the efforts to get all the gold out of circulation.

I read one of them paper books... ya know... back in the day about this.

So, this is going from my memory.

Most of the gold were stored in banks or holding companies. You'd have various gold notes and bank "something" (gold clause?). By and large, the public didn't "handle" gold because, it isn't easy to store/carry.

Then the 1933 Gold Act kicked in which basically these banks/holding companies simply complied with the new regulation.

However, those with the means to keep/store gold kept it in the family guessing (rightly so) that the Gold Act wouldn't be permanent.

Also, this isn't a good example D... The scary US "Gobmint" did not send armed officer house to house to search for and seize gold without compensation. Gold coins / notes / clauses that were turned in were exchanged for legal tender Federal Reserve notes (paper money) on a dollar for dollar basis. A $10 gold coin was taken and the presenter given a $10 bill.

 d-usa wrote:

Spoiler:

I don't think it will ever be finalized. The constitution is a living breathing thing, as it was designed to be. At some point we might hit a time when people may be willing to amend the 2nd away. And some time after that maybe we might put it back in. Who knows what Americans 25 or 50 years in the future will be thinking about. I think that for quite a few of us it's pretty much an academic exercise at this point.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 whembly wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Just curious, how did the collection of gold go after it was made illegal?

Not well.

Many old school families kept their golds.

How did the government try to get it all back?

I look at it like this...

Did the Prohibition work at all?

I was just curious how it went. I know prohibition was a giant failure, but I don't recall ever really hearing about the efforts to get all the gold out of circulation.

I read one of them paper books... ya know... back in the day about this.

So, this is going from my memory.

Most of the gold were stored in banks or holding companies. You'd have various gold notes and bank "something" (gold clause?). By and large, the public didn't "handle" gold because, it isn't easy to store/carry.

Then the 1933 Gold Act kicked in which basically these banks/holding companies simply complied with the new regulation.

However, those with the means to keep/store gold kept it in the family guessing (rightly so) that the Gold Act wouldn't be permanent.

Also, this isn't a good example D... The scary US "Gobmint" did not send armed officer house to house to search for and seize gold without compensation. Gold coins / notes / clauses that were turned in were exchanged for legal tender Federal Reserve notes (paper money) on a dollar for dollar basis. A $10 gold coin was taken and the presenter given a $10 bill.

And I mentioned a couple of times that I don't think it's a good example of how to round up guns. I was just curious how they approached it since it's the last major instance of something popular becoming illegal that I could think off.

 cincydooley wrote:

 motyak wrote:
Can we not start the "Military will all abandon their posts and side with the resistance" "Military will put the resistance down like dogs" "Nuh uh" "Yuh huh" "Nuh uh" "Yuh huh"

Please. Its always one of the last steps before thread lock

It's not any of that.

There are simply too many members of our military that are defenders of the constitution and our citizenry above all else. They, in fact, swear oaths to that and are not beholden to orders that violate the constitution or seek to harm our citizenry.

There's no "nuh uh" to it; it's simply a fact.

This story was co-published with the New York Times.

Over the past two decades, the majority of Americans in a country deeply divided over gun control have coalesced behind a single proposition: The sale of assault weapons should be banned.

That idea was one of the pillars of the Obama administration’s plan to curb gun violence, and it remains popular with the public. In a poll last December, 59 percent of likely voters said they favor a ban.

But in the 10 years since the previous ban lapsed, even gun control advocates acknowledge a larger truth: The law that barred the sale of assault weapons from 1994 to 2004 made little difference.

It turns out that big, scary military rifles don’t kill the vast majority of the 11,000 Americans murdered with guns each year. Little handguns do.

In 2012, only 322 people were murdered with any kind of rifle, F.B.I. data shows.

The continuing focus on assault weapons stems from the media’s obsessive focus on mass shootings, which disproportionately involve weapons like the AR–15, a civilian version of the military M16 rifle. This, in turn, obscures some grim truths about who is really dying from gunshots.

Annually, 5,000 to 6,000 black men are murdered with guns. Black men amount to only 6 percent of the population. Yet of the 30 Americans on average shot to death each day, half are black males.

It was much the same in the early 1990s when Democrats created and then banned a category of guns they called “assault weapons.” America was then suffering from a spike in gun crime and it seemed like a problem threatening everyone. Gun murders each year had been climbing: 11,000, then 13,000, then 17,000.

Democrats decided to push for a ban of what seemed like the most dangerous guns in America: assault weapons, which were presented by the media as the gun of choice for drug dealers and criminals, and which many in law enforcement wanted to get off the streets.

This politically defined category of guns — a selection of rifles, shotguns and handguns with “military-style” features — only figured in about 2 percent of gun crimes nationwide before the ban.

Handguns were used in more than 80 percent of murders each year, but gun control advocates had failed to interest enough of the public in a handgun ban. Handguns were the weapons most likely to kill you, but they were associated by the public with self-defense. (In 2008, the Supreme Court said there was a constitutional right to keep a loaded handgun at home for self-defense.)

Banning sales of military-style weapons resonated with both legislators and the public: Civilians did not need to own guns designed for use in war zones.

On Sept. 13, 1994, President Bill Clinton signed an assault weapons ban into law. It barred the manufacture and sale of new guns with military features and magazines holding more than 10 rounds. But the law allowed those who already owned these guns — an estimated 1.5 million of them — to keep their weapons.

The policy proved costly. Mr. Clinton blamed the ban for Democratic losses in 1994. Crime fell, but when the ban expired, a detailed study found no proof that it had contributed to the decline.

The ban did reduce the number of assault weapons recovered by local police, to 1 percent from roughly 2 percent.

“Should it be renewed, the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement,” a Department of Justice-funded evaluation concluded.

Still, the majority of Americans continued to support a ban on assault weapons.

One reason: The use of these weapons may be rare over all, but they’re used frequently in the gun violence that gets the most media coverage, mass shootings.

The criminologist James Alan Fox at Northeastern University estimates that there have been an average of 100 victims killed each year in mass shootings over the past three decades. That’s less than 1 percent of gun homicide victims.

But these acts of violence in schools and movie theaters have come to define the problem of gun violence in America.

Most Americans do not know that gun homicides have decreased by 49 percent since 1993 as violent crime also fell, though rates of gun homicide in the United States are still much higher than those in other developed nations. A Pew survey conducted after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., found that 56 percent of Americans believed wrongly that the rate of gun crime was higher than it was 20 years ago.

Even as homicide rates have held steady or declined for most Americans over the last decade, for black men the rate has sometimes risen. But it took a handful of mass shootings in 2012 to put gun control back on Congress’s agenda.

After Sandy Hook, President Obama introduced an initiative to reduce gun violence. He laid out a litany of tragedies: the children of Newtown, the moviegoers of Aurora, Colo. But he did not mention gun violence among black men.

To be fair, the president’s first legislative priority after Sandy Hook was universal background checks, a measure that might have shrunk the market for illegal guns used in many urban shootings. But Republicans in Congress killed that effort. The next proposal on his list was reinstating and “strengthening” bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. It also went nowhere.

“We spent a whole bunch of time and a whole bunch of political capital yelling and screaming about assault weapons,” Mayor Mitchell J. Landrieu of New Orleans said. He called it a “zero sum political fight about a symbolic weapon.”

Mr. Landrieu and Mayor Michael A. Nutter of Philadelphia are founders of Cities United, a network of mayors trying to prevent the deaths of young black men. “This is not just a gun issue, this is an unemployment issue, it’s a poverty issue, it’s a family issue, it’s a culture of violence issue,” Mr. Landrieu said.

More than 20 years of research funded by the Justice Department has found that programs to target high-risk people or places, rather than targeting certain kinds of guns, can reduce gun violence.

David M. Kennedy, the director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, argues that the issue of gun violence can seem enormous and intractable without first addressing poverty or drugs. A closer look at the social networks of neighborhoods most afflicted, he says, often shows that only a small number of men drive most of the violence. Identify them and change their behavior, and it’s possible to have an immediate impact.

Working with Professor Kennedy, and building on successes in other cities, New Orleans is now identifying the young men most at risk and intervening to help them get jobs. How well this strategy will work in the long term remains to be seen.

But it’s an approach based on an honest assessment of the real numbers.

Police Have No Duty To Protect Individuals

by Peter Kasler

Self-Reliance For Self-Defense -- Police Protection Isn't Enough!

All our lives, especially during our younger years, we hear that the police are there to protect us. From the very first kindergarten- class visit of "Officer Friendly" to the very last time we saw a police car - most of which have "To Protect and Serve" emblazoned on their doors - we're encouraged to give ourselves over to police protection. But it hasn't always been that way.

Before the mid-1800s, American and British citizens - even in large cities - were expected to protect themselves and each other. Indeed, they were legally required to pursue and attempt to apprehend criminals. The notion of a police force in those days was abhorrent in England and America, where liberals viewed it as a form of the dreaded "standing army."

England's first police force, in London, was not instituted until 1827. The first such forces in America followed in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia during the period between 1835 and 1845. They were established only to augment citizen self-protection. It was never intended that they act affirmatively, prior to or during criminal activity or violence against individual citizens. Their duty was to protect society as a whole by deterrence; i.e., by systematically patrolling, detecting and apprehending criminals after the occurrence of crimes. There was no thought of police displacing the citizens' right of self-protection. Nor could they, even if it were intended.

Professor Don B. Kates, Jr., eminent civil rights lawyer and criminologist, states:

Even if all 500,000 American police officers were assigned to patrol, they could not protect 240 million citizens from upwards of 10 million criminals who enjoy the luxury of deciding when and where to strike. But we have nothing like 500,000 patrol officers; to determine how many police are actually available for any one shift, we must divide the 500,000 by four (three shifts per day, plus officers who have days off, are on sick leave, etc.). The resulting number must be cut in half to account for officers assigned to investigations, juvenile, records, laboratory, traffic, etc., rather than patrol. [1]
Such facts are underscored by the practical reality of today's society. Police and Sheriff's departments are feeling the financial exigencies of our times, and that translates directly to a reduction of services, e.g., even less protection. For example, one moderate day recently (September 23, 1991) the San Francisco Police Department "dropped" [2] 157 calls to its 911 facility, and about 1,000 calls to its general telephone number (415-553-0123). An SFPD dispatcher said that 150 dropped 911 calls, and 1,000 dropped general number calls, are about average on any given day. [3]

It is, therefore, a fact of law and of practical necessity that individuals are responsible for their own personal safety, and that of their loved ones. Police protection must be recognized for what it is: only an auxiliary general deterrent.

Because the police have no general duty to protect individuals, judicial remedies are not available for their failure to protect. In other words, if someone is injured because they expected but did not receive police protection, they cannot recover damages by suing (except in very special cases, explained below). Despite a long history of such failed attempts, however, many, people persist in believing the police are obligated to protect them, attempt to recover when no protection was forthcoming, and are emotionally demoralized when the recovery fails. Legal annals abound with such cases.

Warren v. District of Columbia is one of the leading cases of this type. Two women were upstairs in a townhouse when they heard their roommate, a third woman, being attacked downstairs by intruders. They phoned the police several times and were assured that officers were on the way. After about 30 minutes, when their roommate's screams had stopped, they assumed the police had finally arrived. When the two women went downstairs they saw that in fact the police never came, but the intruders were still there. As the Warren court graphically states in the opinion: "For the next fourteen hours the women were held captive, raped, robbed, beaten, forced to commit sexual acts upon each other, and made to submit to the sexual demands of their attackers."

The three women sued the District of Columbia for failing to protect them, but D.C.'s highest court exonerated the District and its police, saying that it is a "fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen." [4] There are many similar cases with results to the same effect. [5]

In the Warren case the injured parties sued the District of Columbia under its own laws for failing to protect them. Most often such cases are brought in state (or, in the case of Warren, D.C.) courts for violation of state statutes, because federal law pertaining to these matters is even more onerous. But when someone does sue under federal law, it is nearly always for violation of 42 U.S.C. 1983 (often inaccurately referred to as "the civil rights act"). Section 1983 claims are brought against government officials for allegedly violating the injured parties' federal statutory or Constitutional rights.

The seminal case establishing the general rule that police have no duty under federal law to protect citizens is DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services. [6] Frequently these cases are based on an alleged "special relationship" between the injured party and the police. In DeShaney the injured party was a boy who was beaten and permanently injured by his father. He claimed a special relationship existed because local officials knew he was being abused, indeed they had "specifically proclaimed by word and deed [their] intention to protect him against that danger," [7] but failed to remove him from his father's custody.

The Court in DeShaney held that no duty arose because of a "special relationship," concluding that Constitutional duties of care and protection only exist as to certain individuals, such as incarcerated prisoners, involuntarily committed mental patients and others restrained against their will and therefore unable to protect themselves. "The affirmative duty to protect arises not from the State's knowledge of the individual's predicament or from its expressions of intent to help him, but from the limitation which it has imposed on his freedom to act on his own behalf." [8]

About a year later, the United States Court of Appeals interpreted DeShaney in the California case of Balistreri v. Pacifica Police Department. [9] Ms. Balistreri, beaten and harassed by her estranged husband, alleged a "special relationship" existed between her and the Pacifica Police Department, to wit, they were duty-bound to protect her because there was a restraining order against her husband. The Court of Appeals, however, concluded that DeShaney limited the circumstances that would give rise to a "special relationship" to instances of custody. Because no such custody existed in Balistreri, the Pacifica Police had no duty to protect her, so when they failed to do so and she was injured they were not liable. A citizen injured because the police failed to protect her can only sue the State or local government in federal court if one of their officials violated a federal statutory or Constitutional right, and can only win such a suit if a "special relationship" can be shown to have existed, which DeShaney and its progeny make it very difficult to do. Moreover, Zinermon v. Burch [10] very likely precludes Section 1983 liability for police agencies in these types of cases if there is a potential remedy via a State tort action.

Many states, however, have specifically precluded such claims, barring lawsuits against State or local officials for failure to protect, by enacting statutes such as California's Government Code, Sections 821, 845, and 846 which state, in part: "Neither a public entity or a public employee [may be sued] for failure to provide adequate police protection or service, failure to prevent the commission of crimes and failure to apprehend criminals."

It is painfully clear that the police cannot be relied upon to protect us. Thus far we've seen that they have no duty to do so. And we've also seen that even if they did have a duty to protect us, practically- speaking they could not fulfill it with sufficient certainty that we would want to bet our lives on it.

Now it's time to take off the gloves, so to speak, and get down to reality. So the police aren't duty-bound to protect us, and they can't be expected to protect us even if they want to. Does that mean that they won't protect us if they have the opportunity?

One of the leading cases on this point dates way back into the 1950s. [11] A certain Ms. Riss was being harassed by a former boyfriend, in a familiar pattern of increasingly violent threats. She went to the police for help many times, but was always rebuffed. Desperate because she could not get police protection, she applied for a gun permit, but was refused that as well. On the eve of her engagement party she and her mother went to the police one last time pleading for protection against what they were certain was a serious and dangerous threat. And one last time the police refused. As she was leaving the party, her former boyfriend threw acid in her face, blinding and permanently disfiguring her.

Her case against the City of New York for failing to protect her was, not surprisingly, unsuccessful. The lone dissenting justice of New York's high court wrote in his opinion: "What makes the City's position [denying any obligation to protect the woman] particularly difficult to understand is that, in conformity to the dictates of the law [she] did not carry any weapon for self-defense. Thus, by a rather bitter irony she was required to rely for protection on the City of New York which now denies all responsibility to her." [12]

Instances of police refusing to protect someone in grave danger, who is urgently requesting help, are becoming disturbingly more common. In 1988, Lisa Bianco's violently abusive husband was finally in jail for beating and kidnapping her, after having victimized her for years. Ms. Bianco was somewhat comforted by the facts that he was supposedly serving a seven-year sentence, and she had been promised by the authorities that she'd be notified well in advance of his release. Nevertheless, after being in only a short time, he was temporarily released on an eight-hour pass, and she wasn't notified. He went directly to her house and, in front of their 6- and 10- year old daughters, beat Lisa Bianco to death.

In 1989, in a suburb of Los Angeles, Maria Navarro called the L. A. County Sheriff's 911 emergency line asking for help. It was her birthday and there was a party at her house, but her estranged husband, against whom she had had a restraining order, said he was coming over to kill her. She believed him, but got no sympathy from the 911 dispatcher, who said: "What do you want us to do lady, send a car to sit outside your house?" Less than half an hour after Maria hung up in frustration, one of her guests called the same 911 line and informed the dispatcher that the husband was there and had already killed Maria and one other guest. Before the cops arrived, he had killed another.

But certainly no cop would stand by and do nothing while someone was being violently victimized. Or would they? In Freeman v. Ferguson [13] a police chief directed his officers not to enforce a restraining order against a woman's estranged husband because the man was a friend of the chief's. The man subsequently killed the woman and her daughter. Perhaps such a specific case is an anomaly, but more instances of general abuses aren't at all rare.

In one such typical case [14] , a woman and her son were harassed, threatened and assaulted by her estranged husband, all in violation of his probation and a restraining order. Despite numerous requests for police protection, the police did nothing because "the police department used an administrative classification that resulted in police protection being fully provided to persons abused by someone with whom the victim has no domestic relationship, but less protection when the victim is either: 1) a woman abused or assaulted by a spouse or boyfriend, or 2) a child abused by a father or stepfather." [15]

In a much more recent case, [16] a woman claimed she was injured because the police refused to make an arrest following a domestic violence call. She claimed their refusal to arrest was due to a city policy of gender- based discrimination. In that case the U. S. District Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that "no constitutional violation [occurred] when the most that can be said of the police is that they stood by and did nothing..." [17]

Do the police really harbor such indifference to the plight of certain victims? To answer that, let's leave the somewhat aloof and dispassionate world of legal precedent and move into the more easily understood "real world." I can state from considerable personal experience, unequivocally, that these things do happen. As to why they occur, I can offer only my opinion based on that experience and on additional research into the dark and murky areas of criminal sociopathy and police abuse.

One client of my partner's and mine had a restraining order against her violently abusive estranged husband. He had recently beaten her so savagely a metal plate had to be implanted in her jaw. Over and over he violated the court order, sometimes thirty times daily. He repeatedly threatened to kill her and those of use helping her. But the cops refused to arrest him for violating the order, even though they'd witnessed him doing so more than once. They danced around all over the place trying to explain why they wouldn't enforce the order, including inventing numerous absurd excuses about having lost her file (a common tactic in these cases). It finally came to light that there was a departmental order to not arrest anyone in that county for violating a protective order because the county had recently been sued by an irate (and wealthy) domestic violence arrestee.

In another of our cases, when Peggi and I served the man with restraining orders (something we're often required to do because various law enforcement agencies can't or won't do it), he threatened there and then to kill our client. Due to the vigorous nature of the threat, we went immediately to the police department to get it on file in case he attempted to carry it out during the few days before the upcoming court appearance. We spent hours filing the report, but two days later when our client went to the police department for a copy to take to court, she was told there was no record of her, her restraining order, her case, or our report.

She called in a panic. Without that report it would be more difficult securing a permanent restraining order against him. I paid an immediate visit to the chief of that department. We discussed the situation and I suggested various options, including dragging the officer to whom Peggi and I had given the detailed death threat report into court to explain under oath how it had gotten lost. In mere moments, an internal affairs officer was assigned to investigate and, while I waited, they miraculously produced the file and our report. I was even telephoned later and offered an effusive apology by various members of the department.

It is true that in the real world, law enforcement authorities very often do perpetuate the victimization. It is also true that each of us is the only person upon whom we can absolutely rely to avoid victimization. If our client in the last anecdote hadn't taken responsibility for her own fate, she might never have survived the ordeal. But she had sufficient resolve to fend for herself. Realizing the police couldn't or wouldn't help her, she contacted us. Then, when the police tried their bureaucratic shuffle on her, she called me. But for her determination to be a victim no more, and to take responsibility for her own destiny, she might have joined the countless others victimized first by criminals, then by the very system they expect will protect them.

Remember, even if the police were obligated to protect us (which they aren't), or even if they tried to protect us (which they often don't, a fact brought home to millions nationwide as they watched in horror the recent events in Los Angeles), most often there wouldn't be time enough for them to do it. It's about time that we came to grips with that, and resolved never to abdicate responsibility for our personal safety, and that of our loved ones, to anyone else.

 cincydooley wrote:

 motyak wrote:
Can we not start the "Military will all abandon their posts and side with the resistance" "Military will put the resistance down like dogs" "Nuh uh" "Yuh huh" "Nuh uh" "Yuh huh"

Please. Its always one of the last steps before thread lock

It's not any of that.

There are simply too many members of our military that are defenders of the constitution and our citizenry above all else. They, in fact, swear oaths to that and are not beholden to orders that violate the constitution or seek to harm our citizenry.

There's no "nuh uh" to it; it's simply a fact.

The majority Republican Missouri legislature handed yet another victory to pro-children activists yesterday, and a stunning defeat to those who would leave school children vulnerable to murderous psychopaths, when it overwhelmingly overrode the Democrat Governor’s veto of legislation allowing teachers to be armed in schools, as reported by the NRA and other news sources.

SB656 was passed and delivered to the Governor in May 2014, who vetoed the bill on July 14. Yesterday the Missouri Senate voted to override the veto by a vote of 23 to 8, and the House by a vote of 117 to 39. Supporters of the override came from both Democrats and Republicans.

A full copy of the bill is embedded at the bottom of this post.

SB656 allows the school district to designate teachers or administrators to receive extensive training as school protection officers as well as to carry a gun on school property.

The law also included other pro-self-defense provisions, including allowing open carry anywhere in the state for people possessing a concealed carry license. This is very useful even for those license holders who never intend to openly carry, because it protects them from the risk of a brandishing charge in the even they unintentionally reveal their concealed handgun to casual observation.

The law also lowered from 21 to 19 the age at which a person can obtain a concealed carry license, as well as other favorable provisions.

SB656 will take effect no later than October 23.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/239629898/Missouri-2014-SB656-Enrolled

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
Glad to see bipartisan support for the right to effective self defense

 Grey Templar wrote:
Lol, the third known School shooter was Matthew Ward

The majority Republican Missouri legislature handed yet another victory to pro-children activists yesterday, and a stunning defeat to those who would leave school children vulnerable to murderous psychopaths...

 whembly wrote:

-Teachers can be armed.

 Hordini wrote:
Why would they need to be compensated by the state? I don't think that many people were really suggesting that, were they?

 dogma wrote:

The majority Republican Missouri legislature handed yet another victory to pro-children activists yesterday, and a stunning defeat to those who would leave school children vulnerable to murderous psychopaths...

Pro-children? Really?

 whembly wrote:

-Teachers can be armed.

But they won't be compensated by the state, meaning that this legislation is much adieu about nothing where students are concerned.

 dogma wrote:

 Hordini wrote:
Why would they need to be compensated by the state? I don't think that many people were really suggesting that, were they?

The bill explicitly states that no state funds shall be used to compensate a "School Protection Officer". This means that any state funds which support the relevant district cannot be passed on to said officer. A fact which renders this bill moot.

And that's before we dig into the issue of why SPOs are required, when a LEO could do the same job more effectively.