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Now just wait a minute here!
Oct. 12th, 2007 10:31 amhttp://www.wtnh.com/Global/story.asp?S=7199938
These stories are starting to make me sick. Cops show up with warrant, cordon off neighborhood, and empty house of guns. The story uses every gun-grabbing fear word from "automatic" to "live grenade", but there's a complete lack of any explanation of what is actually the point of this exercise.
I'm going to assume that the owner of the firearms and "hollowed out" grenades has done something sufficiently suspicious to justify the warrant. Since one of the occupants turned in 90 guns the day before (what criminal would do that?), I'm not sure this is justified, but just for now, let's go with it. If not, I hope that every official involved gets suitably punished for violating someone's civil rights.
I didn't see anything in the story to suggest that anyone has done anything wrong, except collecting firearms. I think this person's neighbors have as much right to fear a gun collection as much as I fear the sock puppets across the street, or the beanie babies in the back of the car in the parking lot. You can be afraid if you like, but don't think that such fear is necessarily reasonable.
There's another big story in the news about the kid "plotting a Columbine-style attack" with lots of guns, grenades, and even an "assault weapon". Oh scary, scary! The other side I've heard from sources that are at least as credible as ABC is that all of the guns were BB guns, that the "assault weapon" was a 9MM Hi-Point Carbine (which isn't even considered an assault weapon in California). I don't want yet another school shooting, but the sensationalist aspect of the journalism here is just reprehensible.
I think it's interesting that insurance companies aren't allowed to use fear tactics the way that the newspapers can. If some insurance company started offering life insurance policies with special school shooting riders, they'd be lynched, but the newspapers work every one of these tragedies for every sale they can.
These stories are starting to make me sick. Cops show up with warrant, cordon off neighborhood, and empty house of guns. The story uses every gun-grabbing fear word from "automatic" to "live grenade", but there's a complete lack of any explanation of what is actually the point of this exercise.
I'm going to assume that the owner of the firearms and "hollowed out" grenades has done something sufficiently suspicious to justify the warrant. Since one of the occupants turned in 90 guns the day before (what criminal would do that?), I'm not sure this is justified, but just for now, let's go with it. If not, I hope that every official involved gets suitably punished for violating someone's civil rights.
I didn't see anything in the story to suggest that anyone has done anything wrong, except collecting firearms. I think this person's neighbors have as much right to fear a gun collection as much as I fear the sock puppets across the street, or the beanie babies in the back of the car in the parking lot. You can be afraid if you like, but don't think that such fear is necessarily reasonable.
There's another big story in the news about the kid "plotting a Columbine-style attack" with lots of guns, grenades, and even an "assault weapon". Oh scary, scary! The other side I've heard from sources that are at least as credible as ABC is that all of the guns were BB guns, that the "assault weapon" was a 9MM Hi-Point Carbine (which isn't even considered an assault weapon in California). I don't want yet another school shooting, but the sensationalist aspect of the journalism here is just reprehensible.
I think it's interesting that insurance companies aren't allowed to use fear tactics the way that the newspapers can. If some insurance company started offering life insurance policies with special school shooting riders, they'd be lynched, but the newspapers work every one of these tragedies for every sale they can.
