Across the country, police have become very interested in finding out the exact details of their residents’ gun ownership.
In Austin, Texas, the police chief has urged residents to snoop on their neighbors and report on any “gun enthusiasts” who might be suspicious characters for them to “vet.” Free Thought Project quotes this from the police chief’s announcement:
And in Beloit, Wisconsin, police want residents to volunteer to have their homes searched for firearms. Beloit Police Chief Norm Jacobs suggests, of course, that it’s for the children: “Maybe we’ll find a toy gun that’s been altered by a youngster in the house.”
He also hopes this will “encourage people to think about gun violence as an infectious disease like Ebola,” according to a description of the policy by Wisconsin Public Radio, and “result in the discovery of guns they didn’t know were in their own homes.”
Buffalo, New York is similarly concerned about the possibility of people not realizing they own guns—specifically those once owned by deceased relatives. Last month the city announced their plan to begin enforcing a state law that permits them to seize guns from the deceased so “they don’t end up in the wrong hands.”
“At times they lay out there and the family is not aware of them and they end up just out on the street,” the Buffalo police commissioner said.
Gun rights advocates like BearingArms.com called this a “blindingly obvious” ploy to “use the relative’s pistol permit as the proverbial camel’s nose under the tent to get at every firearm they can, hoping to remove all the firearms from the home while the family is at their most vulnerable.”
In some cases the relatives have 15 days to get rid of the guns, transfer the permits, or turn them in, and can spend up to a year in jail for violating the law.
