informers among us

[MD_Willington]

Hasn't the American Medical Association been doing this for years? I believe I read in a Shotgun News article that the AMA was asking doctors to ask their patients how many guns, etc. they had.

Our pediatrician asked us if we had firearms before, I told him that we had plenty of 5 gallon pails around the house, two toilets, two sets of stairs and two automobiles, all of which cause more injury and death for small children. He never asked again.

 

[Tokugawa]

This thread was not started to bash cops, or to say that it is wrong to report the guy you saw molesting a kid. Yes, when I see a guy driving that can't stay between the lines, I call it in. He represents a direct threat.

The concern to me is the widespread solicitation of informants as a program, and the resultant changes to our society. It ties in quite nicely with the use of surveillance cameras. No one item is so terrible, it is the sum of these things that has me concerned.

 

[SuperNaut]

The DHS' TIA program was trying to enlist the aid of postmen, meter readers, cable guys etc. to spy on the houses they service. After much public criticism this program was said to have been "discontinued," when in fact, the program just changed its name.

Because of this program I moved a bunch of books away from the front window and into a back room. Not just political subjects, all of my firearm-oriented books as well.

 

[Lonestar]

Wait, the officer respond to your home, finds no automatic weapons, if he does you show him your class III license, or he checks the system to see if you have one on file. Everything is in your name, everything has paperwork or can be traced back, you will be fine. Everything will be evaluated on the spot, and as long as your are not doing anything illegal, your weapons are going nowhere.

Joe hoodlum on the otherhand has no paperwork, no record of sale, he is a felon, he says that his guns are his cousins (which he forgets his exact name) and he has sawed off shotgun and a modified semi auto rifle that now shoots automatic. He will lose those weapons and hopefully go to jail.

Please don't side with Joe Hoodlum.

 

[javacodeman]

Hasn't the American Medical Association been doing this for years? I believe I read in a Shotgun News article that the AMA was asking doctors to ask their patients how many guns, etc. they had.

When I was in the Navy, the Navy pediatrians used to ask us if we used tobacco or had firearms and recorded it on their forms. Back then I didn't and just answered "no." But I always thought, "And what if I did?" I wish I had it to do all over again. I would have responded (and certainly would now if it happened again) similarly:

Our pediatrician asked us if we had firearms before, I told him that we had plenty of 5 gallon pails around the house, two toilets, two sets of stairs and two automobiles, all of which cause more injury and death for small children. He never asked again.

Edit: I still don't use tobacco.

 

[Spreadfire Arms]

Lonestar wrote:

Wait, the officer respond to your home, finds no automatic weapons, if he does you show him your class III license, or he checks the system to see if you have one on file. Everything is in your name, everything has paperwork or can be traced back, you will be fine. Everything will be evaluated on the spot, and as long as your are not doing anything illegal, your weapons are going nowhere.

for clarification there is no Class III "License" but i think you're referring to the Class III tax stamp(s) that would be on your Form 4(s).

depending on the state (if there is state registration as well) the LEO would not able to access the ATF NFA database to verify your ownership of any NFA items.

i do agree that if there is nothing that can be proven as illegal then the officer does not have the legal right to enter your home, nor would he have a valid reason to arrest.

 

[rbernie]

Joe hoodlum on the otherhand has no paperwork, no record of sale, he is a felon, he says that his guns are his cousins (which he forgets his exact name) and he has sawed off shotgun and a modified semi auto rifle that now shoots automatic. He will lose those weapons and hopefully go to jail.

The Philly program has resulted in 919 tips and approximately 250 weapons seized. Even if each Bad Guy possessed only one weapon, that's still means that the tips were wrong seventy five percent of the time and that almost seven hundred folks got jacked up in the system for no demonstrable reason. That's a less than stellar record.

NYCs program is a little bit better. In 2006, they received 701 tips and seized 293 guns. That means that only sixty percent of the folks that were snitched on were jacked up for no good reason. How comforting.

Please don't side with Joe Hoodlum.

I'm not. I just don't want to be treated like Joe Hoodlum based solely upon an anonymous paid tip. And while I hear what Jeff is saying in general vis-a-vis tip lines and how they're treated within the LEO community, the program stats provided by NYC and Philly certainly bear witness to the fact that these specific gun-related programs have a very high abuse/failure rate.

 

[joab]

i do agree that if there is nothing that can be proven as illegal then the officer does not have the legal right to enter your home, nor would he have a valid reason to arrest.

But you are still on a watch list

I'm not all that worried about cops, but the other government agencies scare the hell out of me

The old DHS in Florid, called HRS back then, became universally known as the Florida Gestapo. Their reputation as a heavy handed organization operating on the absolute edge of the law was well founded.
People lost their children because they dared to talk back to investigators, lives and careers of the people who got on their wrong side were ruined
Eventually the courts forced the state to disband the dept.
They did this by simply renaming all the little sub groups within the organization but kept the same offices, the same heads, same staff and most importantly the same computer banks.
This new group is the one that investigated me because my son's teacher informed them that I was "training my son with weapons" after she found out that I let my son shoot a .22 at a supervised range.
Now I'm on their list again

This is a very real problem that should not be glossed over with accusations of tin foil hats and "for the good of the children" mentalities.

You may change your tune if you ever piss off the wrong service man

 

[DC3-CVN-72]

What's to stop someone from planting a gun or drugs in your house that you don't know about to get $1000.00 from the police? verry scary!

 

[Ryder]

Joe hoodlum on the otherhand has no paperwork, no record of sale, he is a felon, he says that his guns are his cousins (which he forgets his exact name) and he has sawed off shotgun and a modified semi auto rifle that now shoots automatic. He will lose those weapons and hopefully go to jail.

Don't know any hoodlums. Never have met one. I do know people who were railroaded into the system and released from prison 10 or 20 years ago. They have lived honest lives since their release just as they did before they were arrested. They now have families with young children. And horror of horrors they own a gun to protect that family. You couldn't pay me 5 million dollars to ruin someone's family over that. Let alone $20 an hour.

 

[Tokugawa]

Lonestar, you may live where you need a permit and registration for every gun you own. In vast portions of this land, free men do not need the Gov. permission to own arms and many if not most firearms have no paper trail at all. So the Leo asking you for "proof" of ownership, or a registration, or some other "permit", is going to come away with nothing, and the gun owner will be placed in that most difficult of positions, trying to prove a negative.
I think that the law was intended to get "badguys" guns. However laws have a way of being turned and twisted to fulfill an agenda that may be worlds apart from the original intent.

 

[.41Dave]

Wait, the officer respond to your home, finds no automatic weapons, if he does you show him your class III license, or he checks the system to see if you have one on file. Everything is in your name, everything has paperwork or can be traced back, you will be fine. Everything will be evaluated on the spot, and as long as your are not doing anything illegal, your weapons are going nowhere.

Joe hoodlum on the otherhand has no paperwork, no record of sale, he is a felon, he says that his guns are his cousins (which he forgets his exact name) and he has sawed off shotgun and a modified semi auto rifle that now shoots automatic. He will lose those weapons and hopefully go to jail.

Please don't side with Joe Hoodlum.

It's all so simple. Clearly the Founding Fathers were a bunch of paranoid tin-foil-hat types and Joe Hoodlum supporters. If they weren't, they never would have hindered law enforcement with such pernicious nonsense as the 4th, 5th, and 6th amendments. If only we could do away with these "protections" (for criminals)! For the Children, of course. After all, think of how much crime could be prevented if cops could search homes, businesses, and body cavities after receiving nothing more than an anonymous tip! Or maybe even just random neighborhood "sweeps"! After all, if you are honest and have nothing to hide, why would you object? :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

 

[havoc7usmc]

I live in the great state of Vermont. We have a lot of people move to our state that don't understand our pro gun laws. Make a story short. I'm snitched/reported on at least a dozen times a year to the state police. I live in a very rural area and have the luxury of shooting from my front porch, yes I have a nice little 50 yard range where I can relax, drink my ice tea, barbeque and shoot all at the same time. I have a very good back stop/berm and safety is the number one issue. But it really bugs the non locals' that we can own guns and shoot and on our property, they feel that it not right, while they to haul ass down a narrow dirt at 60 mph( boat trailor taking out our mailboxes and family pets along the way) and have to expose their family to gun fire while going to the lake. Oh, by the way the State Police don't responed. I'm a LEO and I fix their guns.

 

[QuestionEverything]

And Philly was very up front with things; cash-for-tips is paid on arrest, not upon conviction. Wanna screw with a the guy down the hall and buy that new TV set all at the same time? This may be just the ticket....

Step 1: Buy Hi-Point for $100 and file off the serial number.

Step 2: Spend another $30 crudely attaching a foregrip to the weapon, making it an NFA Class II item.

Step 3: Plant gun in Neighbor Joe's house/room/yard.

Step 4: "Officer, Offficer, Neighbor Joe has a sawed-off cop-killing automatic military attack rifle! I saw where he hides it!"

Step 5: $870 profit.

 

[javacodeman]

Step 1: Buy Hi-Point for $100 and file off the serial number.

Step 2: Spend another $30 crudely attaching a foregrip to the weapon, making it an NFA Class II item.

Step 3: Plant gun in Neighbor Joe's house/room/yard.

Step 4: "Officer, Officer, Neighbor Joe has a sawed-off cop-killing automatic military attack rifle! I saw where he hides it!"

Step 5: $870 profit.

I think that is a MasterCard commercial in the making.

java

 

[Owen]

I haven't seen anything anti-cop on this thread yet Lonestar.









(well the Florida DHS thing was kinda anti-cop, but not the slathering bigotry I think is objectionable)

 

[Dr. Dickie]

I think that is a MasterCard commercial in the making.

Then it would be:

Step 1: Buy Hi-Point for $100 and file off the serial number.

Step 2: Spend another $30 crudely attaching a foregrip to the weapon, making it an NFA Class II item.

Step 3: Plant gun in Neighbor Joe's house/room/yard.

Step 4: "Officer, Offficer, Neighbor Joe has a sawed-off cop-killing automatic military attack rifle! I saw where he hides it!"

Step 5: $870 profit.

Step 6: Look on neighbor's face, priceless!

 

[javacodeman]

Step 6: Look on neighbor's face, priceless!

Excellent!!

 

[JWarren]

Actually, the priceless part on the highpoint thing would be the look on YOUR face when you realize that with today's forensic technology, filed serial numbers are retrievable. They can find the stress imprint on the metal practically all the way through whereever the metal was stamped.

I suspect that you'd only be turning yourself in after the numbers were run.


Still, that was funny!


John

 

[mrmeval]

Planting stuff happens now for various reasons not related to money. It doesn't take even that effort, it can just be "conspiracy too..." do some crime with a sworn witness.

 

[rbernie]

Y'all are making this too hard. The cops will pay off for an arrest, not conviction, and in 60% or more of the cases they never FIND an illegal weapon to go along with the arrest.

Who needs a weapon? Just tell 'em that the dude down the hall has an illegal weapon and that he loans it out to his 'banger friends. They'll jack him up for days, search lots of places, never find anything, and you get a grand to go with the entertainment.

What's not to love?

 

[joab]

well the Florida DHS thing was kinda anti-cop, but not the slathering bigotry I think is objectionable

Not really because the cops did not like the old HRS and a couple of high ranking cops I know can't stand DHS or whatever they call themselves

What's to stop someone from planting a gun or drugs in your house that you don't know about to get $1000.00 from the police? verry scary

For some reason I never thought of that.

I had keys to homes and in almost every home I went into, between 10 and 20 a day, I had almost total access without supervision.

I also have a few non papered guns that could not be traced back to me due to their age. I imagine a few of us do. I would bet that anyone that would set you up would not be above "finding" one

A phone call and a couple quick cuts with a saw on a decrepit old single shot shotgun turns it into a $1000 1911

Everything is in your name, everything has paperwork or can be traced back, you will be fine.

Joe hoodlum on the other hand has no paperwork, no record of sale, he is a felon,

A high percentage of my guns have no paperwork anywhere that can be traced back to me and I have no record of sale on many and I am far from a practicing felon.

 

[ProguninTN]

Gun Reporting

From what I have read, I would imagine that gun reporting is more common in locales with lots of gun restrictions and an anti-gun populous. In other areas, it seems drug activity/crimes against children would be the most reported crimes.

 

[telomerase]

Step 1: Buy Hi-Point for $100 and file off the serial number.

Whoa, whoa, you're overpaying. This doesn't have to be a WORKING Hi-Point.

And cut the labor cost on the serial number, just do all your buying at inner-city flea markets.

Or just skip all the above and plant drugs instead, they hardly cost anything in the minuscule quantities required (thanks to the brilliant success of the US regime in Afghanistan, opium production has doubled in the last year).

Step 5: $870 profit.

That's what makes America better than the old Soviet Union: better-paid secret police snitches.

BTW, thanks for starting this thread... I see I've really been barking up the wrong tree with this "working" for a living stuff!

 

[geekWithA.45]

$870 profit?

Wander a junkyard, find 10" of 12 gauge pipe, an elastic band, a nail, and some wood to make grips with. 100% profit!