Good day all. I just had a bit of a surprise. I saw a decision that was just announced from the United States Supreme Court that was a 9-0 decision in favor of the 4th Amendment in regards to a warrantless seizure of guns.
I recall reading about this case a while back. Basically a couple got into a fight, the husband put an unloaded gun on the table and rhetorically told the wife to “Shoot me now.” The police arrived and convinced the husband to check himself into a hospital. (Which is NOT a state commitment) While there, the police lied to the wife and confiscated all of the husbands legally owned firearms. He sued of course and now the USSC has said Nuh Uh! That’s a Bozo No No! Here are the details from American Military News:
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that warrantless gun confiscation from Americans’ homes is unconstitutional, voting unanimously on the side of a Rhode Island man whose firearms were taken by law enforcement without a warrant after his wife expressed concerns that he might hurt himself.
According to Caniglia v Strom, a lower court had previously determined that police confiscating the guns without a warrant fell under the Fourth Amendment’s “community caretaking” exception, but a 9-0 vote from the nation’s top court struck down that ruling.
First, I’m not surprised that this happened in Rhode Island. They are bluer then blue. The constitution is advisory to them. I also looked up the Circuit court that originally ruled in favor of the confiscation and violation of the 4th Amendment. Three Obama judges and a Clinton judge. (There are also a couple of Bush judges as well) I haven’t been able to find a breakdown on who ruled which way on this, or if it was a unanimous decision.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the unanimous opinion for the Supreme Court, stating that law enforcement can execute “many civic tasks in modern society,” but there is “not an open-ended license to perform them anywhere.”
“The very core of the Fourth Amendment,” Thomas wrote, is the “right of a man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable search and seizure.”
Pity that many judges consider most of the Bill of Rights to be a dead letter. What surprises me is that all 9 justices slapped down the 1st Circuit. Normally the two Obama justices will rule in favor of the state regardless of the actual wording of the Constitution.
Now there are exceptions to the 4th Amendment, usually when an officer sees something happening at that moment. There is actual policy and training to help an officer understand when it’s valid to crash a door. (Usually a scream coming out and someone saying “Please don’t kill me!”)
Another exception – the one on which this case was based – is called “community caretaking.” The Supreme Court previously determined that police can bypass the warrant requirement to perform “community caretaking functions, totally divorced from the detection, investigation, or acquisition of evidence relating to the violation of a criminal statute,” noting a situation when police took a gun from the trunk of an impounded vehicle without a warrant.
“In reaching this conclusion, the Court noted that the officers who patrol the ‘public highways’ are often called to discharge noncriminal ‘community caretaking functions,’ such as responding to disabled vehicles or investigating accidents. But searches of vehicles and homes are constitutionally different, as the Cady opinion repeatedly stressed,” Thomas wrote in the court’s opinion.
Now I have second hand experience with a 4th amendment issue. The house across the street from mine was once owned by a drug dealer. (He actually put a lot of money into the building too) One day I was coming home from work and the street was blocked by a fire truck, ambulance and some police cars. I found out that someone had died in the building.
When the paramedics arrived, they saw a table full of Oxycontin boxes. They couldn’t go out and tell the police because of the patient they were working on. As they headed out they told a police office who went inside. The morons weren’t quite stupid enough to leave the stuff in the open. They threw a blanket over it. While the cop knew the drugs were “RIGHT THERE” he couldn’t do anything because they were not in plain sight. The police had to go through the old fashioned investigation stuff, get a warrant and arrest everyone. ($3 million in Oxy recovered)
The story goes into what happened between the couple, how the police got involved and the lies and blatant disregard for the constitutional rights of Mr. Canigli. He tried to get his property back, however the state refused, and wouldn’t until he filed suit. Lo and behold, his property was returned. However the suit continued. This brings us to the “Red Flag” laws that the Progressives and Statists love so much.
In Justice Samuel Alito wrote a concurring opinion for the ruling in which he addressed existing “red flag” laws that also call into question Fourth Amendment rights.
“This case also implicates another body of law that petitioner glossed over: the so-called “red flag” laws that some States are now enacting. These laws enable the police to seize guns pursuant to a court order to prevent their use for suicide or the infliction of harm on innocent persons,” Alito wrote.
“They typically specify the standard that must be met and the procedures that must be followed before firearms may be seized,” he continued. “Provisions of red flag laws may be challenged under the Fourth Amendment, and those cases may come before us. Our decision today does not address those issues.”
Somehow I think that Justice Alito is hoping one does. Red Flag laws are blatantly unconstitutional, and have gotten people killed. I know of one person in Florida who had his guns confiscated, and he showed them they had the wrong person. The police didn’t care, they took his guns and threatened him with arrest. I don’t know if that one is moving through the courts or not. I hope it is.
In March, the Biden administration urged the Supreme Court to uphold the lower court’s ruling, arguing the actions taken by law enforcement to confiscate the petitioner’s firearms without a warrant were “reasonable.”
Gee, the Fake President’s phony maladministration saying that the 4th Amendment doesn’t apply to anyone that has a gun, or who is a deplorable Trump supporter. Why am I not surprised?
“The touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is reasonableness,” the DOJ’s brief stated. “For criminal investigations, this Court has generally incorporated the Warrant Clause into the Fourth Amendment’s overarching reasonableness requirement, but it has not generally done so for searches or seizures objectively premised on justifications other than the investigation of wrongdoing.”
“The ultimate question in this case is therefore not whether the respondent officers’ actions fit within some narrow warrant exception, but instead whether those actions were reasonable. And under all the circumstances here, they were,” the brief added.
The HELL they were! This was a blatant violation of the 4th Amendment, but this is also the Department of InJustice. President Trump’s attempts to clean up that cesspool were thwarted by the Deep State, and now we’re seeing them become even more contemptuous of the Constitution and the rights of the individual. Expect it to get a lot worse under the Fake President and that mindless drone Garland.
Allow me to post the text of the 4th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Now for the disposition of this case. It’s been sent back down to the 1st Circuit Court for review. In short, the Supreme Court is telling them that they were 100% wrong and to correct their mistake. The ruling provides them the guidance they obviously needed to do their job. (Like try reading the constitution dumbasses) This also doesn’t bode well for the Red Flag laws that have been passed by the states. Those laws may mean well, but have already been show to harm people. As for the 2nd Amendment? There is a case in front of the court that should prove very interesting, and is currently striking fear in the black hearts of Progressives. That won’t be heard for a while though.
Thatisall
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