GPD’s new duty sidearm: M&P45 2.0 CORE with RMR sight
and TLR-1 HD light. Images: Courtesy Grantham PD
Red dot optical sights are the hottest police service pistol trend in America today. Not surprisingly, how to train with them has become an equally hot topic among law enforcement instructors. When the Grantham, New Hampshire Police Department decided to make the switch, it had at the helm a chief who had been a firearms instructor for many years. Chief John Parsons explains, “We had been very happy with the S&W M&P45s we had issued since 2015. We chose to replace them with the M&P 2.0 optics ready pistol, in the same .45 ACP caliber, with 4.5″ barrel and suppressor-height night sights.”
Why stay with .45 at a time when American police are returning in droves to the 9mm? Parsons explains, “Our officers are confident and competent with their .45s. In our jurisdiction, we’ve had to put down moose hit by vehicles, and we also have black bears. Moreover, the M&P45 is standard issue for our state troopers, with whom we work daily.” GPD’s issue duty load is 230-grain Federal HST, which has earned a splendid reputation for getting its job done.
However, holsters became an issue. Holster makers don’t find it profitable to build scabbards for less popular guns. Safariland made the .45 holsters in the 6360 model, which had served the department well for years, but did not offer a model for an optic-equipped S&W .45.
Safariland duty holster protects the RDS and its rear lens from hostile elements.
Finding A Holster
Through a process of elimination, Captain Vincent Cunningham determined that a Safariland 6360 RDS holster for the SIG P320 RX would exactly fit the S&W M&P45 2.0 with a Trijicon RMR mounted. Some of today’s instructors are horrified at the idea of putting a Brand A pistol into a holster built for a Brand B, but older heads remember when a department might replace a Model 686 S&W L-Frame service revolver with a Ruger GP100 and use the exact same holsters and speedloaders as before since they all fit perfectly.
The issue was not what gun the holster was originally built for but whether the new gun fit properly. GPD determined that it did. No slop. No snag. No impingement on the trigger.
The department ordered the 6360 RDS ALS/SLS Mid-Ride Levell III retention duty holsters, and the new issue pistols fit perfectly with the same Streamlight TLR-1-HL lights that had ridden on the first-generation M&P45s, but now accommodating the RMR sight atop the pistols. The Safariland design shields the optical sight until the retaining device is released. This is an important consideration in a four-season climate where an officer might be outdoors for hours at an accident scene or during a manhunt in heavy rain or worse, falling snow, which could build up on the back of an optical sight in a holster that did not protect the lens.
Training
Virtually every agency making this switch has discovered there is a learning curve when optical pistol sights are adopted. Grantham PD saw this coming and met the challenge.
Grantham is easy driving distance from Exeter, NH, where the SIG Academy is located. Parsons reports, “Over that summer, I sent us all through the SIG SAUER Pistol Mounted Optics 102 one-day course. We are all going through the 103 course (two days) as well.” By the time you read this, Sergeant James McKenna and Chief Parsons himself will have gone through the SIG Academy’s Pistol Mounted Optics Instructor Course.
Upon initial issuance of the new hardware, each officer sighted in the RMR at 15 yards. A hundred rounds per officer were spent initially with draw-to-the-shot drills at various distances to acclimate to “finding the dot.”
Since the initial training, officers have spent plenty of time on qualifications in both day and night shooting. The advantages of the red dot were particularly evident in the latter application. Officers were already familiar with red dot sights on their issue patrol rifles and quickly acclimated to placing the dot with “target focus.” Noted Parsons, “I can really only speak for myself, but I found I was faster on target at distance, and it was easier to pick up the red dot with my ‘seasoned’ eyes.” Overall, acceptance of the new equipment by personnel was overwhelmingly positive.
Staying with the same firearms platform and the same type of holster helped to make the transition seamless. Grantham’s experience indicates that the key to a successful transition from iron sights to RDO on service pistols lies in planning and training.
Tanks are just cool. Tearing about the desert in one of these bad boys is a feeling of power like no other.
In what seems a familiar refrain, Shawn Timothy Nelson never was quite right. Born on 21 August 1959, Shawn was the second of Fred and Betty Nelson’s three boys. He attended James Madison High School in San Diego.
This is Shawn Nelson. Sadly, he seemed to come from the factory broken.
In 1978, Shawn enlisted in the US Army. After his training was complete, he was posted to Germany as an armor crewman. Two years later he separated from the military with an honorable discharge for “multifaceted disciplinary problems.”
The vast majority of the junior soldiers with whom I served were solid, hard-charging young studs. They were drawn to military service out of a desire to give back, a lust for adventure, or a need to earn money for college. However, a few of them just weren’t wired correctly. Shawn Nelson seems to have fallen into that category.
For a time, Shawn Nelson’s life looked like it might turn out OK. However, eventually, everything just kind of fell apart.
Once he left the military, Shawn trained to become a plumber. After he married Suzy Hellman in 1984, Shawn started his own plumbing business. By all accounts he was fairly successful. At some point everybody needs a plumber.
An Interesting Piece of Humanity
Shawn knew how to exercise the US legal system. He got into a fight with a hospital security guard in 1990 and subsequently sued the hospital. His mom died at the same hospital the following year, and he sued them again for that. In 1993 all of his cumulative legal assaults were consolidated and promptly dismissed. This experience left him bitter and angry.
Shawn and his wife actually lived in Clairemont, California, a subordinate community within San Diego proper. His weird behavior earned him no small amount of local notoriety. Nelson frequently cut his grass in the middle of the night, and he eventually excavated a twenty-foot hole in his backyard searching for gold. By all accounts his efforts bore no fruit. His property was cluttered with mechanical detritus and refuse.
The cops responded to his home nine times in 1994-1995. These calls ranged from allegations of domestic violence to a claim that his work van had been stolen. Throughout it all, his neighbors knew of him but no one actually knew him.
Shawn Nelson also struggled with addiction. He mixed alcohol and methamphetamines regularly, causing his behavior to become more and more erratic. In 1991 Suzy moved out.
In the end, Shawn Nelson was just dealt a bad hand. How he responded to his spate of ill luck, however, was unconventional to say the least.
In June of 1994, someone stole Nelson’s van with all his plumbing tools. Now deprived of the means to do his job, his business cratered. Along the way, he had a motorcycle accident and suffered a painful spinal injury. By 1995 he was unemployed.
Now unable to pay his bills, the bank foreclosed on his house and the utility companies cut him off. He was finally served with an eviction notice. By this time he had found a new girlfriend, but she saw the writing on the wall and left as well. Nelson began alluding to suicide. The man was clearly at the end of his rope.
I’ve been down on my luck before–most all of us have–though I cannot say I have ever sunk quite as low as Shawn Nelson did. Of course, I never dug a twenty-foot hole in my backyard looking for gold, either. In response to such sordid circumstances, some turn to God, while others might seek out government assistance. By contrast, Shawn Timothy Nelson just went insane.
The Army National Guard
The Army National Guard answers to the Governors of the individual states. In times of crisis, these citizen soldiers can be activated to deal with civil unrest or national disasters. Upon the orders of the President, they can be federalized for national service as well. The National Guard makes up 14.8% of America’s total military force.
The Army National Guard sports some pretty cool toys nowadays.
Back when I was young and dinosaurs roamed the plains, the National Guard was legit one weekend a month and two weeks each summer. It was a great way to make money for college without much risk of deploying someplace to get shot. Not so anymore. After 9/11 we got our money’s worth out of those guys. A good friend with whom I was commissioned commanded in combat at the company, battalion, and brigade levels as a National Guard officer. As you might imagine, he has an exceptionally long-suffering wife.
The National Guard typically trains on the same gear to the same technical standards as their active duty counterparts. Sometimes that works out better than other times, but Guard guys can indeed do some pretty high-speed stuff. In many cases, local National Guard armories will maintain small numbers of combat vehicles onsite for training purposes. I also suppose they could roll out the local Bradley or M1 Abrams in response to civil unrest or something similarly horrible, though I have never heard of that actually happening.
The Mississippi Army National Guard rivals the land armies of many modest nation-states.
In my home state of Mississippi, our National Guard includes Armor, Artillery, Aviation, Engineers, Maintenance, Quartermaster, JAG, and Special Forces units. We even have an Army band. That’s a whole lot of heavily armed rednecks. Don’t screw with us. I’m not kidding.
The Crime Involved a Tank
Nothing takes it to the next level like a 57-ton Main Battle Tank.
Shawn Nelson’s local National Guard armory housed an armor unit. Contained therein were several M60A3 Main Battle Tanks. The local motor pool was surrounded by an eight-foot chain-link fence topped with triple-strand barbed wire. Permanent party personnel typically went home around 1800 hours. They diligently locked the gate behind them as they left.
17 May 1995 was a Wednesday, and the Guard guys were working late for some reason. At 1830 Shawn Nelson drove his derelict van through the open gate and parked near the tanks. Shirtless and ill-kempt, he broke the locks securing three different tanks before he got one to start. By 1845, however, it was game on.
Now here’s something you don’t see every day. The cops were helpless to stop Shawn Nelson once he got his stolen tank spooled up.
Nelson was an experienced tank driver. He crashed the gate with the turret traversed backward and the gun secured in the travel lock. For the next 25 minutes, he wreaked utter chaos in and around San Diego.
One resident later stated, “He didn’t go down the center of the street…It seems he just wanted to get the utilities and cause as much damage (as possible) without hurting people.”
Over the course of some six miles, he took out traffic lights, power poles, fire hydrants, and bus stops. In so doing he cut power to 5,100 households. Along the way, he also crushed forty vehicles including at least one motor home. Throughout it all, miraculously, no one was injured.
The Weapon Was a Tank
The M60 Patton was quite a capable machine in its day.This is the M85 .50-caliber machine gun. In trying to shorten the action so it would fit inside the commander’s cupola designers kind of ruined the gun. It was not popular with the tankers with whom I served.
The M60A3 Patton was 31 feet long and could reach speeds of 45 miles per hour. The tank was powered by a Continental AVDS-1790-2 V12 air-cooled, twin-turbo diesel engine. It was armed with a superb 105mm M68 main gun along with a 7.62x51mm M73 coaxial gun and an M85 .50-caliber machine gun in the commander’s cupola, both of which kind of sucked. More than 15,000 of these vehicles were produced.
This is an early M60 with the optical range finder. The lenses are mounted in those armored bulges on the sides of the turret.
Like all military weapon systems, the machine evolved over time. The M60A1 was equipped with an M17A1 optical rangefinder that used a pair of lenses set on the sides of the turret to accurately determine range. This binocular periscope device rode in the two bug-eyed knobs on the exterior of the turret. With these two lenses focused on a target it became a simple mechanical exercise in geometry to determine the range. The later M60A3 included a laser rangefinder. I worked alongside M60 tanks early in my military career and found them to be more than adequately intimidating.
Nothing Lasts Forever
There’s just nothing in the arsenal of the San Diego Police Department that is going to put a dent in one of these.
The authorities were in a bit of a quandary. Though bereft of ammunition, this was still a 114,000-pound armored vehicle. The cops didn’t have anything that would touch it. The Governor supposedly considered requesting armed tank or attack helicopter support. In the end, Shawn Nelson took care of the problem himself.
In his enthusiasm to crush pretty much everything in sight, Nelson ran his pilfered tank up onto a concrete traffic barrier, wedging it in place. While trying to extricate himself he threw a track. Now the tank was immobilized.
It’s pretty tough to get into one of these monsters if the guys inside don’t want you to.
The tank was in combat lockdown with the sundry hatches secured. Four extraordinarily brave San Diego PD officers mounted the thrashing vehicle and managed to get the commander’s hatch open using bolt cutters. Throughout it all Nelson tried to throw the officers clear by violently working the remaining track.
The cops had no idea whether or not Nelson was armed. Once they finally got the hatch opened they shot him in the right shoulder. He died on site. The coroner later reported that he had been intoxicated at the time. Here’s a video of the final moments.
The Aftermath for Shawn Nelson
This was still freaking California, so naturally folks took issue with the way the cops ended Nelson’s rampage. Only in the Land of Fruits and Nuts would four cops be brave enough to leap onto a rampaging tank and then have citizens complain that they did it wrong. The lawyers naturally got involved, and the State of California was forced to pay out $149,201 (about $273,000 today) to cover damages. Wow.
This is Fort Irwin, California, home of the National Training Center. If misery was a mineral you mined out of the ground here is where you’d go to find it. I hate this place.
The following day all 28 tanks in Southern California Guard armories had their batteries removed for safekeeping. Those suckers are heavy. I suspect that was a fairly unpopular play among the tankers tasked with carrying out this edict.
Because it was still California, all California National Guard tanks were eventually moved to Fort Irwin and Camp Roberts for safekeeping. I’m honestly surprised they didn’t just pass some fresh new tank control laws to guarantee that the Shawn Nelsons of the world could no longer steal tanks. Freaking California…
What is more frustrating than myths that get passed around with such regularity when no one pauses long enough to examine whether or not they are true? Maybe a case of the shingles, but other than that…
Here are some firearms and home defense myths that just won’t die.
It won’t happen to you:
“Who cares?” you might think. “It’ll never happen to me.” You’re right, it probably won’t. However, there are one heck of a lot of burglaries every year. Since “home invasion” isn’t a named crime, statistics are difficult to obtain. A “home invasion” can be a burglary. It can be an assault, It can be an armed robbery. It can be rape or murder. You get the idea. Since there is no specific tracking for violent home invasions, we have to look at the associated crimes. Depending on the year and source, consider these figures.
There are between two and nearly four million burglaries every year in the United States.
In about a million of these cases, someone is home when the intruder breaks in.
Over a quarter million people become victims of a violent assault associated with a home break-in.
That’s a lot of action. That’s as many as 10,958 self-serve home-entries each and every day. Or, you might think of it as almost eight per minute.
Oh, one more interesting tidbit. While most people assume that nighttime carries the highest risk of a home invasion, most incidents occur between the daylight hours of 10am and 3pm. Food for thought for your overall home security plan. Lock those doors during the day too!
A laser will just give away your position:
I can’t count how many times I’ve heard this myth repeated. I think it persists because there is a nugget of largely irrelevant truth to it. There are a few things to consider before discounting the value of a laser sight on your home defense firearm.
First, are you planning to play a game of “Ninja find the other ninja” in your home as part of a defense plan? If your primary use of a firearm involves sneaking through dark villages and buildings so you can kick down a door and kidnap someone, then this myth is valid. A laser probably will give away your position. If your use case involves defending yourself and family from someone breaking into your home, you might want to reconsider your tactical plan if it involves you sneaking around playing cat and mouse with a band of tactical commandos who are going room to room looking for you. I’m sure there’s an example of a highly trained Delta Ninja Seal Omega Sector Assault Team planning a nighttime attack on one of our suburban homes, but the vast majority of cases are better resolved by hiding in place, armed and ready, while calling the police for backup.
As an industry acquaintance once said, “A laser won’t give away my position. What will give away my position is me yelling something to the effect of, ‘Get out of my house before I shoot your sorry @ss!’”
Second, laser beams are largely invisible. Unless your home is full of smoke or fog, all that’s visible is the light on the firearm itself and the dot on the target. With rare exception, the beam in between doesn’t show. Give it a try.
The only reason you see this laser beam is because the cave is chock full of smoke. Otherwise it would be largely invisible except for the dot on the wall.
Third is the modern miracle of pressure switches. Lasergrips like the Crimson Trace models feature pressure-activated switches. Squeeze tighter and the laser is on. Loosen up and it’s off. There’s no hand-crank operation that fires it up continuously for an hour or so with no shutoff capability. If you need to move to a child’s room or discreetly escape, turn it off maybe?
Fourth, before you pull a trigger in your home in the middle of the night, you’d better be darn sure of what you’re shooting at. That means either there’s enough light so you can see your target (which means they can see you) or you’re using a light of some sort. A laser isn’t going to be the thing that reveals your presence.
I poke some fun at this myth, but it’s a serious topic. I don’t care if you choose a laser or not. What I care about is the ability to get shots on target as fast as possible in poor light conditions and from unconventional positions that tend to happen in a self-defense scenario. I’ve not found anything more effective than a laser at making that happen. Your mileage may vary.
Racking a shotgun slide:
Is this one a myth or not? I’ve not yet found any volunteers to break into my house at night so I can rack an 870 to see if it freaks them out.
I suspect most people really, really wouldn’t want to hear this noise while trying to steal your Xbox, and there is the crux of the matter. Most “home entries” are not invasions but simple attempts to discreetly steal stuff. In two-thirds or more cases, the dude breaking in would much rather not encounter anyone, so I suspect we can agree that the dreaded racking noise would cause a sudden desire for Depends on undershorts.
For the rest of the cases, I suspect we can also agree that it would be a great outcome if that racking sound ended the potential confrontation. Just don’t count on it. Be prepared for more, especially now that the intruder knows you’re home and armed.
Don’t use an AR-15 because it will over-penetrate:
An AR-15-type firearm can actually make a great home defense weapon. As with most things, the devil is in the details when considering penetration issues.
Shotgun loads may or may not penetrate like a hammer drill. It all depends on the ammo. Buckshot, for example, goes through many walls like butter.
I hear lots of people say things like, “I use a shotgun as I don’t want to worry about over-penetration.” That may or may not be a valid plan, depending on the choice of ammo. Having shot through lots of scrap drywall in range tests, I can tell you that buckshot penetrates walls just like handgun bullets. That means it’ll go through lots and lots of them. After all, a 00 buckshot pellet is more or less a .32 caliber handgun bullet but usually moves significantly faster at 1,500 or 1,600 feet per second. Of course, if you go to smaller shot sizes, like bird-appropriate pellets, penetration risk will be greatly reduced, as it will on human targets at ranges past a handful of yards. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking shotguns for home defense. It’s hard to argue with terminal effectiveness. We’re only talking about over-penetration here.
Yes, I’ve actually tested this myth by doing weird stuff like this. Because you know.. science.
Surprisingly, standard 55-grain FMJ and varmint ammo penetrates less than almost all buckshot and handgun projectiles. Although those little buggers are fast at near 3,000 feet per second, they’re light and tend to break up and tumble after hitting barriers. Usually, the first and second drywall sheets start the upset and veering off course. By the third and fourth, things are getting wonky. Make no mistake, they’ll easily travel through multiple sheets of drywall, just fewer than other types of handgun and shotgun ammo.
Help is on the way in minutes:
As an AmmoLand News reader, you know the harsh reality of logistics. You’re the first responder to an event in your home. As committed as the local police may be, they’re always going to be the second responder.
Nationwide, the average police response time to arrive at the location of a call for help is about 10 minutes. Of course, that is the average of rural and urban environments. If you live in or near a city, your response times may get as low as four or five minutes. For example, in San Francisco, where you need a police response because you’re not to be trusted to protect yourself, it will take just under six minutes on average. Other big cities like Dallas, Los Angeles, and New York range from about six minutes to just under 10.
Here’s the problem. The average self-defense encounter goes from zero to “significant results” in about 90 seconds, again on average. So, no matter where you live, you’re not getting help in time to stop anything from happening. But you already knew that, right?
You’re more likely to get killed if you have a gun in the house:
We might as well end with a doozy. The anti-gun crowd loves to share a “statistic” like this one:
“If you have a gun in the home, you’re three times more likely to get killed.”
This little fake news tidbit that just won’t die comes from a study by Dr. Arthur Kellermann. After years of stonewalling his data and methodology, a couple of things came to light. First, he only counted homicides, where the homeowner died. He didn’t study how many lives were saved by the presence of a gun. Considering that 92% of defensive gun uses don’t involve a shot being fired, that’s a big deal. So, by not including no-shoot scenarios and those where the homeowner didn’t die, he cherry-picked about one percent of data to arrive at his conclusions. Oh, and then it was discovered that he also counted homeowners who were killed by guns that were NOT in their homes prior to the attack. Meaning if a home invader came in with his back street special and killed someone, that went into his tally.
Okay, boys and girls, this is one of those semi-complex scenarios where you can hardly tell the players without a scorecard, so let’s make up some names and jersey numbers right now. First, there’s Paul Brite, a 53-year-old Florida businessman.
Like a lot of law-abiding Americans, Paul doesn’t care for the idea of becoming a crime statistic, knows that food doesn’t really come from grocery stores, and safety doesn’t emanate like a forcefield from police stations.
He’s got a valid CCW permit but doesn’t even pack a roscoe on his person, preferring to simply keep a sidearm handy.
Second comes Carl Lee “Brains” Reese, a 21-year-old self-made punk with multiple arrests for carjacking in two states and a lonesome parole officer wondering where the heck ol’ Carl’s gone off to.
Third in the lineup is Mario Danele “Wheels” Sikes, Reese’s cousin and apparently his biggest fan. At 17 years old, Sikes’ juvenile record is protected from our prying eyes, but he’ll soon be batting in the big leagues, the “Big House” leagues, anyway.
Then you’ve got Jim Haire, owner of a painting and decking business, who probably never pictured himself as a traffic controller, especially in the middle of a gunfight. The rest of the mob can be introduced as we move along.
It’s your basic sunny morning in Coral Springs where one Paul Brite is showered, shaved, and just finished running his Lexus through the neighborhood car wash. All seems absolutely hunky-dory until he is engaged in intense conversation by Mssrs. Reese and Sikes, one of whom holds a handgun to Brite’s attentive head.
A short time later, having covered about a mile, Reese turns onto a quiet side street and stops, apparently voicing some concern to his cousin that they may have screwed up mightily and locked their victim in the trunk with a cellular phone.
They agree to open the trunk and investigate Brite’s communications potential. Reese makes the move while Sikes resumes his station wagon navigator spot.
It seems that, no, they didn’t lock Brite in with a carphone, but the briar patch they threw him into happened to be where he keeps a loaded revolver and an equally stuffed semi-auto pistol, which he now holds, one in each hand, as he exits the trunk like a jack-in-the-box.
Two-Gun Paul bursts out of the trunk, loudly ordering “Brains” Reese to the ground, punctuating his commands with a few shots fired in the air. This definitely gets attention throughout the neighborhood.
Reese, no rocket scientist, greets this edict by reaching for his pocket. Brite reluctantly but resolutely pops a cap in Reese’s abdomen, which, indeed, convinces him to get on the ground.
“Stay still! Stay still!” Brite shouts, “Somebody get the police!” Reese, mortally wounded, stays very still.
And then The Little Rascals arrive. A flock of residential ragamuffins starts circling the still-energized Brite and recumbent Reese on their bicycles. Enter Jim Haire, on the run.
Waving his arms and shouting at the TV-trained kids, Haire bravely tried to convey the message that this was not a video game, boys and girls, and real bullets may re-commence flying momentarily.
Meantime, “Wheels” Sikes fires up the geriatric wagon, puts the pedal to the metal, and tries to play Lawnmower Man on both Brite and Haire.
Brite, dancing around so as not to place the street urchins in the line of fire, responds with another fusillade of hot lead, ventilating the Vista Cruiser but missing Sikes, who then decides to exit rapidly stage right, weaving through the flying circus of bicycles.
As the credits roll, we find the kiddies miraculously okay, Reese declared dead at North Broward Medical Center, Sikes taken into custody a short distance away, Haire wondering how he ever got into this melee and Paul Brite, a law-abiding citizen, miraculously not charged with violating the rights of his carjacking kidnappers.
Brite and Haire take justified bows. Sikes takes the rap for theft, kidnapping, and felony murder — for participating in a felon.
Mark Moritz hung up his satirical spurs last issue to a collective sigh of relief from America’s gunwriters whom he had lampooned in “Friendly Fire” for two long, painful years. The 10 Ring is written by Commander Gilmore, a retired San Diego police officer who bases his humor, like Mark did, on actual occurrences. All the incidents described by the Commander are true.
Police in New York want the legal ability to seize firearms during a domestic violence call – even if no arrests were made. However, instead of going through normal legal channels and obtaining a search warrant or court order, police just want the legal ability to take the guns on their own.
New York State lawmakers plan to reintroduce a bill during the next legislative session that will go farther than the state’s Safe Homes Act of 2020, which allows officers to seize firearms found during a consensual search when police respond to a domestic dispute.
New York State Senator Peter Harckham, a Democrat from Westchester County, has sponsored a bill that would
“mandate” officers to confiscate all firearms left out in the open during a domestic call.
“This is not gun control, this is gun safety; and this is domestic safety,” the senator told Spectrum News. “This is keeping the victims of domestic violence alive. We had two fatalities through domestic violence and firearms in my district in the last month. This is very real. This is very deadly and this is not a permanent seizure.”
Senator Harckham’s bill would allow police to keep the seized weapons for five days – most likely to seek restraining orders or other legal options – before returning them to their rightful owners. Also, police would likely extend this five-day time limit as needed.
Tom King, president of New York State’s Rifle & Pistol Association, balked loudly about the new bill.
“No person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law,” King told the reporters. “That means a search warrant or an order from a judge to confiscate the firearms, and they’re doing this without that.”
King pointed out the more than 100 New Yorkers who had firearms seized under the state’s newly expanded red-flag law. This group contacted King’s nonprofit seeking help getting their guns back. Some have already paid more than $10,000 in legal expenses, King said.
Takeaways
The main problem with the new bill is that it offers police yet another illegal mechanism to seize someone’s guns.
Our federal law does not allow law enforcement to go traipsing through someone’s home looking for firearms that were never used in a crime, which they will then seize for no evidentiary value.
These types of laws are passed solely for one reason – harassment. They want to harass gun owners. They want gun owners temporarily disarmed and then forced to make several trips to the police station to get their property returned, at great cost, too. Don’t forget that.
Today, gun owners have fewer rights in places like New York than they do in free states. This new bill will only make it worse.
Article courtesy of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project. Click here to support the project.
Okay, boys and girls, this is one of those semi-complex scenarios where you can hardly tell the players without a scorecard, so let’s make up some names and jersey numbers right now. First, there’s Paul Brite, a 53-year-old Florida businessman.