Unarmed gun owner harrassed in Maryland
Jon the Mechanic sends us a link to the Tampa Tribune which reports a legal and licensed gun owner from Florida made a trip to a wedding in New Jersey and decided to leave his gun at home since he was driving through some states that were less receptive to transporting guns through their streets, but apparently, being a good gun owner didn’t help him when he encountered a Maryland cop;
The officer — from the Transportation Authority Police, as it turns out, Maryland’s version of the New York-New Jersey Port Authority — strolls up, does the license and registration bit, and returns to his car.
According to Kally and John (but not MTAP, which, pending investigation, could not comment), what happened next went like this:
Ten minutes later he’s back, and he wants John out of the Expedition. Retreating to the space between the SUV and the unmarked car, the officer orders John to hook his thumbs behind his back and spread his feet. “You own a gun,” the officer says. “Where is it?”
“At home in my safe,” John answers.
“Don’t move,” says the officer.
Now he’s at the passenger’s window. “Your husband owns a gun,” he says. “Where is it?”
The story goes on from there with the Maryland cop calling for backup while they search for the gun in the car and unable to find it, issue a warning to the Floridian. I’m wondering how the police knew that he owned a gun, or maybe he just baited the tourist with the statement of gun ownership. Anyway, I live ten miles from Maryland and I never go there, except for the local VA clinic and Walter Reed. they’re downright paranoid about guns there.
Category: Gun Grabbing Fascists
Do you really have to ask the question “how did they know he owned a gun”? Because his gun is registered (like a good, responsible, law-abiding citizen) and while everyone on the anti-gun crusade tells you they aren’t tracking your legally owned, registered firearm; they are doing just that through your driver license/ID. In states where they are paranoid about guns i.e. Maryland, New York, Connecticut, etc., they are going to do this crap more and more. Pretty soon, SWAT will be rolling up in their pretty tacticool MRAPs when a gun owner gets pulled over.
I can see the legality of this unlawful search being that the officer had “reasonable suspicion” that there was a gun in the car, since he IS a gun owner and all that, so it goes to probable cause.
Glad I left there in 1959.
The article ends with this gem:
—————————————–
Now, despite having fielded apologies from the officer’s captain as well as from a Maryland Transportation Authority Police internal affairs captain, John is wondering if he shouldn’t just cancel his CCW license.
—————————————–
… And that’s how they’ll disarm We The People: by making it too inconvenient or embarrassing to own a firearm legally.
Two Words for FL Man:
Lawyer UP!
You have a great Federal Civil Rights suit tee’d up.
@3 Adam — he said “cancel his CCW”, he didn’t say “sell the gun” or “stop carrying the gun.” It is for this reason that I have serious doubts about surveys or estimates that purport to tell me how many households have guns.
Ya know, when faced with a problem, the only thing that Congress can do is to create a law. Maybe Congress should create a law that prevents states from sharing firearm ownership and CCW information? Clearly Florida told Maryland that our victim had a permit. If it was illegal for Florida to tell Maryland about the CCW, then the ugly part of this story would not happen. While I am a fan of smaller government and fewer laws, maybe we need to reinforce that prickly “shall not be infringed” phrase.
Upon my first reading, I overlooked another issue. The Maryland cop was casing the car with Florida plates. Based on my reading of the article, the cop did not know about the CCW until he ran the drivers license. Our victim says that he was behaving himself, so why did he get stopped in the first place?
Note to self: when traveling and renting a car, always ask for a car with local (and not out-of-state) license plates.
What was the warning they issued if nothing was found in the vehicle?
How can you get a warning for nothing? Were they warning him to stay out of Maryland? Because I got the message loud and clear, there’s no chance of me spending a f#cking nickel in that state….
In Oct 2013, a new law for background checks with more stringent criteria for the purchase of “assault type weapons and handguns” took effect in Maryland.
Instead of relying on the Federal database for criminals, the law demands that the State Police do a background check on people before purchasing specific types of guns.
The law also allows dealers to sell the weapon to the applicant if the background check is not completed within 7 days.
As of January 11, 2014, there is a backlog of application approvals which date back to August and early September. Some 30,000 applications are still being reviewed and have passed the 7 day mark. (That is down from 60,000 applications.)
The result was predictable. First, the number of murders in Baltimore is up from last year. Secondly, after not hearing back from the State Police, dealers sold weapons to people after the 7 day period. Most we eligible to purchase the weapons, but some were not. Some 860 people lied on their applications to get a purchase permit, thereby committing perjury (as stated in the law and on the application.) Over 200 of those people had received their purchases.
The State has decided to prosecute just 6.9 percent of the people who committed the crime of perjury.
To clear the backlog, the State Police has asked for $500,000 from the government to pay for a computer consulting firm.
So to recap……. the new law allowed more guns into the hands of people who should not have gotten them, doesn’t deal with the criminals or those who break the law, is slow and cumbersome, and costs more with less results.
Some politicians are blaming the dealers for the problems. (I kid you not.)
You can read more about this mess here if you’d like: http://raisedonhoecakes.com/ROH/2014/01/13/appearance-over-reality/
(If posting a link to another blog is wrong, please feel free to delete it. (The link, not the blog.))
The important thing in Maryland and other states is to have the appearance of doing something, rather than doing something that works.
I took my CCW in Ohio about 5 years ago, and I thought this could be a problem if either of my two sons (who were both driving trucks registered to me)were stopped by the police, knowing many policeman and having several friends both police and sheriff’s, I’m worried about the some of them being over militerized, I’ve known a couple who were just itching to pop some one. I’ve met to many who were just cowboys. For these reasons after passing my CCW I decided not to apply for the liscense. I’m going to use the 2nd Amendment as my permit, can this be a problem in the future for me…..I’m sure someone out there finds reason why that isn’t legal. The way the Constitution lays it out…..all I need is the 2nd Amendment. ANY LAW against gun owner ship is illegal, any law against buying ammunition is illegal! Just because some rubber necks pass a stupid illegal law……doesn’t make it legal! I’ll stop here with a quote from someone much more intelligent than myself, “If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey, he is obligated to do so.” Thomas Jefferson
I hate to say this, but the wife is a hoplophobic dipshit. I understand she was nervous, etc., but she should have just said “I don’t know,” or “It’s at home,” or whatever, instead of trying to be “helpful,” as the article claims, and yammering on about how she’s scared of guns.
And no, this doesn’t mitigate the problem of these petty, tyrannical shitbags making this family’s lives hell for several hours.
And I’d like to know what the “warning,” that pernicious fuckwad wrote out was for. The guy did nothing wrong.
In Arkansas if you have a concealed carry it is tied into your driver’s license. They actually use the license photo on the carry permit. when you are stopped they usually run the plate before approaching. The very few times I’ve been stopped, in addition to pulling over and turning on the flashers, I open all windows so they can see inside upon approach, have my wallet on the dash so I’m not reaching for anything, and my hands on the steering wheel fingers spread apart. If it is dark I turn the interior lights on. That gives them a warm fuzzy about officer safety. If they don’t ask, I tell them about the weapon in the door panel. I remove the weapon if we are going to a military installation or onto a school property. When leaving the state, as long as I’m staying below the Mason-Dixon line I take it along. You encounter over zealous pricks in any occupation but there seem to be more in the wannabe secondary zones.
“I’m wondering how the police knew that he owned a gun…”
umm, because the NSA knows everything about everybody now, which constitutes de facto gun registration in the USA.
“…yeah, but Bush…”
well, maybe Bush knew about it, maybe he didnt…it doesnt matter. we now KNOW that obama knows. THATS the part that matters.
everybody knows in the government AND NOBODY CARES
is that because the NSA knows everything about everybody and in so doing has the dirt on any and every politician in the position to do anything about it?
and this is happening when it seems almost every federal agency is being armed to the teeth…
state and local law enforcement are being given war machines…
these are scary times people…ignore the signs at your own peril
“We can deny reality, but we can’t deny the consequences of denying reality.”
? Richard Paul Evans
@ 9 you are wrong. You will be arrested!
@ 12 … Seriously?
Um. Tinfoil hats on.
@11: Same here in Minnesota. Your Carry Permit is tied to your license, so when you get pulled over, they already know that you’re a carry permit holder. I ran into that with a Mpls Park Police cop, last year, who was doing his best Dunkin Donuts Field Tester routine (a little like the chowderhead in this article). He pulled me out and did the whole frisk and locked thumbs and into the back of a squad car routine on me for a traffic stop (I had a tail light out). I don’t give a rip what cops, or former cops, on this site, or any other site, say about the cop on the beat being on the side of legal gun owners, because actions speak louder than words, because I’ve been on the receiving end.
Does it stop me from carrying? No. Will it discourage me from renewing my permit? Not a chance. Just mentioning an observation.
Its in my pants, occifer.
Another thing they look for is a NRA sticker in the back window of your car or truck, they so do the thugs looking for a weapon left in the car in front of a bar, school or any gun free zone.
Jeezus, and people say California is bad! If a CHP cop pulled something like this, it’s doubtful he’d ever do it twice, once his sergeant and the local Sheriff’s office and possibly municipal PD (excepting LA and San Francisco) got done with him. California certainly has some fucktard laws (May-Issue CCW, 10-round mags, and bullet buttons come to mind) but we also have a plague of deep-pockets bloodsucker lawyers who will crawl over eachother to take a big lawsuit against a law enforcement agency. So even if the cop might be a power-tripping liberal fascist (most aren’t in my experience) there’s a deterrent. I’d advise this dude from Florida to hook up with one of them. There’s a legit civil rights violation by the (Soviet Socialist) state of Maryland, known in legal circles as blood in the water.
My days of driving like a bat out of hell are long behind me, thus I haven’t been pulled over in 8 years. But when I did, I’d always get my license, etc out before the cop approached, hold them out the window with both hands, and let him know if I had a weapon in the truck (no law against that, contrary to popular belief). Cop gets the warm fuzzy, he’s in a better mood, I get a warning to slow down, everybody’s happy. Didn’t give him the list of my collection, just “FYI there’s a weapon in the truck” if applicable.
@19: Yeah, Barney Fife didn’t ask me if I had a weapon, I didn’t tell him I had a weapon on me, because I didn’t, so the warm fuzzy scenario was never implemented. Instead, Barney Fife got to act out his fantasy of being a badass for a half hour or so and I got to see what the plastic bench they call a seat felt like in his squad car. The problem for Barney, and those like him, is that one day they’re gonna pull their badass routine on the wrong person and then we will have people on here blubbering about an officer that was taken out and how dangerous it is for them, etc. If a cop wants respect, they have to give respect. It’s that simple. I know some decent cops, too, so it’s a mixed bag.
I believe the law in my state is that you inform the officer only if you are carrying. In a case like this I would say something like “No gun at this location end of discussion.”
Every story like this has three sides: The officer’s, the other guy’s, and the truth. We have only one side here and, if it’s only half true, it’s inexcusable. As for “the warning” you can bet that the officer’s account included an illegal lane change or something. Even a rookie knows that he has to have some basis to pull someone over. Stupid rookies use the same one too often. It’s good to mix it up. No one was more pissed than the cop who found nothing in the vehicle. No open containers, drugs, or waepons. At least he didn’t plant one. Hey, not that that ever happens.
Last time I got stopped, the state trooper asked if I was carrying, because my CCW is tied to my driver’s license. I said I was. He asked why. I said, “Because I can.”
The time before that the state trooper asked if I was carrying and what (G23 at that time), and we wound up comparing pistols while we were waiting for a tow truck after I got slammed into by an Escalade!
They vary.
Here in Texas, if you have a CCW a big red flashing field shows up when a cop runs your license. However, you are only obligated to inform the officer/show him your CCW if you you are actually carrying. So when I was pulled over one time for a minor excess of speed and was not carrying, I have the DPS my license and registration only – he never asked anything further.
I agree with the posts above… the guy needs to get an anti-cop Maryland lawyer on his case. At least in the article, it never does give a reason for his being pulled over in the first place. (That being said, his wife reminds me of the proverbial wife passenger who tells the traffic cop “he’s only polite like that when he’s drunk, anyway!”)
Every police officer is trained to assume that the person they just pulled over or the person they are field interviewing is armed. Police aren’t killed or wounded at distance but up close and far too many in traffic stops. That’s why the detainee’s hands are to be visible. It’s simple stuff. A police officer who has prior notice through a database that the guy they just stopped has a carry permit is at an advantage. Why ANY cop, properly trained, would feel more threatened with this knowledge is beyond my comprehension. What the info should tell the officer is that the person they stopped qualified for a permit and is, therefore, playing by the rules.
Thank you @13~
Even if he did have a CCW and the cop ran his license plate it, there is still no probable cause to pull him over. Didn’t even try to say he was speeding or failed to do this or that.