(NaturalNews) In the wake of the recent Sandy
Hook shooting, I reached out to my contacts in law enforcement, military
and (retired) FBI over the last three days, asking three simple
questions:
#1) Do you think Obama will use executive orders to demand nationwide gun confiscation?
#2) If such an order is given, will you or fellow members of your organization enforce it against the citizens? (And if so, how?)
#3) What is the solution to stopping future mass shootings?
I posed these questions to one ex-FBI agent, one retired Sheriff's deputy, two active duty city police detectives, one retired former police captain of a major U.S. city, two U.S. Army veterans and one USMC veteran, discharged several years ago after two tours in Afghanistan during which he sustained a severe personal injury. For obvious reasons, none of them wish to be identified by name, but their answers below speak to their credibility and authenticity.
Only two of the eight people I questioned thought that Obama would call for outright gun confiscation, and one of those believed it would only be a restriction on so-called "assault rifles" but not shotguns or handguns.
Everyone believed that Obama would at minimum call for restrictions on weapon magazine capacity, most likely seeking to limit that to ten rounds per magazine (which is also the current limit in California). I was also told that Obama might attempt to federalize mandatory waiting periods for gun purchases, which already exist in some states but not all.
The retired police captain told me that, "Door-to-door confiscation by men and women in blue [i.e. city cops] would be a suicide mission." If ordered to conduct such gun confiscation actions, many would simply resign on the spot rather than risk their lives in firefights with determined gun owners, he explained. "Our officers are not generally willing to assume the increased risk of such a police action."
He also explained, importantly, that most police officers have not even been trained to conduct sweeping, community-level weapons confiscation programs. "This goes against all our community outreach efforts where we try to earn the trust of the community." If cops suddenly became gun confiscation enforcers, trust would break down and policing would become extremely difficult, he explained.
The USMC veteran told me that some of the younger soldiers would go along with gun confiscation if ordered, but that nearly all the older military personnel would likely refuse such orders, even at risk of a court martial. "Some of the guys actually talked about this on deployment. The E-1's might follow those orders but most of us who managed to stay alive through a couple of tours are too smart for that. You'd have AWOL out the ass. We didn't sign up to engage Americans as enemy combatants. The answer would be F*%K NO all the way up the chain of command."
One of the police detectives explained another reason for saying no: "There is no love for gun confiscation in law enforcement. We're all gun owners and most of us grew up with guns, hunting, target shooting or just collecting. Most of us have gun collections when we're off duty, and Obama himself isn't well liked across law enforcement. There's no way police officers are going to put their lives on the line to go along with an order from a President who really doesn't have moral authority among cops."
When I asked what if Bush had called for gun confiscation, and would cops be more likely to comply if the order was given by a Republican, the reply was, "For some guys, yes, because they will listen to a Republican more than a Democrat, but still for rank-and-file officers who are just here collecting a paycheck for a risky job, they're no way they're going to engage in what is basically a war action just to keep that job. You can't pay them enough to pull that kind of duty, gun confiscation."
I was told by more than one person in this group that any effort by Obama to invoke gun confiscation could lead America to civil war if any real effort were made to enforce it.
When I asked him about a practical solution to reduce shootings, he said that in his opinion, "Levying new taxes on all handguns like the tax stamps on class three weapons" would likely prevent new guns from being purchased by most violent criminals, but it wouldn't take guns out of the hands of criminals who already have them. "These people will break into your car to steal the coins out of your vehicle console. They have no morals, no limits. There's almost nothing they won't do to get what they want, which is usually drugs."
As background, the BATF currently levies a $200 tax stamp for the transfer of any suppressor (silencer), short-barreled rifle, or full-auto weapon, all of which are VERY expensive to acquire and require extensive background checks to legally own.
"Most of the gun violence in our city is drug addicts raiding the homes of other drug addicts. The statistics might appear to show a lot of armed robberies and shootings, but it's really just a small subset of homes or apartments getting raided over and over again by the same people, the drug dealers." When I asked what the real drug problem was, he answered without hesitation. "Meth." Not pot, not marijuana, not even heroin. Meth is the drug that drives violent crime in America's cities.
The retired Sheriff's deputy told me that the solution was to, "Arm the teachers. Tear down the 'gun free zone' signs and put weapons in the hands of school personnel."
This opinion was seconded by one of the active-duty police detectives, who said he had actually worked several shootings, but never a mass shooting. "A mass shooting takes time, often several minutes," he explained. "That's too fast for the police to arrive on scene, but it's plenty of time for someone already on location to pursue and engage the active shooter."
He went on to explain that in the training they have been receiving over the last five years, they have been taught that ANY engagement of an active shooter -- even shots that don't hit the shooter -- are now believed among law enforcement to disrupt the shooter and force him to seek cover, during which his massacre is interrupted and delayed. Where police have traditionally been trained to "confirm your sight picture" of weapon sights on the target before pulling the trigger, that training is being modified in some cities where, in the context of a mass shooter firing off a large number of rounds, even returning so-called "suppressing fire" is now considered tactically acceptable until additional backup arrives. The idea now is to go in and engage the shooter, even if you're just one officer on the scene.
This is contradictory to previous training, and it goes against most cops' safety rules which include, "always know what is BEYOND your target." But tacticians in law enforcement are apparently now figuring out that the opportunity cost of NOT shooting back is much greater than the relatively small risk of hitting an innocent victim when laying down suppressing fire.
It is therefore believed, I was told, that even concealed carry principals or other school staff can effectively lay down that "suppressing fire" even if they are not nailing the active shooter. Obviously, this does not mean firing blindly into a crowd, for example. Each tactical situation is unique and requires rapid assessment before pulling the trigger in any direction.
There is an excellent article on all this at PoliceOne.com, covering a hard-hitting presentation by Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman. Here's a particularly compelling excerpt from the article:
The challenge for law enforcement agencies and officers, then, is to overcome not only the attacks taking place in schools, but to first overcome the denial in the minds of mayors, city councils, school administrators, and parents. Grossman said that agencies and officers, although facing an uphill slog against the denial of the general public, must diligently work toward increasing understanding among the sheep that the wolves are coming for their children. Police officers must train and drill with teachers, not only so responding officers are intimately familiar with the facilities, but so that teachers know what they can do in the event of an attack.
"Come with me to the library at Columbine High School," Grossman said. "The teacher in the library at Columbine High School spent her professional lifetime preparing for a fire, and we can all agree if there had been a fire in that library, that teacher would have instinctively, reflexively known what to do.
"But the thing most likely to kill her kids -- the thing hundreds of times more likely to kill her kids, the teacher didn't have a clue what to do. She should have put those kids in the librarian's office but she didn't know that. So she did the worst thing possible -- she tried to secure her kids in an un-securable location. She told the kids to hide in the library -- a library that has plate glass windows for walls. It's an aquarium, it's a fish bowl. She told the kids to hide in a fishbowl. What did those killers see? They saw targets. They saw fish in a fish bowl."
Grossman said that if the school administrators at Columbine had spent a fraction of the money they'd spent preparing for fire doing lockdown drills and talking with local law enforcers about the violent dangers they face, the outcome that day may have been different.
Rhetorically he asked the assembled cops, "If somebody had spent five minutes telling that teacher what to do, do you think lives would have been saved at Columbine?"
Nevertheless, even if opinions are different in other cities and states, it is clear to me that law enforcement in Southern states will NOT comply with gun confiscation directives issued by Obama. Obama simply does not have the moral authority -- nor the law enforcement support -- to pull off such an action. While his political supporters claim he has a "mandate" across America, that's far from the truth. Obama is widely despised across states like Texas, Florida, Arizona and nearly all of rural America. He only enjoys support in the cities, and primarily in the inner cities.
Also, throughout law enforcement it is widely known that Obama staged Operation Fast & Furious and then got caught. The fact that at least one murder of a U.S. border patrol agent was caused by one of these weapons has made U.S. law enforcement officers realize that the Obama administration is, in many ways, actively working against their interests and even compromising their safety.
The question was raised to me: If Obama is against gun violence, why did he allow thousands of guns to "walk" into the hands of Mexican drug gangs, knowing they would be turned against U.S. law enforcement officers? (Don't hold your breath waiting for Obama to shed a tear for Brian Terry...)
Conclusion? If Obama were to announce a nationwide gun confiscation order, it might set off a civil war, pitting armed gun owners, cops, veterans and preppers against the completely disarmed, trendy, undisciplined anti-gun inner-city liberals. Gee, I wonder who would win that war?
In recognizing this, I'm about to re-read Patriots by James Wesley Rawles. You should too. And check out his website while you're at it: www.SurvivalBlog.com
For the record, Natural News supports cops, veterans and Sheriffs in the fight to defend the U.S. Constitution, its Bill of Rights, and real freedom in America. We will not stand idly by and let a group of political thugs and bullies take away our sacred right to self defense. www.InfoWars.com
About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health author and award-winning journalist with a passion for sharing empowering information to help improve personal and planetary health He has authored and published thousands of articles, interviews, consumers guides, and books on topics like health and the environment, and he has published numerous courses on preparedness and survival, including financial preparedness, emergency food supplies, urban survival and tactical self-defense. Adams is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he writes about or the companies he promotes. In 2010, Adams launched TV.NaturalNews.com, a natural health video site featuring videos on holistic health and green living. He's also a successful software entrepreneur, having founded a well known email marketing software company whose technology currently powers the NaturalNews email newsletters. Adams also serves as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a non-profit consumer protection group, and enjoys outdoor activities, nature photography, Pilates and martial arts training. Known on the 'net as 'the Health Ranger,' Adams shares his ethics, mission statements and personal health statistics at www.HealthRanger.org
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/038391_gun_confiscation_executive_orders_cops.html#ixzz2GCt21juv
#1) Do you think Obama will use executive orders to demand nationwide gun confiscation?
#2) If such an order is given, will you or fellow members of your organization enforce it against the citizens? (And if so, how?)
#3) What is the solution to stopping future mass shootings?
I posed these questions to one ex-FBI agent, one retired Sheriff's deputy, two active duty city police detectives, one retired former police captain of a major U.S. city, two U.S. Army veterans and one USMC veteran, discharged several years ago after two tours in Afghanistan during which he sustained a severe personal injury. For obvious reasons, none of them wish to be identified by name, but their answers below speak to their credibility and authenticity.
#1) Will Obama use Executive Order to call for gun confiscation?
The majority of those answering this question told me they did not believe Obama would call for outright gun confiscation. One detective told me, "Obama will probably try to roll out an incremental restriction similar to the '94 Clinton assault weapons ban." He would then wait for another mass shooting and use that event to ratchet up the restrictions, I was told.Only two of the eight people I questioned thought that Obama would call for outright gun confiscation, and one of those believed it would only be a restriction on so-called "assault rifles" but not shotguns or handguns.
Everyone believed that Obama would at minimum call for restrictions on weapon magazine capacity, most likely seeking to limit that to ten rounds per magazine (which is also the current limit in California). I was also told that Obama might attempt to federalize mandatory waiting periods for gun purchases, which already exist in some states but not all.
#2) Will you enforce gun confiscation against the citizens?
On this issue, the answer was resounding and unanimous: NO!The retired police captain told me that, "Door-to-door confiscation by men and women in blue [i.e. city cops] would be a suicide mission." If ordered to conduct such gun confiscation actions, many would simply resign on the spot rather than risk their lives in firefights with determined gun owners, he explained. "Our officers are not generally willing to assume the increased risk of such a police action."
He also explained, importantly, that most police officers have not even been trained to conduct sweeping, community-level weapons confiscation programs. "This goes against all our community outreach efforts where we try to earn the trust of the community." If cops suddenly became gun confiscation enforcers, trust would break down and policing would become extremely difficult, he explained.
The USMC veteran told me that some of the younger soldiers would go along with gun confiscation if ordered, but that nearly all the older military personnel would likely refuse such orders, even at risk of a court martial. "Some of the guys actually talked about this on deployment. The E-1's might follow those orders but most of us who managed to stay alive through a couple of tours are too smart for that. You'd have AWOL out the ass. We didn't sign up to engage Americans as enemy combatants. The answer would be F*%K NO all the way up the chain of command."
One of the police detectives explained another reason for saying no: "There is no love for gun confiscation in law enforcement. We're all gun owners and most of us grew up with guns, hunting, target shooting or just collecting. Most of us have gun collections when we're off duty, and Obama himself isn't well liked across law enforcement. There's no way police officers are going to put their lives on the line to go along with an order from a President who really doesn't have moral authority among cops."
When I asked what if Bush had called for gun confiscation, and would cops be more likely to comply if the order was given by a Republican, the reply was, "For some guys, yes, because they will listen to a Republican more than a Democrat, but still for rank-and-file officers who are just here collecting a paycheck for a risky job, they're no way they're going to engage in what is basically a war action just to keep that job. You can't pay them enough to pull that kind of duty, gun confiscation."
I was told by more than one person in this group that any effort by Obama to invoke gun confiscation could lead America to civil war if any real effort were made to enforce it.
#3) What is the solution to stopping mass shootings?
The former police captain explained that the real problem with shootings in his city was, "dirt-cheap handguns" also called "Saturday Night Specials." As he explained, "People that spend $500 on a nice handgun are almost never the problem when it comes to violent crime. It's the ones who pick up a junk gun for $50 on the street."When I asked him about a practical solution to reduce shootings, he said that in his opinion, "Levying new taxes on all handguns like the tax stamps on class three weapons" would likely prevent new guns from being purchased by most violent criminals, but it wouldn't take guns out of the hands of criminals who already have them. "These people will break into your car to steal the coins out of your vehicle console. They have no morals, no limits. There's almost nothing they won't do to get what they want, which is usually drugs."
As background, the BATF currently levies a $200 tax stamp for the transfer of any suppressor (silencer), short-barreled rifle, or full-auto weapon, all of which are VERY expensive to acquire and require extensive background checks to legally own.
"Most of the gun violence in our city is drug addicts raiding the homes of other drug addicts. The statistics might appear to show a lot of armed robberies and shootings, but it's really just a small subset of homes or apartments getting raided over and over again by the same people, the drug dealers." When I asked what the real drug problem was, he answered without hesitation. "Meth." Not pot, not marijuana, not even heroin. Meth is the drug that drives violent crime in America's cities.
The retired Sheriff's deputy told me that the solution was to, "Arm the teachers. Tear down the 'gun free zone' signs and put weapons in the hands of school personnel."
This opinion was seconded by one of the active-duty police detectives, who said he had actually worked several shootings, but never a mass shooting. "A mass shooting takes time, often several minutes," he explained. "That's too fast for the police to arrive on scene, but it's plenty of time for someone already on location to pursue and engage the active shooter."
He went on to explain that in the training they have been receiving over the last five years, they have been taught that ANY engagement of an active shooter -- even shots that don't hit the shooter -- are now believed among law enforcement to disrupt the shooter and force him to seek cover, during which his massacre is interrupted and delayed. Where police have traditionally been trained to "confirm your sight picture" of weapon sights on the target before pulling the trigger, that training is being modified in some cities where, in the context of a mass shooter firing off a large number of rounds, even returning so-called "suppressing fire" is now considered tactically acceptable until additional backup arrives. The idea now is to go in and engage the shooter, even if you're just one officer on the scene.
This is contradictory to previous training, and it goes against most cops' safety rules which include, "always know what is BEYOND your target." But tacticians in law enforcement are apparently now figuring out that the opportunity cost of NOT shooting back is much greater than the relatively small risk of hitting an innocent victim when laying down suppressing fire.
It is therefore believed, I was told, that even concealed carry principals or other school staff can effectively lay down that "suppressing fire" even if they are not nailing the active shooter. Obviously, this does not mean firing blindly into a crowd, for example. Each tactical situation is unique and requires rapid assessment before pulling the trigger in any direction.
There is an excellent article on all this at PoliceOne.com, covering a hard-hitting presentation by Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman. Here's a particularly compelling excerpt from the article:
The challenge for law enforcement agencies and officers, then, is to overcome not only the attacks taking place in schools, but to first overcome the denial in the minds of mayors, city councils, school administrators, and parents. Grossman said that agencies and officers, although facing an uphill slog against the denial of the general public, must diligently work toward increasing understanding among the sheep that the wolves are coming for their children. Police officers must train and drill with teachers, not only so responding officers are intimately familiar with the facilities, but so that teachers know what they can do in the event of an attack.
"Come with me to the library at Columbine High School," Grossman said. "The teacher in the library at Columbine High School spent her professional lifetime preparing for a fire, and we can all agree if there had been a fire in that library, that teacher would have instinctively, reflexively known what to do.
"But the thing most likely to kill her kids -- the thing hundreds of times more likely to kill her kids, the teacher didn't have a clue what to do. She should have put those kids in the librarian's office but she didn't know that. So she did the worst thing possible -- she tried to secure her kids in an un-securable location. She told the kids to hide in the library -- a library that has plate glass windows for walls. It's an aquarium, it's a fish bowl. She told the kids to hide in a fishbowl. What did those killers see? They saw targets. They saw fish in a fish bowl."
Grossman said that if the school administrators at Columbine had spent a fraction of the money they'd spent preparing for fire doing lockdown drills and talking with local law enforcers about the violent dangers they face, the outcome that day may have been different.
Rhetorically he asked the assembled cops, "If somebody had spent five minutes telling that teacher what to do, do you think lives would have been saved at Columbine?"
Conclusion: Civil War?
All my contact in law enforcement are in Southern U.S. states. Opinions may be very different in Northern or Eastern cities such as Chicago, New York or New Jersey.Nevertheless, even if opinions are different in other cities and states, it is clear to me that law enforcement in Southern states will NOT comply with gun confiscation directives issued by Obama. Obama simply does not have the moral authority -- nor the law enforcement support -- to pull off such an action. While his political supporters claim he has a "mandate" across America, that's far from the truth. Obama is widely despised across states like Texas, Florida, Arizona and nearly all of rural America. He only enjoys support in the cities, and primarily in the inner cities.
Also, throughout law enforcement it is widely known that Obama staged Operation Fast & Furious and then got caught. The fact that at least one murder of a U.S. border patrol agent was caused by one of these weapons has made U.S. law enforcement officers realize that the Obama administration is, in many ways, actively working against their interests and even compromising their safety.
The question was raised to me: If Obama is against gun violence, why did he allow thousands of guns to "walk" into the hands of Mexican drug gangs, knowing they would be turned against U.S. law enforcement officers? (Don't hold your breath waiting for Obama to shed a tear for Brian Terry...)
Conclusion? If Obama were to announce a nationwide gun confiscation order, it might set off a civil war, pitting armed gun owners, cops, veterans and preppers against the completely disarmed, trendy, undisciplined anti-gun inner-city liberals. Gee, I wonder who would win that war?
Is this all a ploy to open the door for UN troops on the streets in America?
Finally, it's worth considering that civil war may be exactly what Obama wants to cause. It would rip America apart, making way for United Nations troops to invade and seize control, claiming "humanitarian" justification. This could be precisely the action needed to unleash blue helmets across America and push for nationwide disarmament and military occupation.In recognizing this, I'm about to re-read Patriots by James Wesley Rawles. You should too. And check out his website while you're at it: www.SurvivalBlog.com
For the record, Natural News supports cops, veterans and Sheriffs in the fight to defend the U.S. Constitution, its Bill of Rights, and real freedom in America. We will not stand idly by and let a group of political thugs and bullies take away our sacred right to self defense. www.InfoWars.com
About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health author and award-winning journalist with a passion for sharing empowering information to help improve personal and planetary health He has authored and published thousands of articles, interviews, consumers guides, and books on topics like health and the environment, and he has published numerous courses on preparedness and survival, including financial preparedness, emergency food supplies, urban survival and tactical self-defense. Adams is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he writes about or the companies he promotes. In 2010, Adams launched TV.NaturalNews.com, a natural health video site featuring videos on holistic health and green living. He's also a successful software entrepreneur, having founded a well known email marketing software company whose technology currently powers the NaturalNews email newsletters. Adams also serves as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a non-profit consumer protection group, and enjoys outdoor activities, nature photography, Pilates and martial arts training. Known on the 'net as 'the Health Ranger,' Adams shares his ethics, mission statements and personal health statistics at www.HealthRanger.org
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/038391_gun_confiscation_executive_orders_cops.html#ixzz2GCt21juv
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