Right now, I only have one child and she’s just 8 months old. But I look forward to the day when I can buy her her first .22 rifle. Since every child matures differently, I’m not sure when that day will be, but because she’s a girl, I think it’s safe to say she’ll be getting a gun a lot sooner than any son I may have.
I mention this because of what happened to a New Jersey man last week. This man bought his son a .22 rifle for his 11th birthday. He then took a picture of his son smiling with the rifle, which he posted on Facebook.
One day while he was running errands he got a call from his wife saying that four police offers were at the door along with Child Services. Apparently, someone had called the Child Abuse hotline and reported this guy because of the picture. The police asked to enter the house because they wanted to see all of the guns and to make sure they were registered and locked up.
Luckily, this guy was smart and told his wife not to let the police in.
You don’t need to register your guns in New Jersey (it’s voluntary) so they were just making excuses trying to get into the house. His wife also asked the police if they had a warrant and they said no, so she refused to let them in the house and they simply left.
The thing is, if this guy had made the mistake of letting the police in the house, no doubt they would have confiscated as many guns as they could. Even if what they did was illegal, it likely would have taken this guy months of paperwork to get the guns back.
No matter what, never, ever, ever, let the police into your house when they ask.
When I was a police officer, I was amazed at the people who would allow me to search their car and I’d end up finding drugs and marijuana. If I had to guess, 90% of people I asked said ‘yes’ and only 10% of people ever turned me down.
Now, the reason for this is obviously because people don’t know their rights and are intimidated. That’s the entire point of the police uniform and the police car with flashing lights – to intimidate you. And I’d say the police did a good job of that when they went to the New Jersey man’s house with four officers.
But the fact is, if the police have legal authority to search your house or car, etc., they are not going to ask you, they are simply going to come in. So the fact that they ask you should be a big clue that you need to say no.
Even in the police academy, the lawyers who taught the legal classes told us to always say no to the police and my wife says in law school they reiterate the same thing over and over too.
So, should you ever have the police show up at your door or ask to search your car, remember to always say no. If you don’t, it could cost you your gun collection and get you tied up in a bureaucratic mess.
