“We looked at the real life examples of what happened in Louisiana when people were trying to evacuate, some on foot, and they were stopped at bridges and certain checkpoints and their firearms were seized. It took them many months to get them back, if they ever got them back, but they were just trying to comply with a lawful order to evacuate New Orleans.” – Florida State Sen. Jeff Brandes in Unpermitted Florida gun owners get exemption for hurricanes [at gainesville.com]
And one would think when Katrina occurred, could be law dogs finest hour. Instead it’s gimmie your guns.
I don’t understand how “just following orders” is a valid excuse for anyone wearing any uniform, LEO or military. If you can violate another human being’s rights and then tell yourself, “It’s okay because I’m just following orders,” you’re as bad as the monsters giving those orders.
The excuse from nearly every Nazi who led Jews to their death was that they were just following orders. Back then, the US did not accept that as a defense for their actions, because free societies hold government employees accountable for following unlawful orders. Apparently, we are no longer a free society.
Bit of a streatch to compare confiscating guns during a natural disaster to herding people into gas chambers. I don’t think soccer moms will get the connection and they vote.
And since that happened look how many places have put laws into place to prevent a repeat.
The local .gov was very wrong in how it handled that crisis. But Nazis they weren’t.
….How about sitting in a boat with a mounted machine gun trained at every boatload of refugees as you rob them of their most treasured possessions at gunpoint?
Is that comparable to the the acts of Hitler’s version of Jefferson Parish LEOs?
fed up, the citizens that had their guns confiscated during Katrina had legal recourse after the event and changes were made to prevent these actions in the future.
Jews being forced into the gas chambers, not so much.
Comparing a citizens temporary inconvience to the plight of Europeans jews 1939-45 is just way too much of a leap.
What legal recourse do the citizens who were robbed, raped, or murdered have after Military and Law Enforcement CAME INTO THEIR HOMES to disarm them, often breaking down the front door in the process. They didn’t go through the worst neighborhoods disarming people either. They went through middle-class and upper middle class neighborhoods and left people in their own homes defenseless. In case you didn’t get the memo, a large portion of NOPD officers were busy out looting and behaving as predators themselves.
What about when the point came where they decided to barricade the remaining people attempting to evacuate into the city, even shooting at people attempting to cross a bridge out of the city, thereby creating one large concentration camp? Is that not Nazi enough for you?
Irish, the officers involved in the bridge shootings were tried and convicted afterwards. Did the people they shot have guns taken away prior to this? I have seen no credible reports(admmit I haven’t looked very hard) that anybody that was disarmed by the leo’s suffered rape, murder or robbery afterwards.
Resorting to the Nazi claim just makes us all look like a bunch of wild eyed lunatics.
“Just following orders” is only an adequate defense for the winning team. Of course, the winners don’t get dragged in front of courts. It’s why Bomber Harris, or Menachem Begin, or the Enola Gay crew got to go home.
You sir are and idiot.
You are making a pathetically weak moral equivalency argument. As it always does, a rudimentary knowledge of history—which you appear to lack—reduces these kind of false comparisons to twaddle.
Soviet criminals like Lazar Kaganovich also got to ride out their lives peacefully. Power, boy, do you speak it?
I think the article that the victims of the confiscation were victimized while trying to comply with a lawful order to evacuate.
For those saying it’s far below the Nazi atrocities: it is a bit below, but these people were deprived of the means to defend themselves in a period where LEOs could not defend them at all and a constitutional right was violated for no d@mn reason other than “I have a badge and I am anchorage here.” It is an egregious violation of rights. those LEOs responsible should be held accountable or it will happen again.
Katrina revealed how many heroic N.O.P.D. officers, unaccounted for after the storm, were presumed to have perished in the line of duty.
Well, it revealed how thoroughgoing corrupt that city is, for exposing how many phantom employees they had on the police payroll.
Wasn’t “just following orders” (of Hitler) the same reason the German soldiers used?
I believe you are correct. But what do you do when someone that is your boss/commander gives you those orders ? You either follow them or protest and bring up that fact that they are not lawful orders. In the second case you probably get fired. Which may be better than following an illegal order. Still, a tough decision for the people involved. The person that needs to answer for all of this is the one that decided to give that order in the first place. Need to have real harsh consequences for those that give those illegal orders. The problem is that does not seem to be happening. That is what needs to be fixed.
Fired might be your best result. If you’re in the military you can be executed, or at least in prison.
@Bruce-In the military when righteous men say NO to an immoral commander who is ordering them to go against their moral code, sworn by an oath, it is reported as enemy contact, then KIA. Most soldiers believe in God, Country, and their specific branch, which leaves room for moral men to object and not be pawns.
@Gatha58–“Still, a tough decision for the people involved”.
You nailed the exact problem that is responsible for corroding America’s moral fiber, and that is paycheck over my fellow people, and then still think you are a good person. It is not a tough decision for an immoral person is what I think you meant to say. A moral person says no, I will not comply, with their life staked behind that claim, since a moral man will die for his belief of never harming innocents or being an accomplice to evil.
“The person that needs to answer for all of this is the one that decided to give that order in the first place.”
If the person, and person is the wrong word because in that moment the individual has chosen to be a tool of tyranny. In a free nation when that individual willfully chooses to attempt to carry out that immoral order they run the risk of being shot in order to prevent their crime against morality from being attempted. The order would never be carried out if the weak willed employees had intestinal fortitude and stuck to their moral codes, and not a paycheck. As mentioned above POWER and cash rules everything for some people, especially their moral compass. When having is more important than being. That is spiritual sickness that allows lesser men to have authority over Liberty, since their authority is incontestable in the heavily stacked institutions.
“Need to have real harsh consequences for those that give those illegal orders”
There are in the real world, but it is called being a vigilante, and to most it is called fulfilling justice. Killing an evil man, in the commission of his act upon you is the most natural human instinct, and it shouldn’t be a freedom taking experience exacting double jeopardy on the victim. Everyman can be laid claim to but it is not until after that grievance with some men that it is realized you couldn’t afford the cost for that error.
Need to have real harsh consequences for those that give those illegal orders.
If I were in the NG and somebody gave me orders like that, I hope I’d have the foresight to interrogate him on the origins of those orders before I killed him. In reality, it would probably be more like
“Sir, did you just order us to engage in armed support of robbery?”
“Yes” (bang)
And it wouldn’t matter if it were some punk lawyer I just met 10 minutes ago, or my own NG commanding officer who’d had BBQ in my back yard last weekend. I’d shoot him on the spot, then go after whoever gave him the order.
Somebody (a nationally known Soviet born 2A activist) wrote of a JAG briefing she received on the National Guard rules of engagement for supporting NOPD in serial armed robbery (door to door theft of guns from law abiding residents). As best as I can remember, the orders were to make a showing of heavily armed force in support of the armed robbers, but NOT to directly take the property of innocent citizens. She considered herself fortunate that her unit was not used for this duty, but it sounded to me like she’d do as ordered if they assigned her unit because a military lawyer said so. Apparently JAG took the viewpoint that it was OK to threaten to kill anybody who attempted to defend their home from armed robbers, but not to engage in armed robbery itself.
I think JAG needs a refresher course on the civilian legal definition of armed robbery.
When one man comes to my house to threaten me with a M4 while another man relieves me of my possessions, they’re both felonious armed robbers, and I should shoot the one with the M4 first (preferably from at least 400 yards away, if I know in advance what they’re up to).
So it okay to violate right as long as long as you selfishly fear for own job and don’t care about the consequences of your actions following those orders? Okay, lets follow that train of thought: then the German SS were perfectly valid in running the gulags the way they did according to you. And a terrorist bomber, ordered by Bin Laden to fly planes into the WTCs was perfectly excused as well. after all, they had orders right? That is very tangibly cowardly and inhuman.
It’s always about the money (and the pension equivalent of a few mil. banked). Ultimately, “Rights” are only those granted by the party before you pointing a gun. Where are we headed?
What? Nobody calling “Godwin’s Law”? How refreshing!
The 4th and 5th Amendments should have prevented it but no, we need another law to stop government thievery.
It all goes back to “shall not be infringed”. Once those rights are perverted by concepts like background checks, permits, registration and other forms of “gun control”, the door is always open nonsense like this.
+1000.
Once the corruption of rights door is opened, the rest is only a matter of “how much.”
And yet SCOTUS in the Heller decision somehow came to the conclusion that “regulated” and “infringed” are NOT the same thing.
There is a serious flaw in a system where five men, or women, have the final say over 300 million plus citizens as to what their natural, civil and Constitutionally protected rights are.
Article V – read it, love it, live it.
“And yet SCOTUS in the Heller decision somehow came to the conclusion that “regulated” and “infringed” are NOT the same thing…”
Roger that. I don’t exactly know what it is going to take for people to wake up to the reality…
Yet even here, you have people fall to hysterics about open carriers on the front lawn of the WH, and families being tailed by 100 convicted felons.
Their ruling said that the regulation of concealed carry was acceptable but did not say the same about open carry.
They don’t have the “final say” Constitutionally. The COURT dreamed up “judicial review” (which primarily benefits themselves). And “we” have let the nonsense stand.
In reality does SCOTUS have the “final say”? No, but the available options are few and very very painful.
Exactly.
Didn’t the police take guns from permitted gun owners as well as those without permits when this originally happened ?
The police confiscated a lot of long guns and no permit is required for a long gun in Louisiana.
And were there any consequences for the perpetrators? No? Oh that’s right, the perps call themselves “government.”
Following the example of The Good Soldier Schweik, bad orders should be followed eagerly, happily and wrong. Disobedience disguised as idiocy is rarely punished.
If only that ‘evil George Bush’ hadn’t steered the hurricane to New Orleans so as to force all the black citizens to leave thereby leaving a mostly white city now. Huh? Yes, exactly! That is what some in the so-called news media were spouting. You know, the usual suspects on abndcbmsnbc nytimes,ad naseum.
Scotus mandate free and open carry in the U.S. Can’t come soon enough. One can hope, no?
Katrina should be a teachable moment, one should always avoid checkpoints when evacuating.
If the checkpoint is located correctly in relation to the terrain, it will be no easy task to avoid it. Think roads through swamps, bridges over rivers, tunnels, etc. If you’re on foot or in a vehicle, your options are extremely limited if the checkpoint spot was picked by someone with half a brain.
Not saying it would be easy but must be done.
Florida is far from perfect.
But we are getting there for gun owners.
Closer every State session.
Now onto open carry, it should be next up.
The article is referring to those escaping the hurricane as the ones complying with a lawful order to evacuate not the cops that confiscated the guns and the risk of having a Katrina like incident with mass confiscations and possibly mass arrests since carrying a gun without a license is a felony.
What a load of excrement…as if lawful was an excuse. Like herding 110000 Japanese-Americans into concentration camps. Anyone remember what happened at the Bundy ranch recently? Cold dead hands people…
During Katrina, having your guns confiscated by the cops was the least of your worries. Being murdered by the cops was more of an issue.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danziger_Bridge_shootings
Don’t forget having to dodge rounds from Chris Kyle on top the SuperDome.
Not to mention having to dodge rounds from Chris Kyle, firing atop the SuperDome.
Lighten up, Leland.
…according to Mr. Kyle, as ordered by Mr. Bush’s hires. I hope he was lying about this one – scary to think about.
Does the law criminalize the taking of guns in the instance or just make transporting them legal? Because the latter isn’t that useful without the former, as Katrina shows.
Pathetic. The government has to make a law to keep itself from violating basic human rights.
It is beyond ironic that the very institution charged with protecting our rights is by far the biggest violator.
Insane law. Some people don’t want to evacuate and would prefer to remain with their property. That’s their business and it doesn’t affect anyone else. Government overreach for the usual purpose of control.
Rule #1
Shoot anyone that tries to take your gun.
I’ve decided awhile ago that I will live/die by this rule.
Well said Sir, I made this decision awhile before also. I will die a free man, not as a punk…
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