You’re under arrest

Have your citizen put you down and come quietly.

In Connecticut, police are “arresting” firearms.

Not firearms owners, just their guns.

Grounds for seizure: “To stop a person before they commit a crime”.

Evidence needed to seize: Little to none.

A new report to the Connecticut state legislature shows police have used the state’s unique gun seizure law to confiscate more than 1,700 firearms from citizens based on suspicion that the gun owners might harm themselves or others.

The state’s law permits police to seek a warrant for seizing a citizen’s guns based on suspicion of the gun owner’s intentions, before any act of violence or lawbreaking is actually committed.

The law was first proposed in 1998, following a mass shooting at the Connecticut Lottery Corporation that left five dead, including the gunman. Since the law went into effect Oct. 1, 1999, according to new Office of Legislative Research report, police have made more than 200 documented requests for warrants to seize firearms from citizens, and only two of the requests have been denied.

The law has remained hotly debated since its passage, as some point to possible murders and suicides it may have prevented, and others worry that police would abuse the law.

“It certainly has not been abused. It may be underutilized,” Ron Pinciaro, co-executive director of Connecticut Against Gun Violence, told the Waterbury Republican American.

I’m sure that until there are no privately owned firearms in Connecticut, Mr. Pincairo will consider the law “underutilized”.

Under the statute, dubbed the “turn in your neighbor” law by opponents, any two police officers or a state prosecutor may seek a warrant, following a specified process of investigation, to confiscate guns from people deemed a risk to harming themselves or others. The vast majority of cases, however, begin when a person – usually a spouse or live-in, according to the OLR report – file a complaint.

Shortly after the law was passed, Thompson Bosee of Greenwich, Conn., had his guns and ammunition seized by police. Bosee told WND in 1999 he suspects a neighbor, with whom he has had words regarding the neighbor’s driving on Bosee’s property, might have reported him.

“They had a warrant for my guns, they arrested my guns,” said Bosee.

A member of both the NRA and the American Gunsmithing Association, Bosee said he works on his guns in his garage and is not ashamed of it.

Although Greenwich Police would not comment, they released a list of the guns and ammunition they seized from Bosee, including six handguns, three rifles, one shotgun, one submachine gun and 3,108 rounds of ammunition.

Your neighbor trespasses on your property. You tell the bastard to get the fuck off your land. He calls Law Inc. and says that you got angry at him for his trespass. Law Inc. arrives and takes all your firearms.

Sounds like a very good law if you like to trespass on your neighbors property.

So I guess that if you want to plan a home invasion, your best plan of action is to piss off the homeowner first so that he has no way to defend his or her self when you come over armed to take his property.

And I thought that the parole system empowered criminals!