California Ammunition Raids Put Innocent People at Risk of Police Violence

[Suck My Glock]

https://reason.com/2020/06/10/californi ... dium=email

The state boasts of blocking 754 illegal purchases, but it wrongly tagged 101,047 law-abiding people as prohibited. Any of them could have been targeted.

"The standard background check rejected citizen-residents who are not prohibited persons approximately 16.4% of the time."

Judge Benitez wasn't first to note the mess California made of background checks. In December of last year, the Sacramento Bee led a story on the issue with the case of Zachary Berg, a Sutter County sheriff's deputy who was unable to purchase shotgun shells "because his personal information didn't match what state officials had in their database." For Berg and the tens of thousands of other Californians wrongly turned away, "the rejections appear to have occurred because of errors and omissions in the Department of Justice's own gun-registration database," the story noted.

The potential for not just injustice, but tragedy, in such cases is apparent, since news reports describe the raids as being carried out by contingents of armed and armored California Justice Department agents. Anybody who needs a refresher course in the potential dangers of police enforcement of laws great and small need only take a peek at current headlines regarding the killing of George Floyd over a suspected counterfeit $20 bill and the resulting protests and unrest. Or they could consider the killing of Breonna Taylor during a misfired drug raid. And then there's the killing of Duncan Lemp during a raid for alleged illegal firearms possession.

Those headlines should also be a reminder that the government enforces its will unevenly, coming down hardest on individuals and communities who enforcers dislike.

Unfortunately, Judge Benitez's order blocking the background-check law was itself blocked in May by a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, while the case against the law makes its way through the courts. That cleared the way for Becerra's publicity-stunt raids on suspects who attempted to purchase ammunition and were turned away.

We know that no mayhem ensued and that the people on the receiving end of the raids really were prohibited from purchasing ammunition because Becerra issued a press release after the fact rather than cover up a fiasco. Having been warned by Judge Benitez that the law too frequently ensnared innocent people, the California Justice Department seems to have put a little more care than usual into its high-profile stunt so that officials could issue boasts rather than apologies.

But what was accomplished? Given the drugs and (illegal in California) ghost guns seized in the raids, it's obvious that the targets had access to black market sources but tried to make legal purchases. Judge Benitez may have slightly overstated the case when he wrote that "criminals, tyrants, and terrorists don't do background checks" (people do stupid things all the time) but it's probable that some raid subjects had no idea they had done anything to put their names on the naughty list. They may have been non-violent offenders of one of the laws—drug prohibition comes to mind—that carry nasty legal consequences for minimal reason (Becerra's office didn't say).

Just weeks later, it's difficult to consider those raids without envisioning what could have gone wrong. To contrast the "754 persons with felony convictions, mental health holds, certain misdemeanor convictions, or illegally present in the United States, prevented from buying new ammunition" documented by the federal court with the "101,047 residents who are not prohibited persons but who still failed a background check" is to see the potential for wrongful arrests, violated civil liberties, and unjustified deaths of innocent people at the hands of law enforcement agents.

Now, amidst a national discussion about policing and law enforcement, the California attorney general's eagerness to stage publicity-seeking raids to enforce an easily bypassed restriction that is incompetently administered and constitutionally suspect should give everybody pause. As is so often the case when it comes to multitudes of laws and armies of law enforcers, Becerra falsely claims to be "protecting Californians" even as he puts state residents at risk of violence from government agents.

[Eleroo]

We need to make sure to stay politically active to ensure that non-sense doesn't make its way to Arizona.

[mrbogangles]

Remember more and more Californians are moving to this state.

[Pscipio03]

And why I say almost daily we are trying to build a wall on the wrong border

[azman]

Symington use to say we needed to worry about the "western border" more than the southern border.... and he was a developer, yet recognized the damage they would do to our state culture as greatly outweighing any money they brought in.
Back in those days the "Welcome to AZ... now go home" bumper stickers were common as well... I miss those days!

[xerts1191]

[samnev]

I'm not surprised at anything that happens in that state.