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Yeah, having this volume of firearms sales and none involved in any sort of offensive crime strongly suggests to me that he was doing some degree of due diligence with regard to buyers.
Nonetheless, I find that I am not all that sympathetic to someone that was pretty obviously in the firearms sales business and elected to not get an FFL for whatever reason. I remain vigorously opposed to eliminating the "loophole" because I think it's nothing but an end-run to require background checks and then not allow private sellers to do them, but the flip side of that is I want my side of this argument to engage in the basic good-faith effort of doing the paperwork if they want to be in the business.
On the gripping hand, I really do hate the ATF with all my heart. What do you think, could they have picked up ol' Brian at the airport rather than creating the conditions for an early morning shootout? In the event that it was absolutely necessary to serve the warrant at his home without letting him know, do you think it might have made sense to flip the bodycams on? I have zero inclination to extend even the slightest benefit of the doubt to these enemies of the American Constitution.
Or it just means he was selling within his bubble of libertarian firearms enthusiasts, who very rarely commit crimes involving firearms(other than possessing them) and have virtually no overlap with the people who do so regularly.
I do agree with you that he should do the paperwork and get set up as an FFL if he’s going to be buying and selling guns on the regular. ‘Gun dealers need to be licensed’ is a reasonable law and you should follow it. At the same time, a no-knock raid with little justification is a distinctly suboptimal way of enforcing it.
As others have pointed out in this thread though, it likely would have been impossible for him to get and maintain an FFL without also getting heavily harassed.
If you are selling somewhere between 5-200 guns a year you are in legal grey zone. Too small for FFL. Too many sales for private sale loophole. The exact edges are unclear.
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There needs to be much stricter control of both federal and local/state law enforcement executing these ridiculous and unnecessary midnight raids just to frighten suspects and their families. It obviously leads to more violence since people are going to be delirious seconds after waking up. If an alternative is reasonable a judge should be able to sanction the relevant law enforcement agency.
I think a no-knock warrant should be classified as potentially lethal force. In hostage situations, they might be the right response, but most suspects will not react to a police raid by taking their loved ones hostage. Destruction of evidence is another reason, but I think blocking the sewage pipe from the property being raided would probably suffice to preserve drugs being flushed down the toilet. Not a great reason to recklessly endanger lives. Ring the fucking door bell, present your warrant and tell everyone to come out with their hands up.
Of course, there are some very stupid criminals who would opt for taking cover and starting a shootout instead. If they are also poor and urban and thus live on a property with little strategic depth (or stupid enough not to have extensive home surveillance), then no-knock warrants might be less dangerous to police than regular warrants.
Still, catching them outside their house and arresting them with guns drawn should be pretty effective in terms of avoiding police causalities.
A much-discussed case in Germany in 2010 dealt with a botched no-knock raid. The suspect rocker had reason to believe that a rival gang was going to murder him and shot through a closed door, killing a SWAT officer. After the police identified themselves, he surrendered. In the end, he was found not guilty because his error was not unreasonable in his situation. (Of course, in the US, chances are he would have been shot on site instead of getting an opportunity to surrender.)
What does this actually mean? What specific legal or ethical implications do you think this classification would have? The president declares "No-knock warrants are now classified as potentially lethal force," what changes?
Federal courts have decreed that police violence should be justified by the circumstances, primarily the risk to officers and others, so they would presumably need to be able to argue some proven risk.
Which in this case seems to be absent.
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Not a lawyer, but by common sense, you don't execute them without evidence the target is a direct threat to other people.
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Presumably, it would have a chilling effect on no-knock raids as police chiefs and federal authorities get more antsy about using something that is only a few steps removed from the same lethal actions that lead to de facto race riots in 21st-Century America.
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Is there some sort of tactical school of thought on the efficacy or even purpose of early morning raids?
My suspicion has always been that the cops use them to literally catch crooks napping, but as @2rafa points out, it seems like the potential for "WTF IS GOING ON" violence really goes up.
I assume that surrounding the domicile would probably result in too many barricade events?
It's pretty simple: just-awoken or drowsy people are less effective criminals and combatants. Just as an example, I personally have a mental safeguard that I have deliberately curated that makes me double-check any dangerous actions I might make the moment I wake up (like grabbing my nightstand gun), because I have more than once woken up still half-dreaming and hallucinated things that weren't there. If the someone executed a no-knock raid on my house, that just-woke-up hesitation could literally be a matter of life or death.
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At least in the case of Waco it seems like the ATF and FBI wanted to generate publicity. Koresh made regular trips into town and they could have easily arrested him then, thry chose not to.
This search was also during Waco (aka funding) season.
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If you want to convince others to follow regulations that they think are stupid, enforcement that is swift, sure, and brutal is an effective way to do it. Nobody wants to end up like Randy Weaver so they're really damn careful to make sure their shotgun barrels are long enough. And nobody's going to want to end up like Malinowski so they'll be avoiding all but the most occasional private sales of firearms. That the nobodies in question are unlikely to believe the ATF story about Malinowski shooting first (I certainly don't; I suspect they executed the warrant by leading with a flash-bang, or something similar) is an advantage; it keeps them from thinking "well if I just co-operate with arrest I can fight these people in court".
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