Orange County Register 10/2/2020
Gun-rights groups understandably are upset that a Louisiana public school punished a fourth-grade student after a teacher saw a BB gun in the boy’s bedroom during a video classroom session. That was an absurd case of political correctness, given that the gun merely was in the background. It reflects infuriating anti-gun bias.
Now contrast many gun activists’ reaction – or apparent lack thereof – to a more significant gun-related issue that grabbed headlines the same week. A grand jury in Louisville, Kentucky, gave a wrist slap to officers who killed Breonna Taylor during a no-knock raid at her home. The African American woman was an emergency medical technician and hadn’t done anything wrong. The drug-related warrant, which spurred the raid, apparently involved her former boyfriend.
I scoured the Internet and found little outrage from gun-rights groups and supporters. Yet, the Taylor case – as well as the issue of no-knock police raids and police militarization, in general – poses a real risk to Americans’ Second Amendment rights. They also pose risks to our other constitutional rights, such as protection against government searches and seizures, and the requirement for due process.
Heavily armed, black-clad SWAT officers conduct thousands of these raids each year, with many of them botched and some even taking place at the wrong address. As the New York Times recently explained, Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, were in bed and heard banging. Police claim that they announced themselves before busting down the door with a battering ram, but Walker said he didn’t hear that announcement – and feared the intruder was Taylor’s ex-boyfriend.
More:
https://www.ocregister.com/2020/10/02/no-knock-police-raids-trample-on-our-basic-liberties/
