Date: Thu, 1 Dec 1994 22:59:55 -0500
From: alerts@gatekeeper.nra.org (NRA Alerts)
To: firearms-alert@shell.portal.com
Subject: INFO: Kansas City Gun Search and Seizure 'experiment'


December 1, 1994

     Until a comprehensive report on the Kansas City "experiment"
has been examined, it is difficult to draw any conclusions based
upon the media articles which have been published recently. 
Following, though, is the initial response to this gun-seizure
"experiment" from gun-rights scholar Paul Blackman:

     Since the experiment was increasing the number of police
patrols in one police beat and comparing gun-related crime there to
a control beat with no increased police patrolling, it is possible
that the impact was the increased police patrolling, not what the
extra police were doing while patrolling.
     Second, the experiment involves a deliberate effort to violate
the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and
seizures by having police all but invent excuses to stop and
question people and their vehicles and then pretend they need to
search the person/car in order to protect the life of the officer,
when the actual purpose of the stop was to justify the search. This
deliberately twists the Terry v. Ohio stop-and-frisk decision on
its head, and demonstrates the hostility of HCI types to the Bill
of Rights as a whole -- or to any part of it which interferes with
violations of the Second Amendment. We would hope the ACLU would
denounce the police-state techniques being funded by the Department
of Justice, and hope the next Congress will look into it. We hope
that HCI would show some regard for civil liberties by saying the
Fourth Amendment shouldn't be violated just to seize guns.
--
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