"So, when do the cops actually enforce gun laws?"

November 2, 2023 11:37 AM

Investigative journalist David Forbes (previously) writes on the US gun control debate: "As a journalist I've investigated police departments for over 20 years. The reality is that they will not enforce gun laws against white supremacists, the far-right or the kind of abusive guy that makes up 95 percent of mass shooters on any scale that matters. They do not do so now and they won't in the future." Her post "A reality check on cops and gun laws", published June 5, 2022, aims to rebut assumptions "often held unconsciously by people who are in good faith trying to find an answer to appalling violence." Content warning: police and gun violence, hate crimes, domestic abuse. Disclaimer: I know David Forbes and she is a friend of mine.

Quotes from the piece:

The slavers' regime and the segregationists that followed it were paranoid about disarming any who opposed them, especially Black and indigenous populations. In 1864, rapidly losing ground to both Union forces and local Black insurgencies, Wilmington's confederate authorities did a house-to-house sweep of the city to confiscate weapons. After the war, armed Black militia crushed the klan.

In 1898, when proto-fascists readied to overthrow Wilmington's multiracial government, one of the first things they did was deny Black communities access to firearms.

This didn't end in the 20th century, as rounds of gun laws in the '60s and '70s only came about after the use of firearms by the Black Panthers and, yes, the civil rights movement.

This is important because there are still far too many who think that these institutions are, if deeply flawed, basically neutral. It's tempting to think that if a better law were written they would suddenly turn around and enforce it to the detriment of all those pathetic domestic abusers about to go on a murdering spree.

That is, at this point, a dangerous delusion.

When a trans woman's facing death threats, will the same cops who regularly beat the shit out of her community approve a gun permit? Will the profession rife with domestic violence support a survivors' legitimate application to carry a firearm in self-defense?

To ask the question is to know the answer.
....

What the political system pushes towards is taking rampant tragedy and using it to prop up the status quo: give the cops more power while going after the mentally ill and every other marginalized population in their sights.

posted by brainwane (25 comments total)

Hey so I'm the original poster and here are some thoughts to help this discussion not go terribly:

First off, the author of the piece, David Forbes, is a trans woman so please do use "she" to refer to her.

It would be great if we could center the perspectives of trans people, queer people, Black and brown people, domestic violence survivors, unhoused people, neurodivergent people, and people from other groups whose self-defense capabilities are the ones being discussed in the article.

MeFi has Community Guidelines, including "speak for yourself, not others" and "allow others to express themselves", and a recently revised Microaggressions policy that includes "Believe people", "Abstraction", and "Jokes".

Please take care.
posted by brainwane at 11:37 AM on November 2, 2023 [32 favorites]

Thanks for sharing this.
posted by joannemerriam at 12:20 PM on November 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

Here in Chicago we have the issue of all the cops who turned out to be Oath Keepers, which has gotten a three part series in the Sun Times (one, two, three). Currently nine of them remain employed - although recently the chief of police has stated that all people with extremist ties will be let go.

Of course many of these extremists where part of the disbanded Special Operations Section (SOS). This was a special city wide unit that committed robberies, kidnapping, and home invasions. When the story blew up their ringleader even attempted to get a hitman to assassinate one of the officers turned state witness.

The SOS headquarters were in the Homan Square Police Annex at 3340 W. Fillmore Avenue. The very Homan Square Annex that is famous for where the CPD 'disappeared' at least 7,000 people. Lawsuits revealed that over nearly 11 years only 0.9% of those detained at the facility were able to see their lawyers, and most of those people just happened to be white.
posted by zenon at 12:20 PM on November 2, 2023 [19 favorites]

I really appreciate the list under "A few of the things I've seen", and it leaves me wanting really comprehensive data about gun laws and enforcement and withheld enforcement. (What's the word? Withheld? Abrogated? Shirked?)

I know an older conservative who strongly disapproves of elected officials who refuse to prosecute their state's abortion bans or drug laws or what have you. I wish it were more clear to everyone that NO law gets prosecuted fully or evenly throughout a jurisdiction - there are ALWAYS judgement calls (and even in extremely well-funded police departments, there's certainly not enough money to prosecute every single minor infraction), and where there are judgement calls, there's room for abusive enforcement.

The incident that really shifted my view was the horrific day at Uvalde - all those well-trained police officers doing nothing to stop the killer, and taking little action except to prevent parents from trying to do what the officers would not.

There are so many public issues where I vaguely know how things are, but I lack specifics and details to understand and advocate more fully. This piece provides a great deal of essential information for me.

Thank you so much for posting this, brainwane.
posted by kristi at 12:23 PM on November 2, 2023 [10 favorites]

all those well-trained police officers doing nothing to stop the killer

It appears that the #1 goal of all their training is "To go home at the end of your shift". Whether this is compatible with "To Serve and Protect" and the implication of their oath that they will make the ultimate sacrifice is their duty requires it is another thing to consider.
posted by mikelieman at 12:29 PM on November 2, 2023 [4 favorites]

There was a recent episode of Slate's What Next podcast on how Maine's "Yellow Flag" laws failed to stop the Lewiston shooting despite the fact that the alleged shooter was very much on law enforcement's radar.
posted by BrashTech at 1:11 PM on November 2, 2023 [4 favorites]

Sounds like we need to find a way to get them to enforce gun laws, then.
posted by kickingtheground at 1:24 PM on November 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

I don't know why they would want to do that, though.
posted by seanmpuckett at 1:31 PM on November 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

David Forbes is a very good journalist, who I’ve followed on social media since I read her The Old Iron Dream, about right-wing science fiction. She’s really worth paying attention to, especially if you’re at all concerned about the far right in America.
posted by Kattullus at 2:08 PM on November 2, 2023 [8 favorites]

Police here are similarly useless and not just on gun laws. Our local traffic violence response group tracks data on pedestrian and cyclists harm from drivers. Over the course of the pandemic most traffic enforcement has essentially disappeared from view. If you want to shape driver behavior, today it has to be done with concrete rather than paint or cops.
posted by migurski at 2:15 PM on November 2, 2023 [6 favorites]

Yeah, I don't remember the last time I saw a cop doing traffic enforcement. So everyone is trying to go 45 in a 30 zone.
posted by Windopaene at 2:22 PM on November 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

David definitely has her own blind spots, I can’t read her local news anymore because it’s just as slanted as what you’d find elsewhere, just in the opposite direction. But I do admire what she’s trying to do and that she brings a different and important perspective.
posted by rikschell at 2:47 PM on November 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

That criticism is so vague that it is meaningless.

I didn't find anything in the article that rang false, and I appreciated having it laid out for me.
posted by fritley at 2:57 PM on November 2, 2023 [5 favorites]

The reality is that they will not enforce gun laws against white supremacists, the far-right or the kind of abusive guy that makes up 95 percent of mass shooters

spiderman-points-at-spiderman.jpg
posted by Horace Rumpole at 3:02 PM on November 2, 2023 [21 favorites]

Sounds like we need to find a way to get them to enforce gun laws, then.

repeal laws that indemnify authorities from the consequences of deliberately failing to do their jobs to protect people

even so, the real problem is that the gun laws are purposefully set up to protect gun owners by giving full-ass-coverage to authorities, which in turn gives gun owners the go-ahead to commit gun massacres

but that is neither here nor there, because as soon as anyone with a lick of sense points this out, it will turn into a discussion about the weaponry and how critics of gun massacres are bad people for somehow mislabeling the ammunition or gun barrel length or some other inane technical detail entirely irrelevant to the most recent gun massacre and how we got to yet another pile of dead bodies
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 3:58 PM on November 2, 2023 [4 favorites]

https://www.theonion.com/no-way-to-prevent-this-says-only-nation-where-this-r-1819576527
posted by Jacen at 4:54 PM on November 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

Wait.... They are complaining that we got the gun pronouns wrong? Tragically ironic
posted by Jacen at 5:00 PM on November 2, 2023 [3 favorites]

Tiny question: does she pronounce it day-vid or dah-veed or something else? And thank you for posting this and letting me know of her.
posted by lauranesson at 6:33 PM on November 2, 2023

I haven't read this article yet, but I do want to say, as a gay man in his mid-50s living in a small town in the red area of a blue state, I have considered for the first time in my life purchasing a shotgun to keep in my house for self protection.

I'm pretty relaxed and trusting about where I live in general, and have never had any problems since moving here 20 years ago. But for the first time in my life I've begun to involuntarily envision someone coming into this house, after us simply because we are gay. Never felt this before, no real grounding for why I feel this way. But it exists. And I've thought about it for the past year or so. And it isn't a feeling that's going away, sadly.
posted by hippybear at 7:46 PM on November 2, 2023 [2 favorites]

lauranesson: does she pronounce it day-vid or dah-veed or something else?

As far as I know, and it’s been a while since I heard an interview with her, she pronounces it day-vid.
posted by Kattullus at 12:30 AM on November 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

Relatedly, police were warned repeatedly by family and others about the Lewiston shooter and took no action.

Just like Harleys that flagrantly violate noise laws - enforcement is only done when it comes as punching down.
posted by Dashy at 5:10 AM on November 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

This is probably the main reason that I'm not on board with many of the gun control laws that have been proposed. Laws are always going to be enforced unequally and people of color will always bear the brunt of enforcement.
posted by schyler523 at 5:36 AM on November 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

Great article. Please thank her for us.
posted by Dashy at 5:37 AM on November 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

TFA is short enough that there is no excuse for not reading it before posting.

@mikelieman

It appears that the #1 goal of all their training is "To go home at the end of your shift". Whether this is compatible with "To Serve and Protect" and the implication of their oath that they will make the ultimate sacrifice is their duty requires it is another thing to consider.

You are making a category error here with the "Serve and Protect" part. You have neglected to examine who is being served and what is being protected by the police. In neither case is the answer "the public."

Police departments were formed in the last 150 years from organizations that previously had been the owner class' muscle when it came to putting the "press" in "opression" of brown people and workers. That is still the function of police. They serve the owner class and protect the owners' property. They generally do not swear to defend the owners' stuff to the death.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 8:50 AM on November 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

Public defender here. Gun laws put us (as in, PDs) in such a strange position, because while we are, at least in my office, left-of-left, we are also in general trying to put ourselves at the forefront of pushing gun cases to SCOTUS to get the laws struck down.

I'm not going to say I've never seen a white defendant looking at a gun charge, but I can definitely say that out of my usual load of 70-80 cases, a third of them at any one time are Black kids charged with gun crimes.

And when I say gun crimes, I don't mean 'used a gun to do a crime,' I mean, 'had a gun during a traffic stop.' The way that works is that a gun in a car counts as concealed carry in Pennsylvania, so if you've got a gun in the car when the cops stop you for 'not pausing long enough at a stop sign,' they're going to find it and charge you with not having a concealed carry permit. And if you've got one of those concealed carry convictions, you're also then a person not to possess, and having a firearm at all is a crime. Both of those are felonies carrying just less and right at a decade of incarceration at the high end.

And, like, these laws aren't going to stop these kids from carrying these guns, because these kids feel like they need them to stay safe. All the laws do is turn them into felons at a staggering rate. So while I was all about gun control before I became a lawyer, now I'm coming up with all sorts of arguments under Bruen about how this particular kind of kid couldn't have been prohibited from carrying in 1789 or 1865 (the test from Justice Thomas in Bruen for whether a given gun law violates the Second Amendment), and why this particular law happens to be unconstitutional.

If you want to regulate guns in the US, you have to go after supply. It's exactly the same problem as the drug war, except while supply in the war on drugs was distributed across half the other countries in the world, in the war on guns, we're manufacturing them here and selling them here and we've made the manufacturers immune to suit.

Let somebody sue the folks distributing bump stocks and AR-15s, ghost guns, and semi-automatics easily modified to automatics, and you'd see the supply of those things plummet overnight.

And to tie it back to the article, that's also the only way you're going to keep them out of the hands of the white folks the cops aren't going to seize them from anyway.
posted by TheProfessor at 11:33 AM on November 3, 2023 [13 favorites]