This post is about two things that cannot logically co-exist: No-knock warrants and the right to own a personal firearm for self-protection. If those two things are allowable and sanctioned, then the incidence of deadly, and unnecessary, gun battles between police and civilians will continue to take innocent lives.
A no-knock warrant allows law enforcement to enter a property without announcing their presence or their intentions. The officers may make a perfunctory announcement seconds before breaking down a door as seen portrayed in many television dramas or true crime reenactments. The justifications are one of two things: either the officers want to prevent evidence from being destroyed or they fear for their own safety.
In the case of evidence preservation, we might be wise to admit that the only evidence that might be easily destroyed after serving a standard warrant would be drugs. In that scenario, the drugs are flushed or burned. Success! Drugs and the potential profit from drug sales eliminated. Good job all around. Let’s go home!
In the case of protecting the safety of the officers executing the warrant, it would seem the officers would be much safer if they set up a defensive perimeter and execute a warrant requiring the occupants to come out.
The real reason for a no-knock warrant is to give law enforcement the right to act like commandos in a war zone.
Gun rights advocates seem to want everyone to carry a gun for protection. What happens gun rights advocates when it is the police and not a criminal breaking down your door?
Sometimes innocent people die! If not choir boys and girls, at least not the people the warrant was issued to find and apprehend.
Here are two examples:
Amir Locke was fatally shot on February 2, 2022 in Minneapolis. Police were executing a no-knock in a homicide investigation. The warrant gave them the authority to detain any of three people in connection to the homicide. Amir Locke was not one of them. He was asleep on the couch when the door was broken down. He came up with a gun that he was permitted to carry, and he was shot and killed.
Breonna Taylor (Pictured) a 26-year-old Emergency Medical Technician was fatally shot in Louisville on March 13, 2020. The no-knock warrant was issued in connection to a drug dealing operation, but nobody in the apartment that evening were the intended subjects. Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, was inside the apartment with her when the officers knocked and burst in. Walker fired a shot and the officers responded with 32 shots of their own, missing Walker completely but hitting Taylor six times and killing her. Some of the shots entered an adjoining apartment.
Proposed: As a democratic society, let’s make some reasonable compromises. As a democratic society, we can do that. Either we must curtail the rights of citizens to bear arms for self-defense and protection or we must curtail the right of the police to break down our doors. Instead of no-knock warrants, judges can just issue a warrant that requires people to come out for reasonable questioning.
Your assertion that no-knock warrants and the right to bear arms “cannot logically co-exist” is contradicted by the fact that they do.
“Gun rights advocates seem to want everyone to carry a gun for protection.” No, just those who choose to do so.
No-knock for a homicide case is appropriate.
Richard:
You disagreed that gun rights advocates want gun carry rights to proliferate by saying,”No, just those who choose to do so.” I understand Charlie Manson, when he was free was one who chose to do so. Is that the kind of thing you want? In another forum, one of the gun rights advocates said that guns have been around for a long time and society has been functioning just fine. My rejoinder is to mention that I have heard of babies being shot and killed while still in the womb. Is that acceptable?
You also said, “No-knock for a homicide case is appropriate.” Is it acceptable when innocent people are killed without warning and for no advantage to the legal system or to the reduction in crime. In fact, needless killings of innocent people are much more likely to lead to an increase in crime.
Is Breonna Taylor just an unfortunate statistic. Oh well!?
You are all for personal freedom, but somehow you think it okay to break down doors with weapons drawn. Come on man!