Attention all bloggers.

V

Visaman

New member
Last year i had the uncomfortable experience of having a unscheduled
visit from the police.

The experience was caused by :

1.One female person had visited the local police office the day before, and stated that she was worried because i own a "large number of firearms".
She also mentioned my blog, and the local police took a look on that.
It is quite obvious a person that does not understand that target shooting is a common and legal sport with classes for, .357 caliber revolver, 45LC revolver, .22 LR semi atomatic pistol et cetera..

2.They spotted a rifle on the said blog that i have obtained by 100% legal means. They could not find in the archives because it takes some time for the weapons dealer to send in the paperwork. If they had checked the archives properly, they had noticed that i had a approved application for a rifle, bolt action in 7mm-08 and stopped the whole affair and waited for the paperwork from the dealer to appear.

The result was that i had a "visit" of 5 uniformed police officers with a court order, one of them was even armed and had his hand on his side arm ready to draw.

You can all guess what i felt in that moment.. I was in a state of shock in about 24 hours.
They took all my firearms and good deal of ammunition, all legally purchased of course.
I have no criminal record, so the show of force was in my and many others opinion overkill.

It took me to lawyers and three months to get my guns back, due to the first lawyers lack of incompetence and the foot-dragging by the local police department. They did even send my rifle to the crime police central, because the local police department did not understand that a bi-pod and a silencer is perfectly legal and common here in Norway.

It did not cost me any money because i am a member of a local association that i had contacted. They stated that the ordeal was completely unfair, and they carried all the expenses.

The total sum was 1702.15 EURO ( 2206.38 USD ) , i am glad that i did not have to pay that.

None of my weapons was damaged by the police. They often handle seized guns a bit rough, keeps them stored in a cardboard box so finishes and scopes can easily become damaged, and they can become rusty.

The law states that a person that delivers such a complaint ( why has person xxx so many guns and loads of ammunition, oh my god, think if he goes berzerk! :O ) is anonymous so it is not possible for me to figure out exactly who the person is, because the persons name is not recorded by the police. Even, i do have a hunch but i cannot produce any written documentation with a evidence.

I am certain that the person that delivered the message to the police will get bad karma.
I have not received any apologies from the police department.
 
Last edited:
Yeah, it did that. Even if it took two lawyers and three letters to the police to get them to hand out my weapons. The last one from my last lawyer was a tiny bit threatening, i dont think that the local police had liked the consequences. A slightly humiliating ordeal in court.

My proper laminated firearms license card for that rifle that i "had obtained illegally", to quote the court order the police came with, did arrive per snail mail after 14 days. Still, the last lawyer had to write them the said letter to get them to react. He tried with a more polite one first, but no reaction at all..

Sadly,that ordeal can happen to anybody that blogs about their legal and normal hobby.
 
In America we have a sort of protection in the Sixth Amendment that allows us to confront witnesses (of which your accuser certainly was).

Sad that you can accuse someone anonymously of a crime is as this. Open to too much abuse and misunderstanding, as you've now experienced.

If Norway doesn't want you, come over here, we'll be glad to have you :D
 
Part of the problem is there seems to be no place left in this world that if you dont agree with the majority that you can still live as you choose.

Society seems to be evolving all over into various forms of police states and yet media in general has nothing to say about it. The people of the world never seem to learn from the past and past mistakes...

I’m glad you got your guns back but even here in the states we are always on the edge of losing our gun rights as our courts and ancestors of the past failed epically to preserve our rights in legal determinations...
 
It should be noted that Norway's constitution contains only vague and mild restrictions on police power. Article 102 is the closest thing they have to our 4th Amendment:

Search of private homes shall not be made except in criminal cases.
Click to expand...

That's fairly broad.

Visaman, have you witnessed more suspicion towards gun owners since the Breivik tragedy, and do you think this might have led to your ordeal?
 
I'd love to think we are immune from these kinds of problems in the United States, but a complaint by the right person might be followed up on in certain circumstances.

I don't have a Facebook page and I certainly don't blog. I really don't think my life has much to offer to an outside observer. We should always consider very carefully what we post online.
 
In America we have a sort of protection in the Sixth Amendment that allows us to confront witnesses (of which your accuser certainly was).
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, the right to confront your accuser would not have applied even if Visaman has lived in America. The police were operating off of an open source (the blog) and therefore the original tipster's part was OBE.
 
Do a Google search and you will find that this sort of thing has
occurred many times in the USA. Remember hurricane Katrina and
the New Orleans police gun confiscation foray. It took a lawsuit by
the NRA to get the N. O. PD to give the weapons back. It pays to
keep silent about what firearms you have and where they are stored.
 
Tom Servo:

My ordeal is certainly connected to the deeds at Breivik. I even had the temporary license paper for that rifle.

My local pistol/revolver club has the usual number of visitors that try out pistol/revolver shooting. The only thing that i have noticed is that the number of frequent visiting females has changed to more visitors.

It seems to me that most people understand that target shooting is a sport.
The Justice department has frozen all applications for semi-automatic rifles, because a (sigh) new weapons law is in the progress of being formulated..
I dont think that semi-automatic rifles will be banned, because many disabled hunters use them. Its likely to be some changes in the magazine capacity, no more 20 round magazines for rifles of the AR family.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Do a Google search and you will find that this sort of thing has
occurred many times in the USA. Remember hurricane Katrina and
the New Orleans police gun confiscation foray. It took a lawsuit by
the NRA to get the N. O. PD to give the weapons back. It pays to
keep silent about what firearms you have and where they are stored.
Click to expand...

Okay, help me out. I can't find a single Katrina-related gun confiscation where officers received a complaint about a blog and used the information to then confiscate the firearms from the blogger after Katrina.

I see where many folks blogged complaints about confiscated guns after Katrina, but that isn't the same thing.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top