BQ, I'd also like to thank you for your input here, having a valid and well stated opposing view is always welcome as it is helpful.
BUT! (I bet you knew that was coming!) I think the main problem here is we're talking apples and oranges for the most part. Since you and your friends are personally involved and upstanding LEOs, you of course wish that you had ALL the power to do whatever is required to accomplish the honest performance of your job in absolute safety. That is certainly a fair wish!
But similar to spending one's life in the military, absolute safety is not always going to be possible, at least not if there are to be any safeguards whatsoever for the liberties of law abiding and peaceable citizens. The job you've chosen, like a life in the Army, entails certain risks, and the people who pay your salary expect to be able to act as your boss, not to be run over lke dirt in order to allow you to remain absolutely safe. That does NOT mean waking up at 3 AM to discover 20 people with full-auto and silenced weapons destroying your home and terrifying your family because they couldn't read an address correctly, and yet that has happened. And even that is not my real fear.
Having considered long and hard many years ago when I first started hearing about this kinda thing happening, I decided that my only rational response, as a law abiding citizen, to my door crashing down at 3 AM was to come out shooting, not chit-chatting. As you said, but with a different outcome, as a normal citizen who's doing nothing wrong I have nothing to fear from LEOs, therefore that is quite clearly NOT who is beating my door down, whether they SAY they are or not. If my lights don't work because the power has been cut, I drop the pistol and pick up the AR with the 30-round clip full of steel core, get my wife behind me and kill everything in front of me. That seems to me like a rational response, since I have nothing to fear from LEOs.
Now, if somehow it IS a LE unit such as you describe, I will die. That concept bothers me significantly, I consider it much more than a minor inconvenience. Given events in recent years, I consider that fear very remote BUT STILL POSSIBLE!! I would prefer it was totally impossible, translating to if the meth lab (or whatever) can't be taken any other way, that's too bad. Beating down doors at 3 AM is police-state tactics, and should be eliminated completely IMHO. If those doors need to be beaten down, at least do it in the daylight, when I can look out the window and discover 20 marked police cars, drop my guns and surrender. If you consider that less safe for your group, I'm real sorry, but you chose a profession that involves risk. I chose one too, and during a period of over 20 years there were two periods when I thought it might be a real good idea to dispense one or two 20-megaton nukes rather than keeping my tender young butt in harm's way for an extended time (just happened again in Kosovo, but I'm no longer involved), but I also understood that was not how our country functions! IMHO, neither are the police-state tactics you describe.
For DC: you said you were libertarian in most things, but draw the line at meth labs, then proceeded to describe the best reasons to just STAY libertarian on them. If meth production/possession/sale were not illegal, (libertarian concept) then it could be monitored to comply with EPA laws, safety rules, etc., and all your objections would disappear instantly, as major commercial labs would produce it.
On the subject of Waco, there is one thing I have not heard brought up here. I live only 50 miles or so away and watched the unfolding story with rapt attention, and still couldn't ever figure out what happened for years afterward, it was so confusing. Koresh was suspected of sexually abusing little girls and boys, but there was not a shred of evidence so we still don't know whether that was even true. But we gotta do SOMETHING about that prevert, right? So we get the ATF to go do that something, but on what pretense? AH. Somebody heard what sounded like full-auto fire from the compound, so here come 100 ATF goons in full battle regalia to make an arrest, confiscate the incriminating evidence.
One small problem with that scenario, which I haven't seen addressed here. The Davidian compound had a class-3 dealer as one of the residents, a fact the ATF absolutely HAD to know, they monitor such people rather closely. And were there full-auto weapons found? Yes, there were, but they didn't show up for quite a while, since that dealer was away at a gun show at the time of the assault, and the weapons in question were properly and legally stored in a gun safe which had to be broken into in order to find them, no one present in the compound was able to get to them during the conflict. Exactly correctly, completely legally and according to every rule extant, and licensed by the ATF itself.
Also, let's remember that those were not bulldozers as someone suggested which rammed a building full of women and children, they were the Army's front-line battle tanks from Ft. Hood. The commanding general there REFUSED to supply them, was overruled by Washington, REFUSED to allow his troops (trained in their use) to operate them (blatantly illegal but demanded by the FBI nonetheless), and OH! my GOD!!! REFUSED to supply the FBI with live ammunition for the cannon and .50 machine guns thereon, a demand I have still never heard explained. What exactly were they going to do with shells for that cannon? If that debacle had ended up allowing any sort of a hero, my vote would have been for that general, though it would not surprise me to learn that his refusal to "cooperate" ended his career. The government's actions and attempted actions were nothing short of criminal, yet if any heads rolled I never heard of it. Sickening. Absolutely sickening.
Larry P.
But LEOs hold themselves up as representing a higher standard than "civilians" (speaking in "averages") and typically fulfill that standard admirably.
). Anyway, someone at the airport tipped on him and the authorities arrested him and his money. They let him go and no charges were filed, but the money remained under arrest...I believe he finally got it back a year or so later and it cost him in legal fees around $6000 to get it back.