no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes

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Musketeer said:
You may not trust the CATO numbers but I do not see you disproving any of the entries they list as having gone wrong.

No, we do not live in a perfect world. With that in mind the how many individuals COTUS rights are justified in being trampled for the collection of evidence? How many lives? Give it as a percentage or per capita please.
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It's silly to require such things to be expressed in numbers. There is no acceptable number or percentage. Any such number can always be countered by "Well, if 2 is acceptable what happens when it's 2.01? If 2.01 is acceptable what about 2.02?"

It's silly. 0 is acceptable but it's not the world we live in and, contrary to our oft-quoted "Founding Father's" beliefs, which are not necessarily the Gospel Truth, we must ALL give up some measure of liberty in order to obtain some measure of security.

There will always be necessities that we would rather not be, there will always be innocent men jailed, there will always be innocent lives lost.

They must be mitigated but they can not be eliminated. Any requirement to eliminate errors by "the good" will only allow for greater casualties at the hands of evil.
 
You may not trust the CATO numbers but I do not see you disproving any of the entries they list as having gone wrong.

No, we do not live in a perfect world. With that in mind the how many individuals COTUS rights are justified in being trampled for the collection of evidence? How many lives? Give it as a percentage or per capita please.

It's not just evidence collection we are talking about. Guns are everywhere that drugs are. You don't bang on a door and stand politely outside in a suit and tie while gang members or drugs trafficers grab the Mac-10 and shoot you through the wall. And yes, destruction of evidence is a real possibilty. I have seen buckets of bleach in every room of a crack house to throw dope into.

And, if the crack house was next door to your house, or across the street from your kids school, would you want the police to crack down on it? make an arrest that sticks bcause the evidence didn't get destroyed?
 
IMO, the 4th amendment places evidence for prosecution at a lower level of importance than the individuals' right to security in one's home at its most basic level. This would seem to indicate that the justification of "no knock" warrants as a means to prevent the destruction of evidence would be faulty or unconstitutional.

I feel that such warrants should be reserved for only the most dire of situations (ie, hostages) not simply to make evidence gathering more convenient. If such warrants are to continue to be used, perhaps a more stringent system of review/authorization should/could be required for this particular type of warrant (more than one judge perhaps from a special pool with extra training & experience in this type of warrant, consult with DA, etc.).
 
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Just to play Devil's Advocate for a moment: If it were only a matter of evidence preservation, then the preservation of lives clearly ranks above that. As another consideration, though, it could be argued that where drugs and guns are present, then we must also consider the safety of the residents surrounding the place for which the no-knock warrant is sought. The longer drug/gun-runners stay in one spot, and on the street, the more danger they present to their neighbors.
 
The longer drug/gun-runners stay in one spot, and on the street, the more danger they present to their neighbors.
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Those willing to give up a bit of freedom for a little security deserve none of either!

Brent
 
hogdogs said:
Those willing to give up a bit of freedom for a little security deserve none of either!

Brent
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Ah. The oft-quoted, and completely silly, quote of our illustrious Ben Franklin.

If this quote rings true, none of us deserve either... Including Franklin and all the other founders.

All of them, and all of us, have given up some measure of freedom in order to obtain security.

That's what laws are. That's what government does. They strip small portions of freedom to, at least ostensibly, increase safety and security.

I really hate that quote. It's ridiculous. Just because one of the Founders said it doesn't make it Gospel Truth. They were wrong too.

(No offense, Brent ;))
 
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hogdogs said:
But when it comes to our constitutional rights... They shant even nibble at them.
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Ummm ... let's think about that for a moment.

The 2nd Amendment clearly says, "shall not be infringed." Period. That's a blanket prohibition against "nibbling" (despite the fact that judges and legislators today don't appear to be able to read plain English any more). But ...

The 4th Amendment says, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, ..." Thus, "reasonable" searches and seizures were contemplated. The Founders expected some "nibbling," on this one, but they also expected limitations on the degree to which nibbling would be allowed. And that's what we're dealing with on this warrant and no-knock question. If we begin (as we should) with the premise that we SHOULD be secure in our homes, except against "reasonable" searches and seizures, the next question would have to be ... is a gang of men wearing black cammies and face masks and carrying automatic weapons bashing in my door at oh-dark-thirty in any way what the Founders had in mind as something that might be "reasonable" and thus permitted under the 4th Amendment?

I never met any of the Founders in person, but nonetheless I respectfully submit that IMHO the answer would be "No."
 
But to me... "reasonable" would be to knock and announce before barging in...

I am no legal scholar so I can't really get into it much... Many here got me beat hands down in that dept...

Brent
 
I think the question would be more appropriately asked if the founders would have been ok with those masked men bashing the doors of those who are known to produce and distribute dangerous, deadly, illegal substances and who are willing and able to murder those masked men under other circumstances.

Of course they wouldn't be ok with it if it were your door or mine... We're not known criminals.

You have to remember, after all, that these no knock warrants are issued only under extreme circumstances, or at least should be and generally are. It's not like they do it for tax audits.

I don't think we can say much about what the founders would think of our modern world.

Remember, these are men who created the amendment that reads "Congress shall make no law establishing a state religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.", and yet, there were several states which had and continued to have official state religions for years afterword... But we think a teacher praying in school violates the amendment.

Much of what they found acceptable, and rightly so, would be "appalling" in today's world, much of what we find acceptable would have been, I think, appalling to them.
 
I think the question would be more appropriately asked if the founders would have been ok with those masked men bashing the doors of those who are known to produce and distribute dangerous, deadly, illegal substances and who are willing and able to murder those masked men under other circumstances.

Of course they wouldn't be ok with it if it were your door or mine... We're not known criminals.

You have to remember, after all, that these no knock warrants are issued only under extreme circumstances, or at least should be and generally are. It's not like they do it for tax audits. [emphasis added]
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Whatever happened to the presumption of innocence? The only known criminals would be escaped fugitives. Or have we done away with the 6th Amendment now too? (imagine the cost savings)
 
Presumption of innocence is for judges and juries during the trial phase.

Is the street cop supposed to presume innocence when someone is shooting at him, since the shooter has never been convicted?

Law enforcement does and must make presumptions of guilt all day, every day. They have to. They couldn't do their jobs without it.
 
Freedom v. Security. It's an age old question that can be rephrased as Anarchism v. Society.

Throughout the history of mankind, as we moved from Family to Clan to Tribe to City-State to Nation, society has imposed restrictions upon personal liberty. The more complex the society, the more personal freedom is traded for the benefits of living in that society.

Knowing this as a fundamental truth, we can then understand what Franklin actually said: "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." (a motto on the title page of An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania. (1759))

Safety and security are not necessarily the same. In the context of the time, it (the saying above) did not mean what we today think it means.

Regardless, there needs to be a balance between the two concepts of Liberty and Safety. Tilted too far in one direction and we face chaos. The other? Slavery.
 
I never met any of the Founders in person
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I knew the lot of 'em back in the day. Bunch of drunken tankards, you know. They could never write the Second Amendment the same way twice. God's wonder they ever passed anything before they passed out.
 
It was the discussion of high capacity muskets that drove them to drink, IIRC.

My comment is that rights are a social construct and not the laws of physics or constants like the speed of light in a given material. Of course, they are reinterpreted. Look at voting. Free Speech, Etc.

Arguing for absolutism gets us nowhere. Reason is our friend.
 
It's not just evidence collection we are talking about. Guns are everywhere that drugs are. You don't bang on a door and stand politely outside in a suit and tie while gang members or drugs trafficers grab the Mac-10 and shoot you through the wall. And yes, destruction of evidence is a real possibilty. I have seen buckets of bleach in every room of a crack house to throw dope into.

And, if the crack house was next door to your house, or across the street from your kids school, would you want the police to crack down on it? make an arrest that sticks bcause the evidence didn't get destroyed?
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The guns are there because of the value of the illegal trade. The purpose of those guns is more for the defense against other criminals than cops although they would readily use them against cops.

The purpose of most of these raids is to gain evidence for drug prosecutions.

Would I want a crack house next door gone? Certainly.

Even better I would rather it never existed by decriminalizing what people choose to do to themselves and thereby removing the profit margin which has created the drug trade, violence which accompanies it, prison overcrowding (see CA being forced to release tens of thousands by SCOTUS decision), and the whole nonsensical war on drugs with no knock warrants, widespread expansion of tactical teams in local police forces, expansion of Federal police forces, and misappropriation of said police resources for drugs when we should be concerned about borders and terrorists.
 
Musketeer... Decriminalizing "hard" drugs such as cocaine/crack, meth or heroin will not significantly reduce the retail value.

Once it is legal, the "makers" will be required to meet stringent regulations. Once lantern fuel is banned and they must use more expensive ingredients and processes... the money is a "wash"...

Brent
 
Hogdogs,

We will have to agree to disagree. History I believe supports my view as prohibition shows. Making it legal may not in the long run drop the price to the user but it will reduce the profitability to the criminals and with that reduce the violent crime which accompanies it.
 
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