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Unabashed Statist coercion has become the norm for law enforcement in America

My liberal and progressive friends often show cyber-smirks when I talk about coercive taxation or government intimidation. It occasionally feels like we live in completely different worlds.

So maybe this will help them probe what has heretofore been invisible.

Consider two favorite issues for Statists: mandatory seatbelt laws and restrictions on the private transfer of firearms.

I'm not going to discuss the laws themselves, because that's usually a waste of breath. Either you understand the issues of personal liberty or 2nd Amendment rights, or you don't. What I want to do instead is discuss the overt tactics of intimidation and fear being used to make people toe the line.

Case One: Click It or Ticket

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is in the process of spending its $7,500,000--that's $7.5 million--advertising budget on this campaign to get drivers to buckle up.

The precis on the NHTSA website makes it clear that this is consciously intended as a coercive campaign--conform or we will take your money--with very little or no emphasis on trying to convince people in a rational manner that wearing seatbelts is a good thing:

The cornerstone of NHTSA's seat belt communications program is the national Click It or Ticket May Mobilization. The primary audience continues to be men ages 18 to 34, which research shows are less likely to wear seat belts.

Day and Night, Cops are Cracking Down

Every year during this holiday period, law enforcement agencies join forces day and night, from coast-to-coast, for an enforcement blitz that delivers on our message “Click It or Ticket". The mobilization is supported by national and local paid advertising and earned media campaigns aimed at raising awareness before the blitz that ... Day or Night - Buckle Up or Pay Up.


The section on enforcement strategies makes several points clear:


1) Millions of dollars in NHTSA grants is being expended not to assist local law enforcement in fighting crime, but in paying for overtime and equipment to conduct nightly seatbelt check points.

2) The people organizing these events are quite conscious that they are walking a fine line between intimidation and outrage:

In at least two programs, nighttime vision goggles have been employed. Due to the adverse public reaction to the use of these devices experienced in one of these programs, use of nighttime vision devices such as goggles or scopes is not recommended.


The NHTSA also thoughtfully provides sample op-ed pieces to be submitted to local media over the signatures of cops apparently too tongue-tied to write their own copy, which conclude:

While seat belts have been proven to save lives, too many people still need a tough reminder to buckle up. Law enforcement is all too aware of the risks and will be out in full force buckling down on those who fail to buckle up. Wearing your seat belt costs you nothing, but the costs of NOT wearing one may be a ticket, or worse — your life. So please remember to always buckle up, both day and night. Don’t become a statistic: Click It or Ticket!


Here's the Statist/bureaucratic thought process (if such random synaptic activity can legitimately be characterized as thought):

1. We come up with a great idea of what people should do.
2 Because people are too stupid to do what's good for them, we make it illegal not to do it.
3. We stop emphasizing making rational choices and go for intimidation and coercion.
4. We look for other areas of their lives they obviously need help with.

(While I'm focusing here on the attitude of coercion, it doesn't hurt to note that the $7.5 million advertising budget for Click It or Ticket is only a fraction of the $125.4 million expended on the grants allowing local law enforcement to run those seatbelt check points. Curiously, I cannot find out what the locals do with all those fines.)

Case Two: Private gun transfers in Pennsylvania.

I heard this one over the radio, pimping Guntransfer.org.

Here's the text:

It's a scenario that plays out all too often in Philadelphia:

A widow begins the sad process of going through her husband's belongings--giving away clothes, sorting through paperwork, cleaning out tools--and she comes across his guns. He kept a handgun in the house for protection. She wants it gone. A family friend offers to take it, and she happily agrees. No paperwork filed. No legal transfer takes place. It ends up on the street. The handgun is used in a fatal shooting, and it is traced back to her. Can she be arrested for illegally transferring a firearm? Pennsylvania law says, yes.

Transferring gun ownership is a simple process, but one that many people overlook. If you give or sell a handgun to someone, you must legally transfer ownership from yourself to the new owner. Pennsylvania law requires it. Without the legal transfer any crime committed wtih a gun that you gave or sold to someone can and will be traced back to you. You can be prosecuted and face legal consequences. That's not a risk worth taking.


This is not only coercive and intimidating (take that, you thoughtless widows!), but misleading as to the actual requirements of the law, as Dave Markowitz of The Firing Line points out:

This morning, I caught a commercial on WMMR promoting an apparently-new website, www.guntransfer.org. I thought to myself, "Cool, someone is running an ad for FFL transfer services on 'MMR!" Such services are often used by gunnies purchasing firearms from out-of-state, since such transfers must go through a licensee per Federal law. When I checked it after getting into the office I was disgusted to find that it's a site to promote transfer of guns through licensed dealers, as opposed to private party sales. The whois data shows the registrant for the domain as Commonwealth Media Services, which is a state entity.

What I find troubling about it is that it promotes transfers through FFLs, and makes it seem that any face-to-face private sale is illegal in PA. That is not the case. Private transfers of rifles and shotguns between PA residents is perfectly legal, only handgun sales, NFA transfers, and transactions with out of state residents must go through an FFL. The only reference to private rifle/shotgun sales being actually legal is buried on the Q&A page.

What makes this misleading is that in Pennsylvania, only "firearms" must be transferred through an FFL, per 18 Pa. Con. Stat. Sec. 6111. In PA, the definition of a firearm is this:

"Any pistol or revolver with a barrel length less than 15 inches, any shotgun with a barrel length less than 18 inches or any rifle with a barrel length less than 16 inches, or any pistol, revolver, rifle or shotgun with an overall length of less than 26 inches. The barrel length of a firearm shall be determined by measuring from the muzzle of the barrel to the face of the closed action, bolt or cylinder, whichever is applicable."

See 18 Pa. Consolidated Statutes Sec. 6102.

The statutory definition of firearms specifically does not include most guns which do not fall under the restrictions of the Federal National Firearms Act of 1934. In other words, the vast majority of rifles and shotguns in private possession are not "firearms" for the purpose of this law. For example, the hypothetical hunting rifle and shotgun described on guntransfer.org's Home page generally do not meet the legal definition of a "firearm" in Pennsylvania.

So why the dissimulation?

Guntransfer.org clearly reflects the Philly-centric antigun bias. By fooling people into thinking that private party transfers of any gun are illegal in PA, they are looking to create a paper trail. All gun transfers which go through a licensed dealer first require the transferee to pass a background check conducted in Harrisburg by the Pennsylvania State Police. As you may be aware, a few years ago they were sued for creating an illegal registry of gun owners. As it turned out, the State Police won their case when the court ruled that the records which they were compiling did not meet the statutory definition of an illegal database. Nevertheless, it is still a de facto database of gun owners in Pennsylvania. And we know that historically, gun registration has lead to confiscation in Germany, Britain, and closer to home in New York and New Jersey.

This stinks on ice and they need to be called on it.


That doesn't need much addition, except to point out that you have to pay a fee to the firearms dealer to give away your handgun, and Pennsylvania law permits them to charge anything they damn well please for this "service."

Here's the point: Even if I accept (for sake of argument) that our society needs laws to force people to wear seat belts and regulate private gun transfers, the methods by which the government pursues enforcement should be just as chilling to American citizens as the thought that Dubya and Dick Cheney are listening to your phone calls or reading your emails.

From an ethical standpoint, why is the Attorney General of PA misleading people about the details of the gun transfer law with scary anecdotes any different from Dubya and his cronies misleading people about terrorist threats?

Why is spending $125.4 million in taxpayer dollars justifiable to pursue a victimless "crime" at the expense of police time and effort that could actually be spent protecting people from murderers, rapists, and thieves?

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