Quote of the day—Joe Waldron

The Washington State Patrol is back-pedaling swiftly after firearms dealers, the gun owning public — and nearly three dozen state legislators, led by Rep. Matt Shea (R-4) — raised the alarm over the WSP letter to firearms dealers seeking broad information about the sale or acquisition of AR-15s (and clones) and AR-15 lower receivers a week ago. It seems there may be ONE RIFLE missing, possibly from the State Patrol inventory. Rather than work with the BATFE, who has jurisdiction over federal firearm licensees, they decided to keep it in-house — except for their clumsy outreach to more than 1,000 licensed Washington firearm dealers! The Patrol still seeks cooperation and information from dealers (legitimately so, in my opinion), but acknowledges it has no authority to ask for the records.

As I opined last week, it’s more a case of overzealousness on the part of the WSP’s investigative division and a lack of understanding of federal laws regulating firearm dealers and insensitivity to the privacy concerns of gun owners. No nefarious schemes to create an AR-15 registry in the Evergreen State — for now.

Joe Waldron
March 25, 2011
GOAL Post 2011-12
[This is in regard to the letter to all the gun dealers in the state of Washington that I told you about earlier.

I agree with Waldron. Sometimes people do stupid insensitive stuff without realizing it. Give the WSP a break this time but watch for signs they are unrepentant.—Joe]

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8 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Joe Waldron

  1. I agree there was no hidden agenda but the story points out, as I wrote today on my blog, the need for licensing all gun owners and registering all guns. This information should be already in the possession of the police.

  2. The government has no more legal authority to license and register gun owners and guns than they do Muslims and Korans or Jews and Torahs.

    And has been shown before such actions have no societal benefits.

    And most importantly, even if they tried, it wouldn’t happen in my lifetime.

  3. Then why didn’t they just send an inquiry about the lost gun, rather than requesting such wholesale information?

  4. My guess is they were trying to disguise the fact that they screwed up, or they somehow never got around to logging the serial number.

  5. mike supports his usual vapid arguments by assuming that the police had a good reason for the letter. But he can’t even invent one. There certainly is no reason to assume good faith – we don’t do that as a matter of policy with police actions. That’s why we have the Fourth Amendment and its derivative precedents.

  6. This information should be already in the possession of the police.

    No, it should not.

    Hey, if you can make unilateral pronouncements and treat them as Something Society Should Do, so can we!

  7. Ooo, can I play too?

    The names, addresses and phone numbers on anyone who donates or otherwise supports the Brady Campaign, MAIG or other gun control groups should be in the hands of the police, also the police should have the right to search their homes and businesses without a warrant. After all, as these are “hate groups” who are interested in denying broad swaths of people their constitutional rights, they should be under at least as much scrutiny as the KKK, right?

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