Tuesday, May 18, 2021

Good overview of SCOTUS' decision on warrantless searches

Lawrence has a long but info-rich post about the Supreme Court's unanimous decision that the local Po-Po can't just grab your guns without a warrant.  This seems a good summary:

In some ways this was a very narrowly tailored opinion, in that the Second Amendment was not invoked at all, only the Fourth. And indeed, Justice Samuel Alito’ concurring opinion specifically states that “Our decision today does not address those issues” in relation to the constitutionality of red flag laws. However, the decision was a blow for individual rights against warrentless police seizures in the home. Also, by explicitly including guns as property that is equally protected from such warrentless seizures, the Supreme Court has properly supported Second Amendment rights against the state’s overreach.

Now if they could do something about civil asset forfeitures…

Yup.

6 comments:

Old NFO said...

Good news FINALLY!!! And one small step in the right direction.

Wayne said...

Former New Mexico governor Susanna Martinez signed the nation's first law banning civil asset forfeitures in the absence of a criminal conviction. Albuquerque PD responded by bringing in the feds to seize the assets under feral gov law with the local yokels getting a cut.

Maniac said...

And it looks like they may be taking another look at Roe V. Wade.

Maybe I threw in the towel too early.

Jonathan H said...

A SMALL step, but one none the less. What I think is more important is that it was 9 to 0, not 5 to 4.
While I'm not a lawyer, I THINK this applies to pretty much anything in the home, not just guns - it appears that it should help with valuables as well.
Civil Asset forfeiture kicks in when someone is accused of a crime, but there are other searches and confiscations that happen without an accusation of a crime and this will help with those.

Lawrence Person said...

Thanks for the link! Though that post didn't strike me as particularly long.

Now April's Texas vs. California update, that was long...

danielbarger said...

The SCOTUS has a history of rendering rulings that are worded to be as narrow as possible. The court simply refuses to actually stand up and support our rights unless they simply CANNOT find a way to weasel out of doing so. And even then they do as much as possible to refrain from supporting them beyond the minimal amount required by the case before them.