There's been a SWAT raid in Toronto over a gun scare, and designer Jeremy Bell was temporarily held at gunpoint. Per the Toronto Sun:
The partner at digital marketing company Teehan+Lax was surrounded by heavily armed tactical officers, cuffed and held against the wall of his Richmond St. W. office -- until, that is, the cops found the gun he had been holding in front of the window about 90 minutes earlier was a pile of blocks.
The BrickGun Semi-Automatic gun (purchased online from BrickGun, "designers and builders of the world's most realistic custom Lego weapon models") arrived at Bell's office Wednesday.
Here is Bell's account of what happened. You get some idea of the level of response the report of a man with a gun prompted, complete with air support:
A co-worker said she saw at least 6 SWAT, 2 uniformed officers, 2 undercover and a chopper in the air. I’ve since been told that the surrounding streets were blocked off with five cop cars in total, two ambulances, and a dozen cops all taking positions of cover around the office.
Between the response and the reactions, including by Bell himself, we're left with the feeling that it's all understandable, that the citizen is the one who should be sheepish, that the neighbor who reported things was doing his civic duty, and that the police responded in a reasonable and better-safe-than sorry manner.
After all, we're talking Canada here, where seeing a citizen with a handgun--especially in Toronto--is deemed a shocking (and generally illegal) sight. Still, there are plenty of examples we could point to here in the land of the Second Amendment where our countrymen would react with equal panic, and our police with an equally forceful response.
Yet add the magical trappings of a government-issued uniform with a badge amulet, and seeing an accompanying weapon on a fellow human is accepted as the natural order of things...this despite the fact that the very document used to found our system of self government explicitly proclaims "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
We have much work to do to dispel the powerful illusion cast by state authoritarians, by citizen disarmament proponents, and by their media allies that police are the only ones who can be trusted with guns.
Comments
Rather displays their fear of and contempt for citizens, doesn't it? I do hope the Legoman offered them a suggestion about incontinence diapers.
We have become a nation of weak-kneed, sissy snitches...
Yet, what is the reaction when a real act of aggression is in progress? It is safer to attack a peaceable person with a gun, even a real one, than a person intent on causing harm. The badged cowards know it so they show up at the safer scene to be seen as "doing something" to "earn" their paychecks of stolen money.
We can kvetch about how bad things are in Canada, but at least notice that this guy was in and out of trouble within about a half hour. Meanwhile, let's recall that earlier this year a clean-cut ROTC student was arrested in "gun-friendly" Arizona for taking a conditioning hike in a wilderness park in camos with an Airsoft (toy) rifle, was arrested, charged with disorderly conduct, and the police kept him hanging for ten days before dismissing. The guns may be realer in the USA, but the badges are heavier too.
The saddest thing of all about this story is the nonchalance(as reported anyway) with which the suspected gun-toting maniac accepted his fate. As if many heavily armed stormtroopers rounding him up for an imagined crime wasn't anything out-of-the-ordinary... Yeah it's all good, until someone gets trigger-happy anyway. I hope -for the sake of this city- that a catalyst will some day shift the culture away from nihilism, unrealistic idealism and submissive acceptance.
I hope they had enough help. Since it was in Canada at least no innocent people or animals got shot. That's usually what happens in this country.
I'm quite sure that every cop involved didn't think they had enough help. But it is my understanding that all of Canada's strike aircraft were unavailable. I'm surprised they didn't wait for them.
Okay, let me see if I have this right. Some young guy looks into his neighbor's window, sees him sitting at his desk assembling something that looks like a handgun, goes spastic and calls the police? The man isn't acting in a threatening manner, he's just sitting there fiddling with it!?! Jeebus, have people in Toronto gone that far off the deep end? Last I heard, handguns aren't illegal in Canada, just highly restricted. The mere sight of one inside one's home or office should not create such panic. Lord help him if he glanced in my window while I'm practicing dry fire drills, he'd have a heart attack! I don't blame the cops as much as I do the hysterical nosy neighbor who started the whole event. What a brainwashed serf!
Canada laws are a total joke.
Only a government that fears it's people, for reason fears it's citizens. It reminds me far too much of Communism ! I see no freedom in Canada.
None at all.
"the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
You left out the first part of the quote. You could also say the constitution says "To keep and bear arms shall not be."
Each side of the Second Amendment debate likes ONE CLAUSE of the Amendment, but no one seems to want to consider the whole thing. For the record:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
In U.S. v. Miller, the Supreme Court held that the "Second Amendment guarantees no right to keep and bear a firearm that does not have 'some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.'"
However, the right to keep & bear arms is still a broad one. In 1943's Cases v. United States, the courts held that: "Apparently, then, under the Second Amendment, the federal government can limit the keeping and bearing of arms by a single individual as well as by a group of individuals, but it cannot prohibit the possession or use of any weapon which has any reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia."
Not so simpl
I left it out because that part wasn't relevant to this story, Ben. I have written about that part many times when it has been. We understand the militia aspect here. Evidently you do not if you're trying to pull that old Brady talking point--that individual gun rights do not exist, and that 2A centers on being part of the militia, now the National Guard--which, by the way, even they don't use any more after Heller.
Comments here need to focus on the Lego story. No off topic thread hijacking.
Steve B.
Heller is the most up to date supreme court decision and it addressed the meaning of the prefatory clause. The Prefatory clause states one of the reasons for protecting the right to keep and bear arms but does not limit it in any way. I am perfectly comfortable with both clauses of the 2A.
Steve, you left out D.C. v. Heller, which says the Second Amendment refers to a pre-existing right of individuals to arm themselves for self-defense. That decision last year if the basis for current Second Aendment law. The Supremes found that the reference to a militia did not diminish the individual right self-defense. (Miller was a Prohibition Era ruling in which a couple of bank robbers were challenging charges of possessing a sawed-off shotgun, which is why the ruling dwelt on militia matters.)
The response was perfectly reasonable if a handgun is a murder waiting to happen. It is troubling, though, just how carelessly the government hands out guns to government employees (you wouldn't believe the sort of people Michael Bloomberg gives guns to!) even as it puts the most draconian restrictions it can get away with on private citizens.
Read a piece about this earlier. You had the neighbor with the PC-approved "I don't like guns, so you shouldn't have one" attitude combined with "A GUN!! He must be going to do something bad!" fear. Add to that what can only be described as an overreaction by the cops, and you have a flat wonderful mess.
Tim, you say "The response was perfectly reasonable if a handgun is a murder waiting to happen." That's exactly the attitude trained into those people, and this is the kind of crap it causes.
leftism is a mental disorder, example #5,000,002: just seeing a free human carrying a tool of self defense is excuse enough to have that man thrown in a gulag for the rest of their life
David, one nit to pick in your response to to Steve Brack. The militia is not now the National Guard. The people's militia is the unorganized militia formed up in times of need and is charged with functioning properly through voluntary training and familiarity with arms supplied by each individual member, and is not affected by the organized militia, the National Guard, whose institution did not occur until 105 after the ratification of the Constitution. Other than that, right on.
The whole militia thisn is stupid anyway. "States Rights" is a misnomer the founders knew better about.
States have powers, not rights. Only individuals have rights.
And the Militia Act of 1903 definse the organized and unorganized militia.
Ben, if you are older than 18 and younger than 45, and a non-felonious citizen of the United States, you are a member of the Militia whether you know it or not.
I will also add that when I was a Sergeant in the Army Nationl Guard, my uniform said "US Army" on it, not "State Militia". 95+% of our funds came from the fedgov.
Straightarrow, I know that and have written on it, including about how the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the United States Senate Ninety-Seventh Congress wrote:
"Congress has established the present National Guard under its own power to raise armies, expressly stating that it was not doing so under its power to organize and arm the militia."
I was paraphrasing the anti's argument, not mine.
And now back to the Lego story...
"..6 SWAT, 2 uniformed officers, 2 undercover and a chopper in the air. I’ve since been told that the surrounding streets were blocked off with five cop cars in total, two ambulances, and a dozen cops all taking positions of cover around the office."
So, how much did this all cost?
That would be an interesting project for a college statitician or law student or heck...an aspiring journalist. I bet even Canadians would be miffed to discover how much of their money was wasted on just one gun-phobic incident.
How many organic-hemp-based sustainable windmills could have been subsidized with the wasted money? snicker
The good folks of Toronto would have a COW if they saw me doing my frequent dry fire exercises, or cleaning all my guns each month. Thank God I live in Wyoming, where such things are considered normal human activity.
From my cold, dead hands you liberal bastards.
From Jeremy Bell's account- "I can’t imagine what would have happened had I walked out there, but apparently they grabbed another guy who was exiting the building, cuffed him and threw him against the police van. I hope he’s ok… I feel horrible.
Thankfully that’s all that happened… no shots fired."
What happens if the police did shoot someone? Would they be held accountable? Probably not.
From Toronto Star- "The neighbor who called the cops tweeted an apology to Bell on Twitter and posted a note in his apartment window, Bell said.
"He's like, 'Sorry, dude, it looked real,' " Bell said.
Coward. How about meeting the guy face to face and apologizing for almost getting two law abiding people arrested or killed?
If this is the typical yellow bellied, conniving society that Canadians live in where neighbor conspires against neighbor to be "good citizens of the state" whatever the cost, if it looks like, feels like, and acts like the Gestapo, it's the Gestapo.
I'm in favor of arming the populace and disarming the government.
Police officers should not have guns.
Mr. Brack needs to get a refresher course on case law involving the 2nd Amendment. Heller clearly states that the "right to keep and bear arms" is an individual right. It's the new measure.
Gary, Tenzen: As sad as you describe, Canadian gun laws are totally out of wack with reality as you know it in the good old USA. I cannot, nor will not, defend or make excuses for Toronto. There is no city in all of North America more disfunctional on all levels than that one. Even S.F or L.A don't even come close.
I'm a proud gun owner from Canada. I am not alone. I believe that the 2nd amendment should be applied to all people on planet earth. All Americans should be very proud of the 2nd. You should also be equally proud of the entire Constitution of the United States. There are many of us who are envious of that document. This proud Canadian is one of them.
The knee-jerk, statist promoting "reporter" states, as if it is fact: "Now if this incident seems like a bit of an overreaction it is not - in fact Toronto police say they've got good reason to take all gun calls seriously."
Of course they say that. What else would they say? Canadians are apparently happy with asking their betters in government for whatever crumbs of privileges they are permitted by their masters.
No doubt they'll outlaw Lego toys next. Can't let the natives go about soiling themselves with fright while peering through their neighbor's windows.
"Officer - I see a guy assembling a toy gun next door. Call out SWAT!!! Help!
Hello!!
Excuse me but last I checked Toronto was part of Canada. NOT the US. So why do you, the author, confuse "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.", a component of the US 2nd Amend. with any possible connection to Canadian law?
I am a gun owner. But the author of this piece needs to get their facts straight. Next thing you know you will be stating that Canadian Human Rights Commissions are operating in Seattle.
John McC: Trust me, there are many denizens of Seattle, Portland, Eugene, San Fransisco, etc. who would very much like the "Canadian Human Rights Commissions" to operate in the US. And the UN to control the "Right to Self-Defense".
JohnMc, this does not say what you say it says.
David I understand this is an over reaction created by an overzealous antigun agenda by Big (global) government
But the question that doesn’t seemed to be asked is why?
The Elite wants and needs to disarm the people so by criminalizing the idea of gun ownership the Elite through their media are changing the culture.
The Elite have created a snitch culture that as allowed the anti-gun movement to create a quasi license to destroy the culture.
I also blame the NRA for their support of the 1968 GCA that stopped the mail order purchase of firearms.
Women bought guns routinely for their husbands and sons but now thanks to the NRA; women have largely stopped the practice.
Any lies and distortions by the elite takes idiots in the public to sheepishly accept it as truth.
The citizen who sees a law abiding man or woman walking down the street who happens to have on their person a defensive weapon and jumps to the conclusion that they are up to no good, are totally ignorant. A criminal, intending to do harm, does not broadcast their intention by showing their weapon.
I cannot believe no one has simply pointed out the fundamental truth....
When LEGOs are outlawed......
Got something to say?
Examiner.com is looking for writers, photographers, and videographers to join the fastest growing group of local insiders. If you are interested in growing your online rep apply to be an Examiner today!