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Originally Posted by Danke
If a weapon is un-attended on a counter you follow rule one; Treat every gun as if it were loaded.
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Of course. But you don't make a statement via a call to the police that there's a loaded gun on the counter. It's no different than calling in a bomb threat.
"There's a bomb in your house"
"Really?"
"Oh yes. I saw it".
"You saw a bomb?"
"Well...no"
"Well, how do you know there's a bomb in my house?"
"How do I know there isn't?!?"
*police knocking on door*
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Obviously the article has some holes that will most likely never be fleshed out. Even though the general public is not in the know on firearms I'd guess that call was made to the police as a result of a conflict with the tenant. Since none of us were there we can't say for sure what went down but the most logical step would be that this was not a call made for the good of the community but a stab in the back. Maybe deserved, maybe not.
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Then the individual who made the call should be charged for Mischief.
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Once the police were there and had verified it was only a toy they would have quizzed the tenant somewhat along these lines. Why do you have that? No reason. What are you going to do with it? Nothing, it's just there. After that type of exchange they'd have suggested that they take it along to prevent another false alarm.
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The false alarm shouldn't have happened in the first place. There's no grounds to seize an item that is not illegal, where no crime was committed.
If your fire alarm goes off and the fire department shows up, they don't take away your smoke detector to prevent false alarms.
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I don't think the point of this thread should be to discuss the right and wrong of the police or society's phobia of weapons. There's thread after thread of that already on here.
I think we should keep this on topic of reasonable steps that members here can take to store and transport their gear so they are not on the receiving end of a situation like this.
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I think the point of this thread is to illustrate how easy it is to have your rights abused simply because somebody tells the police you have an object in your house.
In my experience, "Reasonable Probably Grounds" needs a little more backing than a call from a technician who claims he saw something in your residence, particularly where the item seen, in and of itself, is not illegal to own. I suppose they checked the registry, saw that there was no record of restricted firearms at the residence and the homeowner has no valid RPAL, and raided the place based on that.
Pretty pitiful.