Beloit Police Ask Residents To Volunteer To Have Their Homes Searched For Guns

There have been seven gun homicides in Beloit this year. Four of the victims were teenagers or young men in their 20s — like Melisha Holloway's 20-year-old son Raymond, who was killed in April. Holloway said too many young men have given up on school.

“Pretty much all those kids and young men just need to be is educated,” said Holloway. “You have a lot of them that barely read at a fifth-grade level yet they're 25 year-old-men. But they know how to work a gun. There's something wrong with that picture."

Well there you have it. They acknowledge there is a serious problem with the education system. But instead, they tackle a theorized result of the problem instead of the problem itself. Do they really think removing guns will make their young men better educated?

This city has 36-37,000 people. There should be enough intelligent people to solve this in a population this size. Should being the relative word.

But here's the *secret* message:

Jacobs said he hopes some searches will result in the discovery of guns they didn't know were in their own homes. He said that there’s also a chance they’ll find guns linked to crimes.

“That's really what we're looking for,” he said. “Maybe we'll find a toy gun that's been altered by a youngster in the house — and we know the tragedies that can occur there on occasion.”

He nevertheless hopes the program will encourage people to think about gun violence as an infectious disease like Ebola, and a home inspection like a vaccine to help build up the city's immune system.

Right except I can't use Ebola version .357 to stop someone from raping/murdering my wife & children.....


Ruger version .357 seems to do the trick though....

Anyone who thinks a home inspection can be equated with a drug vaccine obviously doesn't know much about modern big pharma.

So long as they just want my guns & not my drugs....

a reply to: Domo1

Funny,

Please give us permission to search your home, go through all your stuff, so we can find something to prosecute you for!

If we cannot find anything, maybe a baggie of powder "might get dropped" in a drawer and our 2nd officer with the camera will suddenly "find" this baggie in the drawer.

Oh Look what we found!

The one thing I miss about living in the U.S. is that I owned a few guns. Though, after living here in Japan for a few years I do see the value in strict gun laws. I can walk through most places I frequent without fear of being shot by a mugger, or raped at gunpoint.

I also see many people say "If you ban guns only criminals will have guns". Well, here in the JP, VERY few criminals have guns. They are exceedingly difficult to obtain. The only armed people I see are police officers.

I do miss my firearms, but I also don't worry about some home invader coming in and killing me either.

Your mileage, of course, may vary.

I've got an even BETTER idea! Let's have groups of citizens do inspections on police officers' houses! We can start with Junior's locker at high school, go through Dad's locker at the station and the gym for those pesky steroids, and then we can look around the precinct and the individual officers' houses for stuff that made its way home from the evidence room, or maybe was confiscated from some criminal and re-housed right in the officers' pockets!

You never know when some sidearm, the odd few thousand bucks, drugs or steroids might accidentally show up at Officer Friendly's, and since we KNOW the fine Hero would never want that to be in his possession, we can just take anything like that away, no harm, no foul, right?

a reply to: ScientificRailgun

Big difference. Japan has a unified culture and hasn't been Balkanized. A unified society.

Japan is also an island. They actually inspect inbound shipping containers and can generally control contraband allot better than the US.

The U.S. is not an island and cannot even control it's own border. With 100 million guns already here along with absolutely no border control and spotty inbound inspections of cargo, there is absolutely no way that our large criminal element cannot get weapons.

Any gun control here under these conditions simply mean the criminals have weapons and the citizens do not. Look at Mexico, that is exactly what this would turn into.

Let's begin to talk about gun control once we ensure that Drugs and people cannot illegally get into this country... LOL, not going to happen.

If I lived in Japan, I would not worry as much either. But I live here, half our population could be guests on Jerry Springer, we border a Narco State full of Gangs, We have large armed violent gangs and criminals here.

No way in hell I am not going to be armed under these circumstances.

a reply to: infolurker

Totally agreed on all of your points. The U.S. cannot magically strip all guns from their lands, and unlike JP, there's no feasible way to stop imports of arms by black market dealers and the like.

I know there's no way the U.S. can have gun laws like Japan's, I was only sharing my personal experience living somewhere, where strict gun laws have had a positive effect.

The U.S. is (maybe not so) surprisingly a rather violent nation in retrospect, but with no easy solutions in sight, keeping citizens armed is probably the best option right now.

a reply to: Domo1

This certainly doesn't make any legal or constitutional sense at all, but who is the moron who thinks this could possibly even be accomplished at all?

How long would it take to thoroughly search one home for a hidden gun and then leave the house in a livable condition? A day? Longer?

How many homes in a town of 35K or more people? Five to Ten thousand at least? How many cops can a small town police department spare to spend full time searching homes? Maybe 2 or 4 maximum?

Looks like a 2 – 10 year or more project and the cost?

Really!?

This has honestly got to be one of the dumbest endeavours ever undertaken by a police force. Not to mention completely unfeasible. I'm at a loss for words, the utter stupidity is appalling.

a reply to: Domo1Hi ATS, I just joined and will introduce myself in another post.

I am a resident of Beloit, and my jaw dropped when I read about this end run around the 4th Amendment in the local paper last week.

I've lived here my whole life, so let me give you some background about Beloit. This last summer has been the bloodiest in history-7 dead, mostly driveby type shootings. There are still almost daily reports of armed subjects (google the Rock County Scanner facebook page and look over the postings).

We have a booming gang problem and drug trade here. I've witnessed drug transactions on my own block, once while I was outside cooking dinner on the grill. This used to be a nice family neighborhood, but the crime is spreading across almost the whole city. Beloit has the 3rd highest unemployment rate in the state and the public high school is on the state watch list for performance. According to a Town of Beloit officer, the City of Beloit police department is understaffed and is having issues handling all their calls. But don't park too far from the curb downtown, they're aces at parking enforcement.

I'm keeping my eyes open for any news articles regarding the results of this little "program". No doubt, some people will fall for it, but I see no good coming out of this at all.

originally posted by: CagliostroTheGreat
This has honestly got to be one of the dumbest endeavours ever undertaken by a police force. Not to mention completely unfeasible. I'm at a loss for words, the utter stupidity is appalling.

Pretty much what I was going to post. They wanna "find" guns, then do a no questions asked gun buyback or drop off. Those are usually fairly successful, at least a lot more so than asking citizens to voluntarily submit to home searches would be anyway.

one day they asked to search our house

they asked to search our house again

then one day they didnt ask

I hope they are offering full immunity from prosecution for anything that they might find that is illegal,otherwise I don`t think they are going to get anyone to take them up on their offer.

I can`t imagine any scenario in which someone would call the police to "help" them find a "lost" gun in their own home.

" gee whizz I know that AR15 is around here somewhere but I just can`t seem to locate it, oh well, I`m too busy to look for it now so I guess I`ll just call the police and have them come and find it for me while I watch the packers game"

Beloit Police Ask Residents To Volunteer To Have Their Homes Searched For Guns

I would volunteer.

What if I call the Beloit police and volunteer my house to be searched, using a neighbor's name and address?

"Hello, Beloit Police? Hi, my name is BUSTER2010 would you please come look through my underwear drawer? Thanks".

Scary stuff to consider in the OP, something is not clicking in my brain when I read what was proposed by the Police.
I can't see the logic of any part of this plea the Police put out?

If you would love to have a complimentary search and seizure procedure initiated in your own home just move to High River located in Southern Alberta. Check out this crap..........
www.torontosun.com...

Indeed, new documents just uncovered by Young show that Mounties kept seizing guns up until July 10, nearly three full weeks after the flood and more than two weeks after the first evacuees had been given the all-clear to return to their homes. This information makes a mockery of the Mounties’ insistence that they only took firearms they encountered by coincidence. They claimed to take only those firearms they noticed “in plain sight” while they were in homes searching for survivors.

No need to ask permission and heads rolled and still are over this one.
I do believe this was Canada's first glimpse at a now militarized Police force and it did not go over well.

S&F for the great thread and find.

Regards, Iwinder

It's hard to find words for this.

Here's a fun game for the homeowners and handymen out there-
take a quick walk around your house, peek in drawers and on shelves and in closets- make note of all the things you find that you might not see on the set of a TV sitcom that takes place in an apartment.

Then think about all the ways in which those things you find could potentially be used to harm others intentionally.

I more or less stick to the laws and wouldn't wish harm on anyone who didn't deserve it- but only look at the items that match the above description and suddenly I look like I'm planning to level a city block, or perhaps kill everyone in a stadium.

Maybe they just want a list of everyone willing to be searched so they can get a list of everyone who isn't- and then make liberal use of sneak-and-peek warrants to find out why.

This is a sickening over-reach of government.
A hundred years ago if there were street thugs causing problems, everyday citizens would have shot them down.

It makes me sick to my stomach to look around and see what has happened to this once great nation.

a reply to: Cheddarhead

Hey welcome and thanks for telling us all that. Hope that town gets cleaned up for you guys.

originally posted by: Shamrock6


Pretty much what I was going to post. They wanna "find" guns, then do a no questions asked gun buyback or drop off. Those are usually fairly successful, at least a lot more so than asking citizens to voluntarily submit to home searches would be anyway.

yeah.
i would be very leary of letting the cops in my house to let them look around.
seems like they have something else going on.
to what you said though.

once a year my city does a 'guns for groceries' program...it is super successful every year.

it is no questions asked. you bring in a gun and get a gift card/voucher for groceries. it is the same amount for any gun. so make/model does not matter.
it truly is no questions asked....

then, my foundry melts them....i was working in the lab a couple years ago and my boss said come on, were going to the melt to watch the guns get melted.
no idea what he was talking about.

let me say that we all wear gray hard hats but new hires and guests wear red. so, we get to the deck and there are several cops up there with their red hats on and green melt coats over their uniform.

barrels full of guns getting dumped into the furnace.
it was pretty wild seeing that.

got me thinking about the wind mill or natural gas compressor that has firearms melted into it

pretty cool