-By Warner Todd Huston
Are you a blind person living in New Jersey? Well, according to your police there, they think because you are blind you shouldn’t be allowed to have your Constitutional right to bear arms. This is exactly what they told a Rockaway man over four years ago. But he’s had the last laugh.
Steven Hopler, 49, lost his sight in an accident but that never stopped him from his hobby of collecting and shooting firearms. Four years ago, however, he had an accident and shot himself in the leg. When police responded they decided he was “a danger” and confiscated his firearms without a court order or any legal standing.
It has taken him four years of legal battles, but he’s finally won. This month a court ordered the Rockaway police to return Mr. Hopler’s gun collection saying that his disability did not eliminate his Constitutional rights as prescribed in the Second Amendment.
Hopler celebrated his victory saying it wasn’t about “power,” it was about “freedom.”
Prosecutors have said they will not file any appeals.
Unfortunately, while this victory is sweet for lovers of freedom everywhere, it is too typical of the growing arrogance of our police forces across the country, those arms of the state that think they have the power to decide if you should be allowed to have any rights.
From arresting people because they are video recording them in public, to attaching tracking devices to citizen’s cars, to those odious random traffic stops without cause, police are becoming an oppressive force in America today, not enforcers of the law.
And as these “public servants” go about harassing citizens, heaping nuisance traffic fines on them to raise money for the government, they are allowing dug dealers to roam free and illegals to their law-breaking druthers.
This country is going in the wrong direction from top to bottom. We may be the last American generation that remembers freedom and liberty… especially if Democrats have any say in the matter.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.
He won….but it cost him thousands of dollars and years of his time.
That is not right.
He got his property back but they stuck it to him.