Black-Clad Einsatzgruppen Confiscate Guns in California

Einsatzgruppen are special paramilitary task forces, the most notorious of which were the death squads deployed by Germany’s National Socialist regime. The contemporary American soyuz is lousy with einsatzgruppen, some of which — such as the Pima County, Arizona SWAT team, which murdered Jose Guerena in his Tucson home – behave in a fashion almost indistinguishable from their German antecedents.

The State of California’s Armed Prohibited Persons System (APPS) has created an einsatzgruppe dedicated exclusively to gun confiscation. Using gun registration lists, the APPS stormtroopers, “arriving in SUVs and dressed in black tactical uniforms … regularly sweep through California cities” to seize firearms from people the state has designated “prohibited persons,” reports the Fresno Bee. A criminal conviction is not necessary for enrollment on the civilian disarmament register; all that is necessary is an official finding by the state’s Welfare bureaucracy that the gun owner is “a danger to himself or others.”

The searches are conducted without warrants — unless the targeted individuals refuse to cooperate, in which case the raiders will “seek a warrant and lock down the house until they get results.” California Governor Jerry Brown recently signed a bill that will use a $24 million surplus from firearms purchase fees to hire 36 new jackboots for the squad.

So far, California is the only state to deploy a dedicated gun confiscation team — but it isn’t the only one to engage in pre-emptive civilian disarmament. In 1999, the Connecticut legislature enacted a measure permitting police to confiscate firearms from any individual believed to pose “a risk of imminent personal injury to himself … or to other individuals.” All that is necessary for the seizure to occur is a sworn complaint “by any state’s attorney or assistant state’s attorney or by any two police officers to any judge of the Superior Court.” The confiscated firearms can be held for up to a year, without any criminal charges or civil action being taken against their owner. Thousands of firearms have been seized under that provision, which famously did not prevent the Sandy Hook Massacre.

In the People’s Republic of Massachusetts, police and prosecutors didn’t even bother pretending that they were enforcing a law permitting the pre-emptive disarmament of Gregory Girard, a resident of Manchester-by-the-Sea, after his estranged wife — who apparently is a temporally displaced subject of East Germany — called health and welfare officials to report that her husband held eccentric political views. Specifically, Mr. Girard believed that martial law, complete with gun confiscation, is imminent. Since it is impermissible for people to believe that government agents will carry out paramilitary raids to confiscate firearms, a paramilitary squad was sent to Girard’s home to confiscate his firearms.

California’s roving gun confiscation squad will be the template from which numerous anti-gun einsatzgruppen will be struck.