Average Joe
Just A Everyday Joe
2A Bourbon Hound 2024
2A Bourbon Hound OG
Benefactor
Life Member
Supporting Member
Multi-Factor Enabled
That’s a good example of an LE doing what they shouldn’t have done. You would be surprised by many who didn’t know that they cannot legally take possession of your hand gun if you have a permit and gave notice that you are armed, which is required by law. But we have done it to ourselves. In NC you must go to school longer to get a license to cut hair than you do to be a LEO.I was 23 years old and had just moved back to Chatham County from points abroad.
Borrowed my dad's little single cab Nissan truck and proceeded to load about 18 of my firearms into the cab. Some in soft cases, some in hard cases, and some in blankets or nothing at all. This was a Friday evening and a couple friends were coming over Saturday to my place on the other side of the county to shoot.
Went to our church in Siler City and hung out until 11pm or so. They were having a "young adult" lock-in or some such. Was dating the girl who I married later and she was gonna stay overnight with some of the younger ones.
I got pulled by Siler City PD about 11:20-ish on the edge of town heading home. Turns out my dad's tags had expired 3 months prior. I never thought to look. I don't recall him asking nor do I know if expired tags are PC. Regardless he laid a blanket on the hood of his car and proceeded to run all 18. I did give him a heads up that the Norinco 1911 serial # would come back hot but to a Ruger 44 Magnum which it obviously was not (back then we'd just call the non-emergency # for dispatch even as "civilians" and get em to run the # before we bought used guns). He just looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language and didn't acknowledge anything I said. That was about par for the course back then for Siler. No idea if it's changed or not.
The folks inside the Country Store must have wondered what was going on. It was quite a spread on the blanket. MAK-90 or two, AR or three, M1 Carbine, HK-91, SKS, a couple shotguns, and several semi-auto handguns.
Stop took about 30 minutes from start to finish. We put all the guns back in my truck. I got a ticket for expired tags. My dad got them renewed. I showed up to court with proof and it was dropped but I paid court costs.
Fast forward 18 years later to 2017. I was leaving work at Ed's Gun Shop headed home. I was just outside Vass city limits headed North towards Carthage. Female in a S10-Blazer coming from opposite direction was either high on meth or drunk or on phone. I saw her coming into my lane a good ways off. By the time we met I had all 4 tires of my Pathfinder in the grass at about 40 mph and her mirror still raked down the side of my vehicle. She kept going of course. Major who said he was a pilot stopped behind me and said he couldn't believe that I was able to avoid the collision.
I called the 911. Seems they was a bit of an issue that I was only a couple hundred yards out of town limits. So they had to get the highway patrol. I really REALLY didn't give a crap about filing a report or whose jurisdiction it was. She was obviously in the town limits by the time I called and I was just hoping they could catch her before she killed somebody. Wasn't high on their list of priorities though.
So since he'd already been dispatched I waited a good 15 minutes until trooper got there.
I informed upon arrival. I was out of vehicle so I only informed as to what was on my person. (Had many many more in vehicle)
He took my EDC for "officer safety" but immediately went back to car and ran it. So he was gone for another 5 minutes or so and we hadn't even talked yet about what happened and why I called. He expressly did not ask my permission to run the numbers.
By the time he came back it'd been a good 20 minutes since the incident. I was pretty hot under the collar. Gave a brief description of incident and collected my J-Frame with the ever requisite loose ammo that seems to go hand in hand with cops that are non-gun people. Sure enough, he sounded like a transplant from the Bronx. Only irritating interaction I've ever had with a trooper.
So unless one or both of those stories are situations that presented probable cause (which wasn't articulated to me in either incident) then I guess I've had them ran twice without consent.
But, I've been through many a roadblock and been pulled when I was younger where the LEO didn't want to touch the gun/s and we were both fine with that.
Incidentally that expired tag ticket was the last ticket I ever got. And that was 1998.