Not surprisingly, Biden wants the Supreme Court to also overstep its boundaries with law abiding citizens, the court seemed skeptical of the government arguing that “community caretaking” exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement should be expanded to allow police to seize guns without a warrant into people’s homes.
After the tragic shooting in Colorado, Biden and the rest of congressional Democrats wasted no time politicizing the shooting as they called for more aggressive infringements on the Second Amendment, including controversial “red flag” laws that exist in states like New York, which allows gun seizures from law-abiding gun owners with limited due process..
In this case, Biden is arguing that government should have more power to seize guns from law-abiding citizens, telling the Supreme Court that police should be allowed to enter homes without a warrant to seize handguns.
The case, Caniglia v. Storm, court file 20-157, is on appeal from the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals. Oral arguments on March 24 lasted 102 minutes, exceeding the allotted 60 minutes.
Police generally cannot conduct searches of private property without informed consent or a warrant.
In Cady v. Dombrowski (1973) the Supreme Court held that police may conduct warrantless searches related to “community caretaking functions,” but only for “vehicle accidents.”
Edward Caniglia has no criminal history and no record of violence. He had been married for 22 years when, on Aug. 20, 2015, he and his wife had a disagreement inside their Cranston, Rhode Island, home.
The argument escalated. He pulled and unload gun from his waste, placed it on the table and said, “Why don’t you just shoot me and get me out of my misery?”
She then spent the night at a motel. She tired to call him, and she became concerned when he wouldn’t pick up the phone. She told the police her husband might be suicidal and asked them to conduct a welfare check.
The police called the husband, whom they said “sounded fine.” He told police his “just shoot me” comment happened because he “couldn’t take it anymore.”
The husband went to a local hospital briefly after police assured him that they would not take his two handguns. After he left, they seized his guns without a warrant, telling his wife his life and others could be in danger if they left the guns in the house.
The husband later sued, but the district and appeals courts allowed the search under the community caretaking exception. The husband argued before the Supreme Court that the exception shouldn’t be applied inside “the home-the most protected of all private spaces.”
Biden has also not ruled out using executive action to enact his radical gun control proposals.
Discussion about this post