You Must Not Keep Secrets From the Government
Posted by on Monday, February 27th, 2012An anonymous poster commented recently that laws that could potentially criminalize innocent people who commit a victimless “crime” are typically done to make law enforcement’s job easier. I would have to agree with that. It looks good for the local district attorney to have tons of convictions under his or her belt. One way to make sure this happens is to outlaw more things. So, then, even if they don’t link a certain gun to a certain crime, they can get some kind of a conviction when evidence is lacking for the more insidious charges that they would prefer.
Yesterday, I discussed how the state of Michigan is considering criminalizing the alteration of a toy gun to make it look like a real one. Mind you, this is proposed to be the law of the land whether the gun was used in a real crime or not. Today, I read that Ohio is considering outlawing secret compartments on your vehicle.
In their way of thinking, only a criminal (specifically a drug dealer) would have anything to hide. They can’t imagine a scenario where someone would want to have a secret compartment on their vehicle other than to shirk their war on drugs. Darn it. That’s where I planned to keep all of my replica peacemakers.
In all seriousness, a “secret compartment” is where some people keep a spare key to their house or car in case of being locked out. It would actually be a pretty wise move to keep your valuables in a compartment in the car so that they wouldn’t be obvious to a potential thief peering in your windows (we’ll assume your glove compartment is insufficient). However, these scenarios either escape the legislators’ attention or are seen as necessary casualties in the war on drugs.
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