Greensburg Gun Confiscations

[Skinny Shooter]

http://cutim.com/greensburg-gun-confiscations/776

GREENSBURG GUN CONFISCATIONS
By Patricia A. Stoneking

I would like to start this report by noting that I have personally spoke with several sources who were directly involved in the incidents that I am about to report that took place in Greensburg, KS in the aftermath of the horrible CAT 5 tornado that ravaged and destroyed that town. I will not be divulging their names in this article as they have requested I not do so.

The first thing I would like for everyone to acknowledge is that the residents of Greensburg were forced to evacuate and that, in and of itself, was an illegal action as martial law had not been declared. There were many people who wanted to stay and they were threatened with arrest and forcible removal if they did not leave as ordered. The tornado happened at 9:46pm on Friday evening, May 4, 2007 and they were forced to leave within a couple hours of it, being given no time to collect themselves or assess the damages or even try to pick up anything such as guns and valuables. Ed Klummp, Police Chiefs Association, testified at the House committee hearing with a position opposing The Emergency Powers Act and said the evacuations were so they could search for bodies and shut off gas and power and that the evacuation was for the safety of the residents. I have been told by a reliable source that the electricity was shut off prior to the tornado striking and the gas was shut off within a few hours after. It would seem that the evacuation was not necessary in light of that information. Perhaps the position should have been that those who want to leave be provided a way to do so and those who wish to stay be allowed to stay.

This town was locked down tight for several days and no one was allowed in or out. The only people in that town during this time were Sheriffs Officers, Kansas Highway Patrol Officers, ATF, FEMA, National Guard, Police Officers from surrounding areas and some volunteers from Ft. Riley, generally speaking, government officials. Authorities claim no one else was there or could have gotten in or out. Interestingly enough, I have been told repeatedly by all sources that the media was allowed to roam freely without escorts through Greensburg. Shall we ask why residents were not allowed to stay on their own property but media was allowed unfettered access?

Many guns and other valuables such as jewelry have gone permanently missing and have never been recovered. There were some houses that were not destroyed and were in tact and habitable. Those folks did not want to leave but were forced to do so. When they returned they found their houses had been broken in to and all of their guns missing. One gentleman reports that when he went to claim his guns, taken from his secure home, they were returned to him in damaged condition. They were not damaged by the tornado. They were locked up in his home and illegally confiscated. So how do we suppose that damage occurred?

Guns and ammunition that were collected were taken to a trailer and an ATF agent manned the trailer. When people first came to collect their guns they were asked for proof of ownership such as receipts and serial number lists and they had to fill out a 4473 and get a NICS approval before they could claim their guns. No one had paperwork, receipts, or lists of serial numbers because it had all blown away. Later into the process they quit demanding these items and asked only for a list with make, model and description of the firearm. In one case, in the collection trailer, a gun case was claimed by one man who had a very nice trap shotgun in it and when he opened the undamaged and closed case, he found not his nice BT99 but another damaged gun that did not belong to him. That $1500.00 BT99 has never turned up. One comment made by all sources is that many “nice” guns were never recovered. Every source has reported that little to no care was taken with any of the firearms retrieved and taken into protective custody and they were not catalogued in any fashion. One resident said “they were just thrown in there in piles”.

One family, whose house was not damaged, reported that officers were going to remove them at gun point when they refused to leave their property and a gun fight was only averted when a KBI agent stepped in front of the other officers and pleaded with them to consider what they were doing. Those residents had taken up their shotguns and were not going to leave. We can only say thank heavens for that KBI officer who had the sense to realize what pressing these people at gun point would mean.

As I talked to these residents of Greensburg the accounts of their personal experiences kept flowing and they all had certain things in common. Their rights were violated, guns were confiscated illegally and they were forced to leave their homes illegally. When government agents came to their property they did not ask them if they were okay or needed help. They were there to forcibly remove them and confiscate their property. Many of them expressed fear of reprisal should they go public. Do they have the names of the officials who they believe acted illegally and inappropriately? In many cases, the answer is yes. Did all officials act illegally and inappropriately? NO. Many were very helpful and had great concern for the well being of the residents and were there to assist them with the best of intentions.

The people in Greensburg are a close, tight knit community, everyone knows everyone kind of place. They were very resentful of government coming in and telling them what they had to do. They would have preferred to stay and help each other locate valuables and guns and not leave their property. Several residents have reported that FEMA did more harm than good and would not even cooperate with local law enforcement. Residents of the town who were firefighters and trained in rescue operations wanted to stay and help their neighbors and friends and were told they could not.

The many stories that have been shared with me are too lengthy to include in this report. I just pose these questions. If there was even one act of misconduct or illegal activity by any governmental official are we to stand by idly and allow it without complaint? Should those who broke the law be allowed to continue to “serve” as law enforcement officials without question? Should the residents of Greensburg have to fear reprisal if they report and file complaints about what happened to them? Should Kansas and its legislative body do nothing to see to it that this never happens again?

I am turning over all of the information I have obtained to the NRA complete with names and numbers of those residents which I have spoke with. I am also going to turn the information over to some members of the Kansas House and Senate. I would urge KSRA members to contact their legislators and demand that a full investigation be conducted in to the events that took place in Greensburg. HB 2811, The Emergency Powers Act is a bill designed to prevent this exact kind of thing from happening and provide a remedy if it does (see that article). At the time of this publication that bill is in the Senate Federal and State Affairs Committee. Rise up Kansas! Let your voice be heard! Don’t let your town be next!!
__________________
Target Master Shooting Academy, LLC
www.targetmasteracademy.com
NRA Certified Training Counselor
KS Certified CCH Instructor
KSRA Board Member

http://patriotnews.info/PP/2811.pdf

And this from another thread:

Re: This Big Mess
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by skeet
PBR you would vote a few more bucks in your pocket to make you "feel" better and give up any actual rights you have enjoyed for your entire life?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No I wouldn't
And this hasn't happened. In all of the 20th century, no democratic president has ever taken away any of my rights. Neither would Obama or Hillary.
When organizations and politicians say things like that, it's 100% propaganda in order to get moderates to vote republican, independant, or libertarian. I don't even listen to it anymore.

I know firearms are important to you all (It's not to me - it's a hobby and that's it). I know the NRA pushes the issue every election season (personally I find it to be propaganda). Even if democrats put heavy restrictions on guns (a theory I don't subscribe to) it's doesn't matter anyway because we can't afford to buy them

Whatever you views on guns, abortion, gay marriage, etc - you shouldn't be voting on these and then wonder why the economy is messed up. The gun industry uses scare tactics so you vote on inanimate objects and the opportunity to play Rambo, the church uses scare tactics telling everyone that if you vote for a pro-choice candidate it is a sin, the military powers that be uses scare tactics saying that terror is the world's biggest threat.
I believe Obama (not that I like him...I am for my girl Hillary but that ship has sailed) when he says that republicans have tricked people into voting against their economic interests.

I urge everyone to vote based on the economy---that is truely the most important thing we have that we base our entire lives around. That includes gas prices, jobs, healthcare, balancing the budget, etc. And if economic issues tell you to vote Republican - fine - at least you're voting for a valid reason.
Everything else is not important unless everyone has some sort of financial breather in their lives.

Yep, its all just propaganda.
Just smoke and mirrors to deflect from the "real" issues...

[Skinny Shooter]

http://www.gunweek.com/0501issue/feature0501.html

by Dave Workman
Senior Editor

Eleven months after a devastating massive tornado swept through Greensburg, KS—after which unidentified “authorities” acting under questionable instructions seized firearms from homes—the Kansas House of Representatives unanimously passed legislation that would make such gun confiscations illegal in the wake of such a disaster.

Despite opposition from the Kansas Association of Chiefs of Police, the Pratt County sheriff and Kansas Bureau of Investigation, the state legislature passed HB-2280, a sweeping bill that says no officer or employee of the state, or any political subdivision, may “temporarily or permanently seize, or authorize seizure of, any firearm, the possession of which is not prohibited under state law, other than as evidence in a criminal investigation…”

The bill also prohibits the governor, currently anti-gun Democrat Kathleen Sebelius, from suspending or limiting the sale or transportation of firearms, while the governor may still limit sale, dispensing or transportation of alcoholic beverages, explosives and combustibles.

Pro-gun Republican state Sen. Phil Journey was elated. A former member of the National Rifle Association (NRA) board of directors, Journey described the bill to Gun Week as “the basic (Hurricane) Katrina legislation.” The vote was 121-0 in the House and 30-2 in the Senate.

Following the devastating 2005 hurricane that hit New Orleans and the surrounding area, police and some National Guard units moved through the city confiscating firearms from everyone, without warrant or probable cause. The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and NRA teamed up on a landmark federal lawsuit to stop the New Orleans gun seizures, and afterward, the NRA pushed for legislation in many states, including HB-2280 in Kansas, to prevent such gun confiscations.

Allegations of gun seizures appear to be at the center of the Kansas legislation.

A monster tornado at least two miles wide struck Greensburg, a small community in south-central Kansas west of Wichita on the night of May 4, 2007. Eleven people were killed and the town was largely destroyed. Entire neighborhoods were leveled and aerial photographs that appeared in The Wichita Eagle showed that much of the town had simply disappeared, leaving a landscape of building foundations, denuded trees, debris and little else.

But according to residents who spoke with Gun Week, insult was added to injury when guns were removed not only from wrecked homes but from homes that survived, even from secure cabinets and lockers. These firearms were stored in a tractor trailer, where they quickly deteriorated from heat and humidity. Officers, apparently from various agencies in the area, allegedly claimed that martial law had been imposed when it had not, and ordered all residents to leave the town. Some guns have never been recovered, others were damaged beyond repair.

Some people believe the order for collecting firearms came from the sheriff of a neighboring county, who has not returned calls from Gun Week. That sheriff opposed the new legislation.

Residents whose guns were grabbed want answers and they’re not getting any. Aaron Einsel, who had stored several of his personally owned guns with friends, told Gun Week that after the tornado, one of his friends discovered that Einsel’s guns had been taken from his house.

“I have no idea why they did that,” Einsel said. “After the storm, people were trying to gather their belongings. You’d take your guns and put them in a basement or closet, cover them up with a mattress, to hide them and protect them. And those guns were gone. They were in that gun trailer.”

Einsel eventually recovered his firearms. Another Greensburg resident, Bob Martin, is afraid he will never again see a couple of prized firearms, including a Browning trap gun, that has disappeared.

Martin, 83, was out of town at a trap shoot, and when he returned on the morning after the disaster, several, but not all, of his guns were missing. When he finally got back to what was left of his home, which wasn’t much, he discovered that someone had taken prized shotguns out of waterproof cases, left the cases open so they were damaged, and the guns were put in the storage trailer where they suffered damage.

“If they’d have left the guns in (the cases),” Martin lamented, “they wouldn’t have been damaged.”

He said lawmen he encountered when he and his wife returned from the trap shoot told him the town had been placed under martial law, and they could not enter. But he went around another way and got into town, finally found the ruins of his home and immediately began securing his remaining guns and searching for two Model 12 Winchesters, one of which had been given him by his father.

Browning BT99
He got most of his guns back from the gun trailer, which was parked at the Highway Department lot in town, but is still missing is an expensive Browning BT99 trap gun.

Storm victim Jason Wacker said his home was still standing, but all of his guns went missing.

“That was the only things that were taken,” he said.

When he recovered them from the trailer several days later, he found that parts had been broken off, some of the stocks were cracked, and five days of heat and humidity in that trailer had resulted in extensive damage.

Wacker asserted that his firearms had been secured in the home and that whoever took them “had to break in somehow.”

Another resident, Jeremy Butler, told Gun Week that “they only got one of mine, and I got it back but it was ruined.”

“Everything was wet after the tornado,” he recalled. “They just threw (guns) in a trailer and wouldn’t let anyone get them until they were rusted clear up.”

What happened in Greensburg after the tornado might never have been widely known had it not been for the efforts of Patricia Stoneking, a member of the board of directors of the Kansas State Rifle Association and legislative liaison for the Tri-County Rod and Gun Club.

Outrage
She met with a resident of Greensburg when testimony on the bill, originally numbered HB-2811, was held earlier this year and heard about the gun “collection.” Stoneking began digging and forwarded a lengthy report to the NRA and Gun Week. Her allegations also made the rounds on several Internet forums and chat groups.

Stoneking found the reports to be “stupefying.”

“We had been told that there hadn’t been any problems, that everything was fine,” she recalled. “Everyone told us that the only guns that were picked up were the ones exposed. Nobody has any problems picking up (loose) guns.”

Others interviewed by Gun Week affirmed that opinion, explaining that with the town a mass of wreckage, it would make perfect sense for emergency crews and even local residents to pick up any firearms they found lying in the destruction, simply to assure that they did not fall into the wrong hands.

But Journey suggested that once authorities from surrounding communities moved in to “maintain order,” they did not maintain a perimeter around the flattened town and “keep thieves out.”

“A lot of firearms disappeared,” Journey said. “It was a dumb move to evacuate the town.”

Once Stoneking felt she had verified the account of Aaron Einsel, she told Gun Week that it was “probably a really good idea to get the ‘big guns’ involved.” That’s when she started contacting NRA and other gun rights groups.

Answer Needed
Ultimately, she said, “nobody knows who issued what orders to do what.”

“It would be interesting to have that question answered,” Sen. Journey observed.

In her widely-circulated report, Stoneking said that Greensburg “was locked down tight for several days and no one was allowed in or out.”

“There were some houses that were not destroyed and were intact and habitable,” Stoneking wrote. “Those folks did not want to leave but were forced to do so. When they returned they found their houses had been broken into and all of their guns missing. One gentleman reports that when he went to claim his guns, taken from his secure home, they were returned to him in damaged condition. They were not damaged by the tornado. They were locked up in his home and illegally confiscated. So how do we suppose that damage occurred?”

Sorting fact from fiction and determining exactly what did happen in Greensburg following the tornado may take some time. Meanwhile, residents will be frustrated as they go about rebuilding their lives, but at least they have legislation that will prevent the kind of gun round-up alleged to have occurred in their community from ever happening again.

Martin and his wife sold their property in the town and now live about 12 miles outside of Greensburg in the home of a friend. But he knows from neighbors who had been monitoring police radio transmissions that night that lawmen had gone to his home and were trying to get into his gun safe.

But he is still angry about what happened. When he arrived on the outskirts of town on the morning of May 5, officers from various agencies said the area was under martial law.

“Nobody declared it,” Martin said. “If I’d have known it, I had a gun of my own in the car, and I’d (have) loaded it and gone in. Ain’t nobody going to keep me off my property.”

[fabsroman]

Great post Skinny. People are so worried about the economy and what stupid purchase they have to forego because of it, that they aren't see the BIG picture.

The economy WILL get better. Very rarely are lost rights returned.

[Skinny Shooter]

Thanks Fabs. I was trying to stay out of the other thread but when I saw this info it seemed relevant.

[fabsroman]

Do you have any idea how irate I would be if all my guns were confiscated under the above circumstances, thrown around like firewood, and then thrown into a trailer to rust away? I would be fuming.

Most of all, it would really irritate me that the means for me to provide security for my family, when it is most needed, has been taken away from me. Yeah, I don't know if I would be willing to give them up that easily under the above circumstances. Kind of like giving up my firearms after Katrina. That just wouldn't have been happening.

[Rapier]

After a few disasters you start to learn that if you leave you can not get back and when you are allowed to go back, things are not OK. Florida is well practiced in disaster process so we have few problems today, but every once in a blue moon you still run across Rambo Cop after a disaster. They are a pain in the butt stock.

The folks really need to get together and demand some butts on a silver platter. Every department had a supervisor at the scene, start rolling heads. It will happen again if they do not do something.
Best,
Ed

[Classicvette63]

Some people thought I was a redneck a**hole for not surrended my firearm and basically issuing an ultimatum. Guess what? I still have my gun and them people don't. If they'd have followed the cardinal rule to never surrender their firearm, they wouldn't have this problem.

Only one instance I can see surrendering your weapon. In a legit self defense scenario. Only problem I could see is if it were at home and they wanted not just the primary weapon but all of them. Refer back to line one, now we have a problem.

A bad guy is a bad guy, doesn't matter if he has a badge or not. Sure the boys in blue get a little more slack than some regular baddie, but just a little slack. They are there FOR us, not IN SPITE of us. Sometimes they forget that and need a gentle reminder.

[DON WALKUP]

i believe we're just beginning to see this stuff happen...it's what nightmares are made of but, i believe if the illinois senator with the muslim name is elected as pres, there will be much of this going on...unfettered. he will advocate the erosion of our gun ownership like none other in our history...laws or no laws...