Sunday, November 21, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

VIN SUPRYNOWICZ: 'We'll be busting your door in'

A lawman we'll call Deputy VeeJay writes in, objecting the column appearing here last week in which I cited the recent history book "The Voluntary City" on the nature and true purpose of modern police forces.

"I am a deputy sheriff in Wisconsin. ... I take exception to several things that Mr. Suprynowicz is spewing as logic. Most, if not all, of the blame that Suprynowicz throws onto law enforcement as a whole is completely off-base.

"Once the article takes the turn of supposing that there are no police, Suprynowicz goes on to tell of a fictiticious (sic) 21 year old and 16 year old having sex and babies, smoking dope that they've manufactured and playing with firearms. I quote, 'He's hurting no one.'

"Last time I went to work, I can't recall being asked to pass a few laws before hitting the streets," Deputy VeeJay writes. "I only enforce the laws that the politicians pass. The politicians that are ELECTED by the people. On the basis of Suprynowicz's argument, if I commit a crime behind my closed doors and I perceive that I'm hurting no one, I guess it must be okay. Before you jump all over me, keep in mind that YOU said, `... magically, there are no police.' Why would any of this matter if there weren't laws? Why would we have laws in a land of no police?

"If you're trying to tell me that you want to grow and smoke dope and have sex with minors all the while playing with firearms, you are goddamn right we'll be busting your door in to take your butt to jail. ...

" 'Normal people' have not been growing and smoking dope while sexually molesting children for thousands of years? My God, where do they find people like this?"

I fear the outraged deputy only proves my point. Note he doesn't argue that, "No, we wouldn't be lurking in the bushes outside the home of a neighbor who has harmed no one in order to bust into the place with our machine guns before dawn" -- the kind of late-night activity to which I objected in my original July column on warrant-less gun seizures in Oshkosh, Wis.

Quite the opposite: Deputy VeeJay embraces this newly invented role for American "peace officers," asserting and thus reinforcing my point that, "More police cause higher reported crime rates" by "criminalizing" behaviors that our grandparents never imagined could ever be against the law.

Listen to the perverse delight at the prospect of locking up peaceful people in cages. No wonder we have the highest incarceration rate in the world. I specifically stated, in my hypothetical example, that the loving young couple are waiting till the young lady graduates high school before starting their family (with the blessing of her family), and only that the young man had inherited handguns from his grandfather -- no mention was made of how they were stored, or any handling of them. Frankly, I would assume they're probably locked in the safe.

Yet the deputy decides any non-police officer in possession of old, collectible handguns is automatically guilty of the crime (?) of "playing with firearms" ... and actually stipulates that one of the crimes for which he would happily arrest this peaceful young couple is "having babies"! (Would it be less objectionable to him if they instead had sex ... and an abortion?)

Not only that, he defines "having babies" with a 16- or 17-year-old young woman as "molesting children." Does this law-enforcement officer not know that marriage is legal at age 16 in all 50 states, with parental permission? And that many states including Maryland and Delaware allow a 16-year-old to marry without parental permission, if she is pregnant?

Police don't pass laws? The speaker of our state Assembly here in Nevada is Richard Perkins. I know Richard Perkins and he's a decent man. But he doesn't have to bother consulting the police before passing laws here in the Silver State ... because Speaker Perkins' full-time day job sees him wearing the uniform of a deputy chief of the Henderson Police Department. Yes, Deputy VeeJay, Richard does "pass a few laws before hitting the streets." So much for our long-vanished "separation of powers."

And even if you don't happen to live in a state where a cop officially runs your state Assembly, who do you think shows up to testify for all these laws? Cops, that's who.

Deputy VeeJay even embraces the "smoking dope they've manufactured" argument. What did they manufacture the marijuana out of, Popsicle sticks and Elmer's glue? Marijuana is a plant. It's "manufactured" by the sunshine and the rain. How does the brave deputy suppose we managed to remain such a peaceful nation before 1934, when marijuana and machine guns were perfectly legal?

"Why would we have laws in a land of no police?" the deputy asks. It appears unlikely he has bothered to read "The Voluntary City," the book from which I cited the lesson in question about why modern "police forces" were actually created in England in the early 19th century.

What the academic research demonstrates is that England had a perfectly adequate set of "laws" from the 13th century right up through 1800 ... and no police. None. It was a polite and pleasant and lawful land ... without any police.

After the police were created, crime rates went up. Why? Because in order to keep the lower classes in line, police cause "crime," by defining as "crimes" things that were never "crimes" before. By lurking outside in the bushes at midnight, peeking in our windows and trying to catch us "having sex and babies, smoking dope that (we've) manufactured and playing with firearms."

Yep, that's some crime wave you've uncovered, Barney. Now put the bullet back in your belt. Please.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal and author of the books "Send in the Waco Killers" and "The Ballad of Carl Drega."