A Retired Deputy Sheriff Remembers
By
Daniel Cron
Updated March 2, 2009
I am a retired deputy sheriff with over 30 years of service to the people of California . I am also the father of a California Correctional Officer and the father of a Deputy Sheriff. I am also the father-in-law of a Deputy Sheriff and the uncle of a Kansas State Trooper and the former brother-in-law of a retired deceased big city police officer. I devoted most of my life to enforcing the law and defensive target shooting. I also retain my certifications as a Certified Senior Crime Scene Analyst and Certified Latent Print Examiner. I currently contract part-time with a consulting firm as a fingerprint examiner.
I’m worried about our profession and the type of law enforcement officers we will have in the future. I retired eleven years ago with over thirty years service as a deputy sheriff with a year of city police service thrown in. Just before I retired, I noticed a different breed of officer starting to appear. Now it’s getting scary with street officers taking on a S.W.A.T. attitude and the look of a Ninja with the black nylon uniform. The new look and stormtrooper attitude combined with anti-gun California lawmakers have turned California into something I don’t like any more. Fortunately, my own kids and cop relatives don’t believe in that nonsense although they have to go by the new uniform requirements.
I don’t subscribe to any gun journals except for my life-member NRA magazines because the State of California now requires manufacturers to pay an extortion fee to have their guns tested (by the state) before they can be sold and this has resulted in California citizens being denied the right to own guns that the rest of the country can own. Why read about a great self-defense gun like the little Kel-Tec P3 or the new Ruger LCP 380acp when the manufacturers refuse to submit to California extortion? If I can’t buy it in California why should I get all enthused about it?
These so-called gun-safety-testing laws will backfire some day on an officer who shoots a felon with a gun that isn’t on the ‘safe’ gun list put out by the California Department of Justice. Law enforcement officers are exempt from the ‘junk gun’ law so they can carry any department gun that the department decides on even if it isn’t on the list. For years, I carried a S&W model 10, then a model 15 and then a model 19 S&W finally graduating to a model 669 in 9mm just before retiring. They were and still are good law enforcement firearms but are not on the California ‘safe’ list because they are not currently in production so they are not being submitted for ‘safety’ testing. How will a civil jury react to the ‘poor’ felon that was shot by a police officer with a firearm that was not on the ‘safe’ list? The worst thing about that list is that it expires. In other words, a gun has to be submitted every year or the ‘safety-testing’ certificate expires. The same gun that was tested ‘safe’ one year then becomes ‘unsafe’ until it is tested again (with payment of testing fees again) What utter stupidity!
The California Assault Weapons ban is still law. I guess the lawmakers of California must have realized that the Federal Ban would sunset some day so they wrote a separate law for California that didn’t sunset. So those of us who enjoy target shooting with military look-alike semi-automatic rifles or like to carry 18-round magazines in our pistols are still out of luck in California .
Before laterally transferring to my present county thirty-five years ago, I worked as a deputy sheriff in the California high desert in the eastern Sierras. There, you had to depend on your fellow citizens if you needed help. Your nearest law-enforcement back-up would most likely be over an hour away. There were a few times in my career where I was most grateful to have a citizen come down the road with a Winchester 30-30 or shotgun in the back window of his pickup. In those days, we didn’t worry about citizens with guns. Most of the time, we didn’t worry about it being loaded. In fact, we hoped it was loaded. The very thought of arresting a citizen just because he might have a loaded firearm in his vehicle didn’t even come to mind.
How times have changed. Not in my own mind but in the minds of the public-schooled, brainwashed citizens of the liberal politics of today. It’s terrible to know the truth and to be totally ignored because of the media talking heads in league with the Washington liberal elite. The name liberal or progressive has now come to mean ‘socialist’ or ‘communist’ to avoid the stigma associated with those words. Whether you believe it or not, Senator Joseph McCarthy was actually right about the communists’ intention to take over the United States without firing a shot. Don’t fall into the illusion that communism is dead. It’s still very much alive.
The revolutionary war was fought by only about 15% of the citizens of the colonies. Most people in the colonial days just wanted the status quo of being English colonies. It took those 15% to win freedom for the rest of the 85%. I seriously doubt that we could come up with even 1% these days. With the liberal anti-gun, anti-freedom media spewing venom against honest gun owners and proliferation of arcades and TV shows aimed at the idiot factor of our society, it’s hard to imagine enough patriots to have a voting impact on the treasonous politico’s running our state and federal government these days. Even Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the macho ‘he-man’ super-hero, turned out to be a ‘girlieman’ by signing anti-gun AB 50 (The fifty caliber ban) into law. But then, what else do you expect from a Kennedy family in-law? Whatever happened to good old-fashioned common sense? To my knowledge, a single-shot or bolt-action 50 caliber rifle has never been used to hold up a liquor store or commit any crimes in California and yet Arnold had no problems with signing the bill outlawing it.
I was happy that President Bush signed H.R. 218 into law which was intended to allow current and retired officers to carry a concealed weapon throughout the United States. While I disagreed with President Bush on many of his policies, he was mostly pro-gun.
I am very disappointed that 52% of the American public drank the poison Kool-Aid and elected the most liberal, left-wing anti-gun president in this nations history. Joseph McCarthy must be spinning in his grave now that an admitted Socialist has been elected president. I shudder to think of the gun laws that he will spring on us. He has already stated that he is looking into reinstating the Clinton gun bans which stated that ordinary self-loading rifles were reclassified as 'Assault Weapons' just because they looked evil not because they were fully automatic like a real assault weapon. I can't believe that some gun-owners believed his lie that he wasn't planning to take away our guns. None of the gun bans enacted in other countries have reduced crime. In fact, the reverse is true. Crime has worsened in those countries where law-abiding citizens were deprived of their right to self-defense. Criminals will never give up their guns and will always have them so long as there are machine shops capable of turning scrap metal into guns. Look at the working copies of pistols that are made in back rooms during the Viet Nam war and middle eastern conflicts. Prohibition didn't work for alcohol and it won't work for guns.
I just heard a news broadcast that was blaming the United States Bill of Rights, specifically the Second Amendment for arming Mexican drug lords that were killing people in border towns. Those news people don't know what they were talking about. The drug lords and their henchmen are using fully-automatic weapons and the last time I checked, you couldn't just walk into a neighborhood gun store or gun show and buy fully automatic machine guns without going through a lot of red tape and licensing. Even if you could, there is no reason for blaming an American right for foreign crime in corrupt countries.
I pray for this country's law enforcement officers. Will they do as the Nazi and Japanese soldiers did during WW2 and 'just follow orders' or will they have the intellect to recognize unconstitutional laws and refuse to comply? I am beginning to have my doubts.
Daniel W. Cron
Retired Deputy Sheriff
Modesto, California