Article – DEA chief: US abandoned plan to track cars near gun shows

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Drug Enforcement Administration abandoned an internal proposal to use surveillance cameras for photographing vehicle license plates near gun shows in the United States to investigate gun-trafficking, the agency’s chief said Wednesday.

This is why some folks attend these events in either cars that are not their own, or park well away from the show and walk in. (You know who you are!)  There have been cases in the past of people jotting down the license plates of cars parked at gun shows, and I do believe there was an episode in California where cars were followed from a Nevada border gun shop into California. Its a maddening state of affairs when this sort of thing is even considered.

Tangentially, Im not a fan of license plate readers. I was aghast and appalled to discover that my beloved Montana actually has readers at the border on I-90 to scan all plates coming and going in/out of the state. This is one of those areas that I just cannot get past emotionally. On an intellectual standpoint I can tell myself that the state has a right to monitor access on its thoroughfares, that there’s nothing illegal about it, etc, etc….but on an emotional level I want to head out there at 2am with a hammer and break every one of those stupid things.

Back to the issue at hand, though….. I loves me some gun shows. And if I’m not a ‘prohibited person’, then my parking at the gun show should be absolutely no ones business but mine and the person in the space next to me whose door I scuff. In a perfect world, the person who suggested license plate monitoring of people who haven’t given any indication of breaking the law would be told to clean out his desk and be out of the building faster than he can say “If you have nothing to hide then you should……..”.

The largest gun show in the state takes place close enough to me that I usually just ride my bicycle to the gun show. However, that doesn’t mean Im cool with .gov and their increasing ‘pre-crime’ maneuvering.

22 thoughts on “Article – DEA chief: US abandoned plan to track cars near gun shows

  1. I loathe automated traffic enforcement of any flavor. No one can convince me that the issue is about safety, and not about lining the coffers of the local governmental authority.

    If additional traffic enforcement is that badly needed, hire more police. If you can’t justify the cost of police, you’re either paying them too much, or it isn’t that big of a crisis after all.

    And I’m immediately distrustful of anyone who says “if you’re not breaking the law, you don’t have anything to worry about.” They’re the type who would have been the first to sign up for the secret police in communist Russia and drop dimes on their neighbors.

    • Automated traffic enforcement is not about money, it is about control, they want to know where you travel and when, licenseplate recognition is automated these days and the databases are easy to manage and to mine.

    • “If you can’t justify the cost of police, you’re either paying them too much”

      As a first responder I can say this one is getting a little old. Police, Fire Fighters and EMTs don’t get these large piles of cash people think we do. And the salary isn’t worth some of the situations we are asked to mitigate.

      I’m both FF and EMT and we are asked to provide out own equipment at times due to things like budget cuts. Seems the municipalities think the first place to cut funding are the first responders, then wonder why the cities are in flames and crime is everywhere with spotty response times. I’m looking dead at you Detroit.

      So please give it a rest with the “stop paying first responders so much.”

      As for the traffic cameras at gun shows, I’d be happy to know that they were looking for felons and that is all they were doing with the data. However I don’t think “they” will just throw that data out after every show. So I’m against that sort of thing. I have the same idea about the tag readers “on the fly” in the cruisers.

      • I’m not saying that police or other first-responders are paid too much. If you re-read my comment, you’ll see that what I’m saying is that the “first-responders are too expensive” argument should NOT be an excuse to utilize traffic cameras or automated law enforcement. In other words, if the problem is such a serious threat that it requires 24/7 monitoring, it should be serious enough to justify the additional law enforcement. If it isn’t, it probably isn’t that great of threat after-all.

  2. Beg to differ with you, the state does not have a right or “the” right to do anything. We the People have rights the government my have an interest but it is not a right. You want company on that 2 am stroll, you let me know. I’ll watch your back or you can watch mine.

    • Precisely. States have powers — granted to them by us (“The People”) — not rights.

      We are the ones with rights.

  3. I doubt very much its been ‘shelved’, its just going undercover with no mention whatsover.

  4. Perhaps the folks that make the partially opaque license plate covers can boost their sales.

  5. I am reminded of an event that took place between Baker Mont. and Ekalka Mont. The state had decided to put it a truck scale. The scale house was built and a hole was finished to install the scale in. sometime over a weekend or in the middle of the night someone, not saying names of anyone in the “Tri State” area that happened to own a “Concrete” batchplant in Baker. The hole was filled to about 4″ from the top and troweled off pretty as you please. The concrete pad is still there after 30 some years and the state never put a scale on that road. They just figgered that it was not worth it and it would happen again. The people in that area are hostile to anything to do with “GOVERMENT”.

    • There’s a difference. Truck scales prevent commercial vehicles from breaking the law and transporting overly-heavy loads on public roads and highways. Tax payers have to pay for the maintenance when commercial vehicles break the law and overload their vehicles causing damage and premature wear to the road. There is no other means of detecting this unlawful behavior than to use scales. As a tax payer, I don’t want some asshole trucker or concrete truck ruining a road that I then have to pay for.

      • Many years ago, I read a story in the Readers Digest about an overweight big rig that was hauling something that could not be downsized in any fashion (foundry equipment?). A highway patrolman got suspicious and called for scales to weigh the truck. Limit was 80k lbs in that state. They had to hook up a second tractor to help pull it up onto the portable scales, as the bump was too much for the original tractor’s power to handle. Truck was something like 250k!
        They made the company transport it to the closest rail head, to get it off the roads. IIRC, the fines were extensive.

      • OH YA , SURE THE THE SCALES CAN BE TRUSTED. Did you know that you can be fined off a state scale but you can not sell product off that scale, but if they fine you on that scale, you can not use a certified scale that product is being sold off of to defend yourself in court! I know for sure that the state scales are off by at least a half ton here in South Dakota just by comparing scale tickets. And they do not certify the state scales here, at least I haven’t seen the stickers. And this asshole trucker and freinds can shut down a whole economy if we wanted to. Do you eat much PETER? We pay more in state, county, and federal taxes, permits, fuel stamps,and we are taxd by the number of tires we have on the truck and trailers Plus I have a CDL that I have to take 4 different tests for and a background check with home land security that I have to drive 200 miles to get and pay 250 dollars on that background check. Not to mention I have to pass a medical exam yearly and 3-5 drug tests a year. But they let a dumb ass with no CDL drive a 40′ moterhome that out wieghs any truck per axel out on the road. We pay our fare share PETER, what do you pay for our highways. When you get your CDL you can get back to me.

        • Whoah. Ease back in the amphetamines, bud.

          It sounds like the trucking industry is over-taxed and over-regulated, and I’m not defending that by any means. But I stand by my comments regarding the validity of truck scales to prevent dishonest freight and industrial carriers from violating load limit laws and damaging public roads. Anyone who intentionally damages public roads for their own selfish personal gain is indirectly stealing from taxpayers.

          If the scales used to enforce the rules are not accurately calibrated, that’s obviously unfair, and maybe you should channel a small portion of your impotent internet anger towards addressing that particular injustice.

          As for me paying my fair share for road use: between federal and state income tax, gas tax, vehicle licensing fees, and tolls, I do. Thanks for asking.

          • Then you need to look at the RV industry. They come strait out of the factory over weight, and they are not required to go through the scales much lest having the drivers be certifide to drive these beasts. When you have been singled out for the destruction of our roadways by people that do not understand the industry or the laws that we work under is just a little off putting and it tends to piss us off. 90% of the damage comes from frost from under the roads heiving them up in the spring. No body is allowed to leave a certified scale being over weight, but the state scales say otherwise. Funny how that works HUH. Sherrif of Nottingham

        • The roads are the property of the people (with certain exceptions), a trucking company is a private venture and as such really should pay its way with taxes and tariffs. If everybody kept their rig reasonably within weight limits their would be less cost to maintain the roads.

  6. Does anyone know if the scanners use infrared or any other non-visible spectrum? If they use visible light, obscuring them would be difficult. If they use infrared or some other non-visible light, it might be possible to rig some sort of infrared laser that obscures the plate for the scanner, but is not visible to the naked eye. It could run off the License tag light for power. Wouldn’t be much use on a parked car, but would prevent detection for moving vehicles.

    I may have a new electronics project.

    • They use both visible and infrared. The infrared is for captures of LPs where there is no natural or artificial light.

Comments are closed.