Texas Second Amendment Case Headed To Supreme Court

A Texas man is waiting for the US Supreme Court to decide if exercising Second Amendment rights means citizens might be giving their Fourth Amendment protections. The Rutherford Institute is pushing the high court to hear the no-knock warrant case spurred by the “SWAT-team style forceful entry” into John Quinn’s home.

Rutherford Institute attorneys are making the argument that making legal gun ownership and possession grounds for law enforcement officers to “evade” Fourth Amendment protections both improperly limits and penalizes citizen’s Second Amendment rights. The Rutherford Institute, a non-profit Constitutional Rights organization, also argued in the US Supreme Court petition that legally possessing a gun is not sufficient cause to disregard Fourth Amendment protections and initiate no knock warrants.

The Second Amendment versus the Fourth Amendment case began in Collin County, Texas in 2006. After following the procedure to obtain a warrant to search for drugs which allegedly could be in the possession of the homeowner’s son, the police officers allegedly decided to forcibly break into the home based entirely on the suspicion that guns were also present inside the resident. John Quinn was asleep in bed when the loud sounds of the officers entering the home began. The officers did ultimately find cocaine in the home – less than a single gram.

Texas police officers did obtain a warrant based on the suspicion that John Quinn’s son may possess drugs, but the warrant did not permit the officers from entering the home without either knocking or announcing their entry. During the raid on the residence, Quinn was shot by the officers as the startled man attempted to grab his legally owned gun. According to statements in Quinn v. State of Texas, the man believed he was about to become a victim of a home invasion.

John W. Whitehad, the institute’s president, had this to say about the no-knock warrant case:

“Whatever the issue might be, whether it’s mass surveillance, no-knock raids, or the right to freely express one’s views about the government, we’ve moved into a new age in which the rights of the citizenry are being treated as a secondary concern by the White House, Congress, the courts, and their vast holding of employees, including law enforcement officials. The disconnect, of course, is that the Constitution establishes a far different scenario in which government officials, including the police, are accountable to ‘we the people.’ For it to be otherwise, for government concerns to trump individual freedoms, with government officials routinely sidestepping the Constitution and reinterpreting the law to their own purposes, makes a mockery of everything this nation is supposed to stand for—self-government, justice, and the rule of law.”

Lower courts in Texas rejected John Quinn’s objection to the execution of a no-knock warrant stating that the police officers knew there were guns inside the home and were therefore justified in the decision to make an unannounced forced entry. Following that same logic, every registered gun owner in the United States has reduced Fourth Amendment rights. The number of violent and unnecessary deaths to both homeowners and law enforcement officers in such situations are staggering to consider. A scared child running to daddy could easily be caught in the crossfire.

Long-established Fourth Amendment standards dictate that police officers must knock and announce their presence at a home before opting for a forcible entry. Law enforcement officers may however, go the no knock route immediately if a threat of violence or the potential that evidence could be destroyed is present.

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