BACKA Retired Deputy Sheriff Remembers
By
Daniel Cron
Updated November 13, 2004
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, the uncle of a city Police Officer and the uncle of a Kansas State Trooper. Oh yeah, and the former brother-in-law of a retired 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’m worried about our profession and the type of law enforcement officers we will have in the future. I retired nearly 7 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 indeed 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 380acp when Kel-Tec refuses to submit to California extortion? If I can’t buy it in California so 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 carry 15 round magazines in our pistols are still out of luck in California.
Before laterally transferring to my present county thirty 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. I felt a little like ‘Andy of Mayberry’ in those days although we did have our share of crime. In fact, I was a transporting officer for the ‘Manson Family’ when they were arrested in my county in the California desert..
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 into law. But then, what else do you expect from a Kennedy family in-law? Whatever happened to good old-fashioned common sense? 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.
Thank God we elected a president who claims to believe in citizens’ right to keep and bear arms under the second amendment, at least more so than the other guy. I was also 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. A part of the new law causes a problem, however. The necessity to qualify (at your old department) once a year. Here in California, there is no program for retired officers to qualify with their firearms as required by H.R. 218. When I called my old department prior to a cross-country driving trip by car, I was told that the sheriff has no plans for qualifying retired officers. That renders H.R. 218 totally useless for me. We are right back where we started from. Don’t you just love politics! At least I still had my Utah, Florida and Nevada CCW permits so I was covered by reciprocity for most of the states I drove through. I took my chances in the states that were not covered by reciprocity. My nephew, the Kansas State Trooper told me that most, if not all, the cops in Kansas were not so anal retentive that they would bother a retired officer with proper identification even if he didn’t show evidence of the yearly qualification. I hope that’s true. It was in New Mexico that I was a little worried but I made it safely through that state too. Five years ago, I was nearly mugged in Tucumcari when 2 people kicked in the door of my motel room at 1am. I had my little j-frame 38 with me with lasergrips and when that little red dot flew across the ceiling as I was jumping out of bed, they decided they had business elsewhere.
Dear God, I pray that future cops will have the common sense that we had in the old days. Amen
Daniel W. Cron
Retired Deputy Sheriff
Modesto, California
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