Wisconsin Police Chief Asks to Search Homes for Guns – Then Backpedals

Beloit, WI – File this one under “What were they thinking,?” “That takes a lot of nerve!” “What an invasion of privacy!” and “Who would be stupid enough to sign up for this?”

In my opinion, Norm Jacobs should never have any power, much less any police power. This guy, currently chief of police in Beloit, Wisconsin, was silly enough to claim that “gun violence is as serious as the Ebola virus is being represented in the media, and we should fight it using the tools that we’ve learned from our health providers.”

In other words, Jacobs is asserting that searching every nook and cranny of peoples’ homes is some kind of vaccine to gun violence. Ridiculous!

Thankfully, citizens are still smart enough to know a crock of hockey when they see it. After this program was announced, police department phones began ringing “off the hook” with calls protesting this horrendous waste of their tax money.

The program was not exactly productive. Reportedly, police only received one search request, from a poor misguided soul who had one gun in the home, knew about it, and wanted to give it to police.

There was speculation about who in a household had the authority to request a search, and it’s not a stretch to think that feuding spouses or angry children could initiate “spite searches” that would do nothing but harass people and waste police resources.

Thanks to public outcry, the Beloit city manager announced that the program was being ended.

Russ Chastain

Editor & Contributing Writer Russ Chastain is a lifelong hunter and shooter who has spent his life learning about hunting, shooting, guns, ammunition, gunsmithing, reloading, and bullet casting. He started toting his own gun in the woods at age nine and he's pursued deer with rifles since 1982, so his hunting knowledge has been growing for more than three and a half decades. His desire and ability to share this knowledge with others has also grown, and Russ has been professionally writing and editing original hunting & shooting content since 1998. Russ Chastain has a passion for sharing accurate, honest, interesting hunting & shooting knowledge and stories with people of all skill levels.