video footage was released from a delaware man's ring doorbell showing two atf agents and one delaware state police trooper questioning a homeowner about recent firearms purchases the footage accompanied by an article at ammoland.com explained that the homeowner in hindsight felt that his privacy had been invaded and that he felt coerced into cooperation with the officers the officers explained that they were part of a task force investigating potential straw purchases which occurs when someone buys a firearm on behalf of another person who is otherwise unable to purchase a firearm directly they had records in hand showing that the homeowner's recent purchases what they were they said that they wanted to verify that this man still had these firearms here's a portion of the relevant footage and then we'll go into the law all i'm doing is verify that look verifying that you have it you got two different purchases okay if you have them i'm out of here that's how quick it is yeah do you have them with you by any chance are they if you're gonna say if you can unload them and bring them out or you can go out to your before you're here check them out by number shared number and we're out of here like this yep that's it takes five seconds the reason we're out here is we're obviously gunning violence it's been an uptick so we want to make sure we've been having a lot of issues with straw purchases and so one of the one of the things we indicators that we get is somebody makes a large gun purchase and then a lot of times we've been there like oh those guns got took him we're like so the idea is when you purchase more than two guns at a time it generates a multiple self report and he comes to us and we have to check him out that's all that is he did nothing wrong absolutely zero uh i noticed that you were stopped in philly though right with one of your guns so it's clear that the officers had no warrant but what did they need if anything as far as criminal suspicion goes the delaware state trooper who by the way is part of an organization that has close to zero respect for the second amendment and which already has been caught maintaining secret lists of gun owners had this to say about the reason they were there that day the reason we're out here is obviously gun violence is an at an uptick we want to make sure we've been having a lot of issues with straw purchases one of the things indicators we get is someone making a large gun purchase and then a lot of times we've been there oh those guns got taken one of the atf agents on the scene had this to say about why they were there well it just came up we came here look i'm telling you there's an email from the federal side saying that can you make sure this guy's got his guns if you recently purchased a whole bunch of guns if we can look at them and just scratch them off therefore it appears to be the case that there is no particularized information pertaining to this homeowner indicating that he may have committed some crime or even that any crime had been committed in the first place basically he purchased multiple firearms and theoretically anyone who purchases multiple firearms could potentially have purchased them as strong conveyances for third parties since this is not particular or particularized to this homeowner it could not form the basis of either reasonable suspicion or probable cause however since this man is in his own home neither reasonable suspicion nor probable cause is all that relevant the officers have two options one they can obtain a search warrant which would require finding of probable cause approved by a judge in advance in which case they would need to have particular particularized facts about this homeowner or they can do what cops call a knock and talk which is what appears to have happened here the legal theory is this so-called consensual encounters don't implicate the fourth amendment in the first place basically it's a conversation with the consent of an individual there's no detainment cops are free to talk to someone who's willing to talk to them just like anyone else can because doing so doesn't trigger fourth amendment protections no reasonable suspicion is required much less probable cause that's what the officers were attempting to do here they clearly had no reasonable suspicion assuming they weren't lying which is an entirely different video entirely different legal issue we'll get into a different time here the homeowner says that he felt coerced in hindsight at least so here's the legal issue would a reasonable regular person believe that he was not free to terminate this encounter a person is seized within the meaning of the fourth amendment only when the officer by means of physical force or show of authority has in some way restrained the liberty of a citizen that's from terry versus ohio such a seizure can be said to occur when after considering the totality of the circumstances a court concludes that a reasonable person would have believed that he was not free to leave or in the context of a person being in a location they didn't want to leave such as their front porch the appropriate question would be whether that person would feel free to terminate the encounter florida versus bostic 1991 is the supreme court case on that so there could be a number of relevant factors that could determine these questions such as the number of police officers present their appearance their actions their demeanor such as whether they were acting in a threatening manner or whether they acted as though they suspected this guy of criminal activity rather than treating the encounter as quote routine in nature here there were multiple officers they appeared to make an express attempt to act like they were non-threatening in demeanor and that they were just engaged in a routine investigation you know it's almost like they they teach these things at their their fbi academy or police academy whatever the case may be but on the other hand there were three of them and they were sort of positioned in a way that could be argued as threatening i mean it's not like they were all at the door they were sort of spaced out as if maybe they were dealing with a suspected criminal as opposed to a law-abiding citizen in a nice neighborhood there was some tactical gear on display they were obviously armed of course we'd know for sure had the homeowner actually attempted to terminate the encounter thanks for watching and make sure to subscribe i'll see you on the next video [Music]