Merlin
Ultimate Member
There is a HUGE difference here.
If the police take you in, you absolutely should assert your right to a lawyer and to shut up.
If the police knock on your door and say they've had a spike in crime reports in your neighborhood, have you seen anything? You should not slam the door and tell them to get a warrant.
BUT, What if the question goes;
"they've had a spike in crime reports in your neighborhood, have you seen anything, and the reason we ask is that we have information that you may know something about the crime. Someone said that you may know something because you were where the crime took place".
Maybe the real reason the LEO did not share with the OP is they do have someone in custody that took the gun or they suspect took the gun but they are lying as fast as they can think of the lies and one of there lies included the OP's name.
Maybe he said that he met the OP at the range and the OP said the gun belonged to him and that he could barrow it. Or he lied to the LEO's and told them that You gave him the gun to try and that you told him it was OK because it belonged to you and you wanted to sell it so you let him take it home for a week to try it out with the understanding when you met back up with him the following week he would either pay you or give you the gun back.
Yes, I know...very crazy. But when bad guys are lying to save their a$$ the think of whatever they can to save the as fast as they can think of it. All lies of coarse from someone trying to minimize the trouble they are in.
But if you place yourself in the shoes of the LEO's they have to follow all leads. And they have a lead that implicates you they got from the bad guy, who knows for sure where this may end up. And that fac6t that the OP called everyone and their brother that could not tell him one thing about what is going on doesn't make me feel any better.
Maybe they just told you that they are going to all the members homes that were in during the time the gun turned up missing. And maybe the truth is your one of the only few they want to talk to because someone gave them your name trying to shift the blame onto you? May the person the really took the gun was behind you in line at some point reading over your shoulder so he could give your name to the LEO's at some point if necessary?
Coming to your home because you happen to live an an area where crime is taking please where reasonable people may come to the conclusion that anyone that lives in that area may have seen something fishy. Si allot different then the LEO's coming to your home because your name was on a list.
Now please do not take what I'm saying as I'm in the camp of the "I will not talk to the LEO's". Because if I were in the OP shoes I would have also talked to them. I would however got the LEO's info and I would have had more questions for him then he had for me until the fact that he sitting at my house made sense to me before he left my home. But I'm just pointing out that the LEO in conducting an investigation and what he tells you may be 100% the truth, Or he could also be lying 100% to you with everything that they tell you because for whatever reason, good or bad, they think you may have more to tell them that your letting on and all they are trying to do is get to the truth.
Let's say this guy Bob and Pet were both at the gun range and they do not know each other. And lets say that Pet figured out how to steel this AR. Pet also has this plan that when the LEO's question him and to try to get the LEO's off of his track he tells the LEO that is sitting in his house that there was this guy that goes by the name of Bob he heard telling a friend of his that he could get the AR out of the store.
Now Bob did not do anything wrong at all and was not even talking to anyone during his visit to the store. When the LEO's come to talk to Bob they are not going to tell Bob what they know or have been told. They will select their question very carefully to see if they can get Bob to trip himself up where they may get a clue. So now Bob has his friendly neighborhood LEO's sitting in his home being less then honest with Bob as they ask Bob questions.
Now you may say, "Ya,sure. But if Bob did nothing wrong he has nothing to worry about". But depending what the LEO's were told about Bob, and what Bob tells the LEO's, and how Bob makes what he tells them sound, may make all the difference between the LEO's leaving Bob's home knowing Bob had nothing to do with it, or Bob needing to hire a high dollar attorney to prove Pet was lying about him to a judge.
And all Bob did was go to the range to have a nice time shooting his gun. It would not have been the first time in history that nothing more then the wrong place at the wrong time got someone in allot of trouble.