They also complained of restrictions on freedom in the U.S., such as government confiscation of mail, particularly the freedom of those who are "not theists" or "whose political convictions are unpopular".

It exposes them to ideologically inspired attacks, places them at a financial disadvantage and paves way for government confiscation.

That goes, too, for other government confiscations of wealth.

To the Editor: Your April 15 editorial espouses the virtue of government confiscation with the specious argument that the government needs the money.

In the 1980s, Horrobin sold primrose oil in the United States without legally demonstrating its safety and efficacy, leading to government confiscations and felony indictments of his associates.

If that happened, the system would be tantamount to national gun registration, which the rifle association considers a first step toward government confiscation of firearms, he said.

He had, since 2004, launched a series of unsuccessful legal challenges and dramatic public protests (including a series of hunger strikes) against an alleged government confiscation of part of his farm.

On this basis, the court upheld the government confiscation as a public use, and there was an uproar across the country.

The chapel hosts a silver tabernacle that dates to the beginning of the 18th century, and which was saved from the 1829 government confiscation of religious reliquary by the Brotherhood, whom paid cash to save the artifact.

Federal law explicitly forbids any central registry of gun data - a gesture to gun groups that fear it as a first step toward government confiscation of guns.