Month: October 2007

… in Illinois.

I came across this sad story on Pennsylvania Firearms Owners Association forum. A guy seeking advise about renewing an expired PA License to Carry Firearms. Seems he got into a bit of hot water with the law, under this Pennsylvania law:

Title 18, Section 1.4(a) of the unconsolidated statutes.

§ 1.4. Altered or illegally obtained property; penalty.

(a) Alteration or destruction of vehicle identification number.–Any person who alters, counterfeits, defaces, destroys, disguises, falsifies, forges, obliterates or removes a vehicle identification number with the intent to conceal or misrepresent the identity or prevent the identification of a motor vehicle or motor vehicle part commits a felony of the third degree and, upon conviction, shall be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than seven years or a fine of not more than $50,000, or both.

That’s a felony. Clearly this individual must have been involved in some sort of criminal ring. Right? Well, here’s his story:

I bought 2 cars, one from maryland the other from new york. the person i got the maryland car from got it from an auction in deleware. He never transfered it to maryland and kept it for 3 years. I bought it brought it home and could not get the title transfered. tried contacting the auction house in deleware but out of buisness. so i could not get the title transfered. the newyork car was wrecked but had a good motor and interior. the maryland car did not. the vin was attached to the dash, not to the car it’s self. so when I replaced the maryland cars riped upi dash with the nice shiney newyork car dash the vin went with it cause it was rivited to the dash. you get the picture. I called everywhere to find out what to do and every dmv or berriks I called told me to call the other guy. so basicly I am screwed because state employees of pa,maryland and delaware don’t know the jobs. A victim of circomstance (i know my spelling is bad haha) that my luck.

So he installed the dash from one car into another, and forgot the transfer the VIN number. He got caught, and apparently some turd of a District Attorney decided to throw the book at him, either for the safety of society, or to bolster his legal career, I’m sure you can guess which one. The poor guy runs out of money to pay attorneys, and ends up getting pressured to cop a guilty plea in exchange for a year of probation. Only problem; no one advised him he was surrendering his firearms rights.

I am not opposed to the idea that people convicted of certain crimes of violence can have their right to own a firearm removed. But this whole incident illustrates why this idea has become a mockery of justice. This man was wrongly charged, was pressured to plead guilty by an ambitious DA who was more concerned with his conviction record than justice, and now has been screwed out of an important constitutional right.

Fortunately, he says he currently doesn’t own any firearms, which is good. I’d hate for him to twice be a victim of the justice system. If organizations like the Brady Campaign want to be serious about keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous people, and want us to stand with them, they have to condemn applications like this. Otherwise it’s just another means of harassment, and it’s wrong.

Looks like the federal courts aren’t going for it. I really don’t like this reason:

The federal district court bought their argument that the state law conflicted with the federal 1970 Occupational Health and Safety Act, which requires employers to minimize workplace risks.

The Supremacy Clause reigns, I suppose. So now the OHSA requires employers to ban guns in the workplace? That’s what this would appear to be saying. Someone needs to explain to me what all this has to do with interstate commerce again.

I don’t mean to make it seem like I’m suggesting we ignore the machine gun issue, pretend it doesn’t exist, and not talk about it.  Far from it.   There’s a big difference between talking about the issue, and getting on CNN or another national news outlet and saying “Why yes, we support in legalizing machine gun ownership.”

All I am saying is that it’s not time right now to have a national debate about this.   That is step 32, and we are on step 4 or 5 at most.   So if we want to move the ball forward, what do we do?

I’ll leave the comment section of this thread for folks to offer constructive suggestions on how we can get from our current state, up to being able to seriously petition congress and the public to agree to liberalize the current Title II machine gun provisions.  Remember that the starting state is the vast majority of the public, and Congress, being hostile to your idea.

Countertop made a comment over at Uncle’s that I wanted to highlight here, because he’s so very right:

Because if you don’t message well, then you risk throwing the whole thing in the toilet.,

don’t get greedy. don’t read into what Cox said. don’t think anyone outside the gun culture things you have any right to machine guns.

If it becomes a debate about access to machine guns, we all lose.

You class 3 folks need to get over it, get off your high horse, and realize we are all in this together and its going to take baby steps to get it all back. We are close. We are real damn close, but somehow for ever 5 steps forward we take the nuts (at the urging of GOA I suspect) insist on pushing us back 6.

I try to be a bit more diplomatic than that, but he is right, and sometimes it takes spelling out in harsh terms to get it out there to folks. There’s just no way to win on this issue right now. It’s “hearts and minds” time on the issue.

UPDATE: More wisdom from Bitter.