Year: 2007

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.

I agree with Uncle over at his post on NRA and machine guns. Just for the record, here’s the context:

BECK: We’ve already had that. We don’t put NASCARs onto highways and we don`t put machine guns into the hands of people, either.

HELMKE: That’s an interesting issue because there was a machine gun in effect ban that was passed by the federal government in 1934. What’s the NRA’s impression of that?

BECK: Chris, Chris.

HELMKE: How about the Brady Bill?

BECK: Chris, are you for fully automatic machine guns?

COX: We’ve never advocated fully automatic machine guns and Paul knows it. But, again, Glenn, this is very basic. It’s —

HELMKE: How about Brady background checks?

COX: Paul, let me finish.

You guys supported waiting periods. You didn’t support instant checks. So let me finish. The basic question is do you support an individual, a good honest person, and their right to own a firearm for self-defense? Sarah Brady has said there’s no reason to own a gun, you can`t own a gun for self-defense. Paul, and his group have filed —

(CROSS TALK)

COX: Paul, your group filed in this Supreme Court case briefs saying that the Second Amendment was not an individual right. That honest Americans did not have the right to own a firearm.

(CROSS TALK)

COX: You’re wrong, Paul. And you’re wrong to go on national TV and suggest that you somehow support the Second Amendment, when your actions speak louder than your words.

If you want my opinion, Helmke was deliberately trying to get Chris to go on record as being for a gun control law. I know the Brady’s read gun blogs, including this one (I’ve seen them in the logs). They keep track of the arguments we have within our community. Recently they are pushing HR2640 heavily on their blog. We know that they have been trying divide and conquer tactics in the past, and I believe this is part of that.

The machine gun issue is a touchy one. Touchy because it’s fraught with political land mines. For one, the vast majority of the population doesn’t think they ought to be legal. For two, there would be a lot of NFA collectors who would oppose changing the law, because it would send the value of their collection into the toilet. For three, there’s no way in hell you’ll ever get a repeal of the 1986 Hughes Amendment out of congress, unless the NRA suddenly gets a lot more political clout.

We have a long long way to go on the machine gun issue. Right now, it’s going to be about winning hearts and minds. But I agree with Uncle that we can’t throw machine gun collectors, and people who want to be machine gun collectors, under the bus. We have to find a way to deal with this issue publicly, and mold the debate so that a future step can be taken if there’s a favorable change in the political climate.

Now, some of you aren’t going to like this, but the public rhetoric needs to be that we support the National Firearms Act. The only way, you’re ever going to convince the public and the politicians to repeal the 1986 Hughes Amendment is to convince them that the NFA was just fine, and that the 1986 ban went too far, and is too restrictive. Even this is going to be a hard sell, I’m sorry to say. But if you just say “repeal it all” the public and politicians are just going to say “no” and dismiss you.

Politicians, and sadly most of the public, don’t think your second amendment rights extend to legal ownership of machine guns, and they aren’t going to be swayed by an abstract argument about resisting government tyranny or the natural rights of man. Step one is convincing people that repealing the 1986 ban isn’t really a big deal. We’ll burn the other bridges when we come to them.

UPDATE: David Codrea disagrees.