New Jersey gun owner Brian Aiken is now a felon and will serve 7 years in prison even though he tried to abide by the law and there was no malicious intent in his actions.
Make no mistake, there are areas of this country where the law has made being a gun owner extremely hazardous. New Jersey is one of the worst offenders. The judge at Aiken's trial would not even allow jury instructions regarding exceptions to New Jersey's byzantine transport laws or FOPA Why? Because he, Judge Morley, didn't feel they were relevant given the facts of the case.
New Jersey's gun laws are not about lowering crime. They're about driving out gun owners, persecuting them, and lowering gun ownership rates in the Garden State. That is the goal of all gun control, to reduce civilian ownership of firearms to as close to zero as possible.
As the court stated in New Jersey vs. Pelleteri,
"When dealing with guns, the citizen acts at his peril."
As far as the state is concerned that's a feature not a bug. Gun laws are constructed to be as onerous for the average citizen to comply with as possible. They are meant to be perilous for those who wish to remain upstanding, law-abiding citizens. Unfortunately Mr. Aiken found that out the hard way.
Given cases like this, or this one, where someone on Facebook posts a picture of himself unwittingly committing a Federal felony, it's hard not to marvel at Ayn Rand's prescience when she opined,
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.
I would bet that many folks have no clue that attaching a forward grip to a handgun is a federal felony. I'd imagine it's not uncommon for some young guy to think "oh cool, this'll fit on the rail of my pistol" without giving any thought to whether not it's a crime. Why would they? No reasonable person would think that doing so is a felony.
H/T to Sebastian and JP
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3 comments:
Ahhh, yes. Running afoul of the AOW (Any Other Weapon) stamp is a serious no-no.
It is HIGH time that these backwards and archaic, asinine laws get reformed. Guns and gun products have and are changing, yet the compliance laws are at best, 21 years outdated.
Thanks for the linkage.
Looks like someone is lifting your posts....
http://nwodaily.com/2010/11/creating-criminals/
JP - I noticed they've stolen a whole ton of my posts.
Looks to be some kind of aggregation site that republishes other folks content w/o attribution.
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