Chris in Alaska has a look at Nathan Haddad. He’s looking at a seven year prison sentence for each magazine, and he had five of them. I anxiously await someone from the gun control movement to explain to me how locking this man away for 35 years is going to benefit public safety. Fines are enough to deter honest people, so why throw the book at people like this? I’ll tell you why. Because they hate you. They hate guys like Mr. Haddad. He’s a gun owner. He going to get what’s coming to him.
6 thoughts on “What Could Be Coming Our Way?”
Comments are closed.
There are probably many examples in history of when a cause snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, because their opponents created just enough martyrs.
Not that it makes it any better but the Miller article says the sentences would be served concurrently so 7 yrs not 35.
That’s 7yrs too long for such BS laws.
Andy,
There will be no martyrs on a large scale. Even today, Emily Miller and maybe local press are the only MSM that will cover such cases in any sort of favorable manner. Once the enforcement of SAFE Act ramps up the MSM will ignore such rollups, or portray the individuals as domestic terrorists. The internet helps, but only so much.
Only if the individuals are members of the community, and their arrest sparks the outrage of the community, will people care. Yet another reason to get out there and meet people at the range, at volunteer activities, at work, etc. Nobody will give a shit if the doomsday prepper with a basement full of canned goods and ammo is hauled off to the pokey for a decade or so.
Making the crimes a felony helps distance the offender from any community support. Who, after all, is going to stick up for someone charged with a felony? How many folks stick up for recreational drug users? Heck, even the simple arrest on a felony weapons charge (which will sound scary, like “Felony possession of a large capacity weapon of mass destruction intended to kill large numbers”), even if all charges are dropped or plea bargained down to nuisance charges, is enough to ruin your life. Arrest records are now public information on the internet, free for employers, girlfriends, and others to search. No due process required to ruin a life!
Next, making everything a felony encourages plea bargain, which keeps the cases out of the jury system. This speeds the legal system along and it reduces the odds of an embarrassing jury nullification scenario.
I think the final reason that they make these offenses felonies other than to attack people like us is to strip the “offenders” of civil rights. Can’t have those nasty racist redneck evil gun nuts being allowed to vote ever, ever again, for example.
I absolutely agree with your assessment. I was only engaging in wishful thinking, based on the few examples in history when haughty oppressors roused resistance that hadn’t existed before, by overplaying their hand and creating martyrs. Such things are almost pure luck, though, and are like counting on divine intervention.
One example I have in mind is the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland, which (arguably) was a botched affair that counted on popular support that failed to emerge; but, that the British responded so brutally, summarily executing its leaders, wakened the popular support that hadn’t existed. The subsequent guerrilla war slowly escalated to a full-scale war in 1919 – 1921, and led to the sought for independence.
If Nathan Haddad wound up being sentenced to 35 years in prison for simple possession of a few tin boxes with springs in them, it would be great propaganda fodder for motivating our squishier elements, and possibly engaging some sympathy from the general public.
BTW, returning to my Irish examples, in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, people in Northern Ireland were sentenced to eight years or more in the H-Blocks for simple possession of single rounds of 5.56 ammo. It was reading about that, more than thirty years ago, that first got me interested in studying that history.