Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Why Blackstone is still crucial

Take a look at this; the BATFE has apparently convicted a man of illegally owning a "machine gun" when a gun designed to be semi-automatic misfired at the range. Think of the great legal mind when you consider that the man was sentenced to 30 months in jail despite the fact that the BATFE demonstrated no motive, despite the fact that no one was hurt by that weapon, despite the fact that the BATFE offered no statutory or regulatory definition of a true machine gun, and despite the fact that the defense was not allowed to closely examine the weapon or the evidence presented against them.

In short, exactly this kind of thing is why our forefathers cited Blackstone as a reason to throw off the rule of King George. Hopefully an appeals court throws this conviction out with prejudice, and hopefully somebody takes note and disciplines the clowns at the BATFE and DOJ who perpetrated this travesty.

4 comments:

W.B. Picklesworth said...

That's criminal and I'm not talking about Olofson. Maybe this isn't pertinent, but it especially ticks me off that they're tossing a reservist in prison for such nonsense.

Bike Bubba said...

Yup, there are a bunch of people that deserve to be in prison for this, all of them from the BATFE and DOJ, as well as a judge who apparently "forgot" the defendant's right to confront the evidence presented against him.

Reservist or not, that deserves a loss of government pension and jail time.

Mark said...

If you take a gander at the GOA website there is a link to send $s to Olofson's family and defense fund.

http://gunowners.org

Bike Bubba said...

Good point. Maybe a follow up post is appropriate here...