PA Bill Number: HB335
Title: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons.
Description: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons. ...
Last Action: Removed from table
Last Action Date: May 1, 2024
When the law-abiding are turned into criminals :: 04/05/2015
In recent years I’ve often brought attention to cases of people being entangled in our nation’s complex, confusing and often irrational gun laws. People like David Olofson, who was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for illegal transfer of a “machine gun” after his standard, semi-auto, AR15-style rifle – with no altered or modified parts – malfunctioned as a friend was shooting it and fired multiple shots with one pull of the trigger.
Or FBI Special Agent John Shipley, who was sentenced to two years for “engaging in the business” of buying and selling firearms, even though all of his sales were legal, and he maintained better records than most private sellers – something that was actually used as evidence against him during his trial.
Or the recent case of Shaneen Allen, the single mom who got a gun and carry permit after being robbed twice, and who, when stopped for a minor traffic violation, informed the officer about the gun in her purse. Unfortunately, the incident occurred in New Jersey, across the river from Allen’s Pennsylvania home. Shaneen spent 40 days in jail before finally getting out on bail, and was facing a minimum, mandatory three-year sentence. But thanks to the efforts of attorney Evan Nappen, and the outraged cries of gun owners from around the country – not to mention the governor’s presidential aspirations – she was eventually given a suspended sentence deal that will be expunged upon completion.
Then there’s the Reese family, two of whom were denied bail and kept in custody for 18 months because they sold guns and ammunition to customers in their gun shop whom they “should have known” were lying on federal forms.
Recently, there was an interesting case in Ohio that is worth looking at more closely. A sheriff’s deputy named Eric Spicer used his office to procure a select-fire, AR-style carbine with his own money, then maintained possession of the gun after he was fired from the agency.
The case is complicated with a bit of “he said – he said” between Spicer and his former boss, and by issues surrounding his firing.
According to Spicer, he informed his boss of his desire to acquire the full-auto capable carbine and got permission to submit the appropriate paperwork under the sheriff’s signature. The sheriff said he recalled giving Spicer permission to buy an AR-type rifle, but that he didn’t know the gun was full-auto capable, and said he never gave permission for Spicer to sign his name to the paperwork. After Spicer was fired over an unrelated matter – which still has a Wrongful Dismissal suit pending – he maintained possession of the $1,700 firearm he had paid for.
When another area police agency, where Spicer was seeking employment, inquired about having the paperwork for the firearm transferred from the sheriff’s office to their department, the question was passed on to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, commonly referred to as the ATF. During that inquiry, the ATF learned that the gun was in Spicer’s possession, even though he was no longer employed by the sheriff’s office. That disclosure resulted in ATF raiding Spicer’s residence and arresting him for illegal possession of a machine gun.
Spicer was charged with a variety of criminal counts, but was eventually found guilty of only two: knowingly possessing a machine gun and possessing a machine gun that was not registered to him. For those convictions, Spicer was sentenced to five years of probation. Since the convictions were felonies, Spicer loses his right to possess any firearms for the rest of his life, thus ending his career in law enforcement.
The case is frustrating to everyone. Prosecutors are protesting the “light” sentence handed down by the judge. Spicer maintains that he was trying to abide by the country’s convoluted gun laws and that his prosecution was malicious. Law enforcement critics point to the light sentence as another example of special consideration for police, and rights advocates continue to question why laws, agencies and the courts waste resources focusing on people who are not violent criminals, but who have just gotten tangled in the red tape of the system.
The disparity in sentences between Spicer and David Olofson does seem a bit out of line, but I would contend that it’s a matter of Olofson’s sentence being too harsh, not Spicer’s being too light. More important, though, is the question of why either of them was ever prosecuted in the first place. Neither Olofson nor Spicer was any sort of threat to anyone. Nor were Shaneen Allen, John Shipley, Albert Kwan and numerous others. They couldn’t be called criminals any more than someone caught speeding or jaywalking could be called a criminal. These are people found to be in violation of laws that were written and passed specifically for the stated purpose of reducing violent crime, but who were prosecuted in spite of their clear lack of any criminal intent or danger to the public.
The whole concept of gun control laws – trying to change the behavior of criminals by restricting the activities of the law-abiding – is ridiculous and will unavoidably have a much greater impact on non-criminals than on criminals. That’s wasteful and counterproductive, and it results in serious harm to many harmless and blameless people.
http://www.wnd.com/2015/04/when-the-law-abiding-are-turned-into-criminals/
