Posted on 07/20/2007 7:40:18 AM PDT by wilco200
I don't think you can conclude that based on this - after the purchase did he handle or "take possession" of the gun? If so, the crime was clearly committed.
I think someone should be taking a hard look at Bailey's financial records...Preferably going back to when left high school. In addition, check for criminal/civil records too.
You're the one who said he didn't handle the gun. I have no idea if he did, and why if he examined and handled the gun that the other guy legally bought would that make this a straw purchase? If handling and examining a gun that my buddy bought after we leave a gun show is against the law, they'll be coming for me any day now.
The “defendant” in this case is the author of this column. Therefore what he wrote about his participation in this scheme is questionable as to its accuracy.
He very well could have done a straw purchase, which is stupid, not stupid enough though to brag about or admit it in a newspaper column.
I live nowhere near NH or Mass, and I can't speak to their laws. All I know is he could be charged with the intent to commit a crime most places. He admitted in his writing that he intended to have someone purchase a gun in a neighboring state for him, and then bring it back to prove how easy it is for criminals to do, but if he didn't commit the intended crime, it will be very difficult to get a conviction. If he's done anything here, it's defraud his employer of $ 250 to give to a friend to make a legal gun purchase.
The "actual transaction" as you call it appears to be nothing more than a legal resident making a legal purchase at a legal gun show.
And he may have committed a murder on the way home, but unless the ATF finds some proof of either, I don't think he will be charged with a crime.
Contrary to what he says in his column that he set out to do (prove how easy it is for a criminal to buy a gun in neighboring NH and bring it back to Mass,) all he did was prove how easy it is for a legal resident of NH to legally purchase a gun at a NH gun show. Perhaps he should have saved himself a trip and just asked someone if it's easy or not to make a legal gun purchase in NH.
What’s the “[sic]” in the title for?
Columnist admits to straw purchase, film (and indictment) at 11.
Incorrect. What you describe above is an illegal straw purchase (money from one person, "purchase" via another).
To jail he should go.
“Dear Mr. Bailey,
I am writing to better understand your point in your recent column, “The ATF & Me.” You were caught purchasing a handgun illegally.
Are you now advocating that the current gun laws work or are you suggesting that opinion journalists should not be subject to those laws?
Just checking.
Sincerely,”
“Incorrect. What you describe above is an illegal straw purchase (money from one person, “purchase” via another).”
So you are arguing that if I give you $300 for your birthday and you go and legally buy a handgun it’s a straw purchase? Ridiculous.
bump
"...it took Belair, a New Hampshire resident and licensed gun owner, less than 20 minutes to complete the purchase ... The gun, which retails for $349, was bargain-priced at $240, which I had given to Belair. (And, of course, expensed to the Globe.) Belair could have bought 100 guns in tax-free, no-limit New Hampshire that day, and I could have put them in my trunk and driven (illegally) home. That was exactly the point I was making. That is not what I did. Belair took the gun with him; I'm afraid of guns.
Steve Bailey, the reporter simply gave or loaned money to Walter Belair. Walter Belair is a New Hampshire resident, legally able to buy the revolver. Walter Belair took the gun home, and indeed still had it in his possession when the ATF showed up.
If Steve Bailey broke the law here, then so did my wife when she bought a gun for me at Christmas. So did I when I bought a gun for my granddaughter on the occasion of her 8th birthday, and so do tens of thousands of people yearly as they do the same.
Were Steve Bailey to have taken the gun, or had he filled out the paperwork then turned it over to Belair on Belair's dime, then yes, Straw Purchase. That did not happen here.
That said, I'm not the ATF and they are investigating. They can issue the opposite opinion as easy as they could issue one that the sky was green. fro that point on, legally the sky would be green unless a court of law overturned it.
Such is life with the ATF.
LOL!!
Mr Smith asks Mr. Jones to purchase a firearm for Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith gives Mr. Jones the money for the firearm. Mr. Jones is NOT the actual buyer of the firearm and must answer "no" to question 11.a. The licensee may not transfer the firearm to Mr. Jones.
This is exactly what Bailey described - Bailey is Mr. Smith, and Belair is Mr. Jones. Very simple.
Here’s the e-mail I sent to Bailey:
Mr Bailey,
You do realize you broke the law, and admitted it on the radio, don’t you?
Of course the investigation is not a coincidence, you threw the case right in their laps on the radio. Like the bike cop who was nice enough to give me a warning for making an illegal U-turn a while back said, “you did it right in front of me, so I couldn’t not pull you over.”
We do have a uniform system of monitoring gun sales, it’s called the ATF Form 4473 and the National Instant Check System, and a set of laws imposing penalties for violating its requirements.
Right on the form it says:
http://www.ocshooters.com/Gen/Form-4473/ATF-FORM-4473-pg3bg.gif
“Mr Smith [that’s you] asks Mr. Jones [that’s Belair] to purchase a firearm for Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith gives Mr. Jones the money for the firearm. Mr. Jones is NOT the actual buyer of the firearm and must answer “no” to question 11.a. The licensee may not transfer the firearm to Mr. Jones.”
Yes, Belair could have bought 100 guns, but the ATF also requires that any purchase of more than one firearm at a time must be immediately reported by the dealer on a Form 3310.4 via fax to the ATF National Tracing Center and the state or local police no later than the close of business on the day of the transaction, and that would undoubtedly have flagged the transaction and launched an investigation much sooner than the one that has begun for your heretofore undiscovered crime. And that’s been the law since 1968.
It’s usually not hard to break the law. As you’re discovering, it’s not always easy to get away with it.
While you’re pondering this issue, consider that New Hampshire has a crime rate far lower than Massachusetts, because New Hampshire doesn’t deny the fundamental human right of self-defense like your state does.
I recall a couple of years ago, a Mass. police chief was griping about having to issue pepper spray permits to women, who he described as “arming themselves to the teeth,” when there was a serial home-invasion rapist/murderer on the loose. Pretty twisted, if you ask me, especially when about a quarter to a third of the time, pepper spray just enrages the target, even at police strength.
You should educate yourself on the issues before spouting off in the newspaper, and you should not let your irrational phobias of mechanical devices bias your reporting. See http://www.jpfo.org/ragingagainstselfdefense.htm
There’s going to be a machine gun shooting event in Pelham, NH at the Pelham Fish & Game Club on August 5. If you can take enough benzodiazepines to get through it, you might learn a thing or two.
Michael Pelletier
Gun Control Is Socialist
by
Larry Pratt
As columnist Paul Craig Roberts has put it, “Law, once a shield of the innocent, is now a weapon in the hands of government.”
Roberts is referring to a long and dangerous trend to expand the concept of crime to actions and non-actions in which no individual is harmed or threatened with harm. In our time one can be convicted of a felony and put in jail for killing a turtle, chopping down a tree, draining a swamp, polluting a body of water, and generally not doing everything that some bureaucrat says you have to do.
When we study socialist countries — be they Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union or too many others — we find a concept in the law called “crimes against the state.” These are also sometimes called crimes against the people. In earlier days, they might have been called crimes against the king’s peace. Biblically and constitutionally, crimes are against individuals and should result in capital punishment, restitution or acquittal. Non-criminal damages should lead to restitution. In the 17th and 18th centuries, this was how the criminal justice system operated in America.
Add to these crimes against the state that of possessing a prohibited object, specifically a firearm. Several local jurisdictions in the U.S. have banned a wide range of guns, and the federal government has banned a bunch as well. One need not commit a crime to risk being sent to jail for possessing a combination of metal, wood, and plastic parts.
What our founders required by law — carrying guns — is now illegal in many jurisdictions. And in all but Vermont and Alaska, permission is needed to exercise the “right” to bear a concealed firearm.
To the extent that the United States has imposed gun controls on a population “protected” by our Bill of Rights, we have a measure of how socialist our country has become. Our government was founded on the idea that individuals have God-given rights that need to be protected from that same government. Furthermore, government was seen as having no rights, but only a few well-defined duties. Socialism requires the reversal of our founding premises.
In Joyce Lee Malcom’s study of Guns and Violence: The English Experience we find the record of how gun control came to England. It began to get very restrictive following World War II. Now that most guns have been confiscated (all legal guns were registered long ago), England is roaring into the socialist pit.
(Listen to my interview with Professor Malcolm about her book on the GOA website. Go to http://gunowners.org/radio.htm and click on Previous Episodes.)
Margaret Thatcher sold off many government-owned industries when she was Prime Minister, but as we can see in the U.S., socialism through regulation can be just as stultifying as socialism in which the government owns the productive sector. Regulatory socialism was the Nazi model, proving that nominal private ownership does not prevent control from the center.
England is moving to crush other personal freedoms now that gun ownership has been virtually eliminated. Prime Minister Tony Blair has proposed restricting jury trials, eliminating the prohibition on double jeopardy and most ominously, proposing that an anonymous complaint be enough to put somebody in jail because he is deemed a danger to himself or the community.
Worse still, self-defense — even without a gun — is penalized. Everything else is monopolized in socialist England, so it is no surprise that self-defense becomes a monopoly of the state.
At the core of the Christian common law, the people are understood to be the owners of the law. Socialism considers law (and everything else) to belong to the government or to be controlled by it. The police are under the control of whoever owns the law.
Consider who are the most ardent gun control advocates in America. Senators Charles Schumer, Hillary Clinton and Diane Feinstein are among the most eager to ban guns, and they are among the most socialist of our national politicians.
In the House, a dedicated opponent of firearms ownership and self-defense is Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, an avowed socialist. This can be said because she is a member of the House Progressive Caucus, which is affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, which is affiliated with Socialist International.
Socialism is based on the arrogant assumption that there are a few (elected or in power by force) who are uniquely suited to decide all issues of life. Folks who think like that are hardly likely to make an exception for their subjects to take personal responsibility for their own defense.
As a rule, the more socialist the politicians, the more they want to restrict gun ownership to those who protect politicians — whether that be law enforcement agencies or private security guards (such as the NY City armed detective who travels as an armed guard for Sen. Schumer). Law enforcement is in place largely to tell the subjects of the socialists to obey the regulations of the regime or risk being put in jail.
Socialists do not like bad attitudes among their subjects, as we saw at Ruby Ridge and Waco, or as we saw in Chicago when Secret Service officers threatened a woman who expressed her disgust with Bill Clinton.
Socialists have an “us versus them” view of society. They are angry and feel threatened when they hear criticism of their policies. Did you see Sen. Clinton screaming at the top of her lungs when some of her subjects disagreed with her position on the Iraq war? As one wag quipped, he thought she was talking to Bill when she first heard her.
In any case, a government that sports a “bad attitude” combined with the belief that one is everyone else’s Big Brother will result in a socialist crusade against guns.
Fight socialism. Buy a gun.
That is not what happened here. Mr. Smith paid for Mr. Jones to buy a gun for Mr. Jones!
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