Posted on 08/08/2014 2:18:06 AM PDT by SMGFan
Campbell Webster, of Concord, and his friend Eryk Bean, of Londonderry, were returning from Canada on Sunday after a bagpipe competition that served as a tuneup for the world championships in Glasgow, Scotland. The 17-year-olds, fresh off winning several top prizes in Canada, got to a small border crossing in Vermont when they were told they'd have to relinquish their pipes because they contain ivory.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Bureaucracy and Ivory
Go together like
Chocolate and green peas
When they come for my piano
Cold, dead hands will
Hold the keys....
It is quite easy with a bit of training. If you look closely at a piece of ivory you can see a feature called Schraeger Lines. It looks like a cross weave, almost like a coarse fabric is embedded in the material. The angle at which these lines cross each other is distinctive and readily identifies elephant from mammoth. HOWEVER, Customs people don't seem inclined to bother with this. They pretty much go on the assumption that all natural ivory is elephant. I have even heard of a case where, to determine if the ivory was legal artificial (plastic) they drove a hot metal pin into it - ruining it but determining that it was legal plastic.
Yet another deprivation of rights under color of law:
http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/crm/242fin.php
Of course, as before, getting anyone to prosecute is another story.
That’s a great law, but in many circumstances it might be hard to find someone to take your case.
That ivory front bead on your shotgun will get it confiscated.
This is always the way with tyrannies.
The border situation is “hard”,
and pouncing on this teenager was “easy”.
They’ll do “easy”.
That's because we don't kill them when they start acting like thugs.
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