Farmer said improper sales, such as the ones that the undercover agents pulled off, happen frequently. If the buyer can produce valid identification, passes a background check and takes legal responsibility for the gun, the sale will go through, he said.This is pretty much what I expected to find: No crimes are being committed by the gun dealer's targeted in Bloomberg's "sting"--only routine procedures followed when one person gives another the gift of a gun.
"It's the same scenario repeated many, many, many times," Farmer said. "Husbands buy guns for their wives, boyfriends buy for their girlfriends, fathers buy for their daughters."
Here's another account from a pawn shop in South Carolina:
The woman filled out papers registering the sale and signed a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives declaration saying she was the buyer and buying for someone else, he said.It appears these dealers were following the book to conduct a legal sale in both instances. It wouldn't surprise me to find this chain of events repeat itself in all 15 of the instances Bloomberg would have us believe resulted in "illegal gun sales," where dealers knew the purchasers "would turn the weapons over to criminals."
Men routinely advise women on what guns to buy, Mickalis said, adding "I think they were specifically sent here to create a lawsuit."
Is someone intentionally lying here?
If any lawbreaking has occurred, it appears to have been within the Bloomberg "sting team" camp.
Was the federal gun purchase form falsified?
Were the "agents," that is, private investigators, that is, private citizens with no special privileges and immunities, residents of the states in which they made their purchases? If not, is this a violation of GCA '68, which prohibits, among other things, unlicensed individuals from acquiring handguns outside their state of residence?
6 comments:
In response to this item and partial response to your answer to a comment I posted on another item. Fabricating a scenario for the purpose of gain through a lawsuit is a Fraud Upon the Court and is a crime. Bloomberg and company cannot escape that charge, no matter how careful they were to be in technical compliance otherwise. I say cannot escape that charge, but I meant of their own volition. They, of course, can escape the charge with the complicity of equally criminal law enforcers.
I would bet that the purchases were made by contract personnel who could rightfully buy in each state. It appears to this point that fraud upon the court may be the only law broken here, despite the lies told to the press. However, those lies are part of the fraud and therefore part of the crime.
There may be an issue of federal law being violated here, even if the investigator sent out was a resident of the state in question. The first question in Section 12 of the ATF Form 4473 is “Are you the actual buyer of the firearm(s) listed on this form? WARNING: You are not the actual buyer if you are acquiring the firearm on behalf of another person.”
Only in a circumstance where the investigator intended to retain ownership of the firearm herself, or intended to give the firearm away as a gift, could she be said to have truthfully completed the ATF Form 4473 Section 12a.
It seems highly likely that if she bought the firearms with funds provided by NYC, she has committed a federal offense, in that she was buying the firearm for another.
A C Frechtling said...
There may be an issue of federal law being violated here....
I'll say:
No 1 - "THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE
TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.
No 2 - "The defence of one's self, justly called the primary law of nature, is not, nor can it be abrogated by any regulation of municipal law." - James Wilson
No 3 - "Natural rights [are] the objects for the protection of which society is formed and municipal laws established." - Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Monroe, 1797
No 4 - "Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual." - Thomas Jefferson to Isaac H. Tiffany, 1819
No 5 - "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, and this without any qualification as to their condition or degree, as is the case in the British government."
- St. George Tucker, Blackstone's Commentaries
No 6 - "Nor does this conclusion by any means suppose a superiority of the judicial to the legislative power. It only supposes that the power of the People is SUPERIOR to both; and that where the will of the legislature, declared in its statutes, stands in OPPOSITION to that of The People, DECLARED IN THE CONSTITUTION, the judges ought to be governed by the LATTER rather than the former. They ought to regulate their decisions by the FUNDAMENTAL LAWS, rather than by those which are NOT fundamental." - Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #78
Take a hike Mike, you BloominIdiot!
Typing one handed: so brevity. See Hardy: http://armsandthelaw.com/archives/2006/05/notes_on_nra_co_1.php
Bloomberg has violated federal on several counts: 1) he has hired investigators to perform services outside his jurisdiction, 2) he has refused to turn over evidence in the case, 3) by his direction, his investigators are probably not residents of the states in question and are most likely using counterfeit identification, and 4) also by his direction, his investigators are deliberately falsifying a legal document. If Bloomberg isn't indicted on at least these crimes, then there is no point in pursuing justice at all in this country any longer.
btw, I wrote about the same topic a few days ago.
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