Maine Gun Seller Gets 3 Months

A fascinating story:

When Randy Goodwin started buying and reselling guns, sometimes illegally to out-of-state residents, he was trying to earn some extra money to support his five children.

The Acton resident did not know he was breaking the law, and he never thought he could be putting other families at risk.

My first thought about the length of the sentence was that it was too light, a slap on the wrist. Then I saw why in the first paragraphs of the article. The poor guy had no idea he wasn't supposed to sell guns like that.  Plus he was really sorry about it.

I wondered how many guns he'd sold.  Everybody sells some, you know in the gun culture how guns can actually become a medium of exchange.  Selling a few guns every once in a while, how bad is that?

From September 2009 to January 2010, Goodwin sold nearly 100 handguns to Joseph Burns of Lynn, Mass., Assistant U.S. Attorney Darcie McElwee wrote in court summaries of the cases against both men.

In turn, Burns distributed the guns in Massachusetts. In the fall and early winter of 2009, several guns traced to Goodwin were seized by police during arrests in Lynn.

It turns out this Burns character "pleaded guilty in June to a federal charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm. He faces as much as 10 years in prison; his sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 18."
Now, that's quite a disparity, the seller gets 3 months and the buyer could get up to 10 years. How could they explain that?. Maybe Goodwin's father has some insight.

Randy Goodwin Sr. said the exchange of guns is "an everyday occurrence" in rural Maine, and there was no bad intent in this case.

"My son's a really good dad. He has never broken the law knowingly," he said.

What's your opinion? Please don't tell me "illegal transfer of firearms to an out-of-state buyer" is a misdemeanor in Maine. That would just be the icing on the cake, a slap on the wrist and right back in business. In fact, wouldn't he be right back in business anyway? Unless we believe all that nonsense about not knowing he was breaking the law, what we've got here is one of those pretend-legitimate gun owners who are really criminals in disguise. And as the pro-gun crowd always reminds is, criminals don't obey the laws.

So, next summer if you need to pick up a gun real fast in Maine, go look up old Randy, family man and black-market gun dealer.

Please leave a comment.