Covington VA --(Ammoland.com)- A Virginia CHP holder, Guy Ackerman, inadvertently brought a handgun with him into NJ.
He discovered the gun in his car and rather than leave it in there with valet parking, he took the unloaded revolver to his room and locked it in the room safe. The valet had noticed the gun when it was in the car and told the police, who arrested Guy and charged him with unlawful weapon possession – a felony in NJ.
The prosecutor is refusing to allow Guy an option to avoid jail time, an option that is normally available in such cases.
Guy is really in a tough spot. If he takes the prosecutor’s current “deal,” Guy will spend one year in prison before being able to apply for parole. If denied, he will have to serve up to three years. If he rejects the idea of a “guilty” plea and is found guilty in a trial, he then faces a minimum jail sentence of between five and ten years.
Of course, if he wins the trial, he would be free. However, we are talking New Jersey.
This is why I avoid New Jersey, preferring not to leave America.
Here is a web site that provides details on Guy’s situation, as well as a petition to sign asking that Guy be given the non-felony option: www.wesupportourguy.com
First of all, does anyone believe he forgot he had the gun in the car until he pulled up to the casino? I don't. I figure he was like a lot of gun owners who think they can do whatever they want and get away with it. When caught, they forgot. It's pathetic. Describing him as a victim of his own forgetfulness and then a hero of gun security for bringing the gun into the hotel is transparent pro-gun bullshit.
Secondly, I couldn't find a thing about this case except on AmmoLand and that support site they linked to. I wouldn't be surprised if they invented the whole thing.
But I will say this, if it is exactly as presented here, jail time is excessive. That makes me wonder if there are extenuating circumstances, other than lying about having forgotten he had the gun, which naturally AmmoLand would have omitted.
MikeB (4/20/14): "Please provide the links to the "few second amendment zealots" who've been persecuted in this way."
ReplyDeleteAhem- how about this guy?
This is literally a one-in-a-million anomaly. Yet, you're basing your whole argument on this.
DeleteThis, Aitken, The Texan who was moving to Maine and stopped for a nap so he didn't kill anyone...
DeleteAll One in a million!
Well, it depends on what you want to compare them to, all gun owners or just all idiot gun owners. Either way, the ones who actually go to jail for this stuff are one in a million or one in many millions.
DeleteYou guys love to use the one-tenth-of-one-percent argument when we talk about accidental kid deaths and other things but all of a sudden extremely rare situations of poor persecuted gun owners getting mistreated is a big deal?
Because, Mike, mistreatment of anyone is a big deal.
DeleteWhen it comes to the arguments over accidental deaths we argue against your legislative solutions. That doesn't mean we don't want a solution, just not yours. We, on the other hand, are constantly trying to push for better practices, better training, etc. We have our own discussions trying to find and root out bad practices.
When the issue is legal mistreatment, whether it's of gun owners, or anyone else, the answer is to fix the laws in question. You claim to be a fan of fair legal treatment and to oppose things such as private prisons, lengthy sentences for victimless crimes and crimes that could better be punished by restitution to the victims, but when it's gun owners being mistreated by the system, you suddenly change your tune and want to keep the status quo. Can you really not see the inconsistency in your position?
That's not true. You don't want solutions. If you did you'd support background checks and all the other gun control laws we want. To say they wouldn't work is a lie. You know they would work but you think the price is too high, the price to your twisted concept of freedom and rights.
DeleteNice false choice there. Embrace your solutions--all of them together--or want no solution. And this right after I talked about the ways we seek to solve the problem.
DeleteAnd, nothing about the original topic we were discussing--you completed your shift away from the issue of legal mistreatment since you didn't want to admit that we should try to fix the law to root out unfairness regarding gun owners as much as we do for others.
"Embrace your solutions--all of them together--or want no solution."
DeleteDo you accept ANY of my solutions? The way you phrased that, in your typical misleading way, is like you accept some of what I offer but not all.
Actually, I was merely pointing out that you were demanding complete acceptance of your demands--something you explicitly said:
Delete"You'd support background checks and all the other gun control laws we want."
You demand full acceptance of all of your demands as a sign of wanting a solution. I point out that this is a false choice. You then attack me suggesting that I'm being misleading for framing your false choice in the same terms you used.
1. Free states should pass laws declaring that in their own jurisdictions, gun convictions in slave states do not disqualify a person from owning or carrying a gun.
ReplyDelete2. I can carry all the books I want across the country. Rights are rights.
3. The Firearm Owners Protection Act needs to be revised to say that states like New Jersey cannot prosecute visitors from out of state who bring their guns, but keep them unloaded and locked up. (And yes, I know that's not the case here.)
Then you need a federal law that trumps State law, so you can go from State to State and not run into those problems. It's a federal, constitutional right. It should not matter where you live, or where you travel to.
DeleteAs I keep saying, if you don’t support prison for this type of case, why do you support writing the law that way? Why chastise those who oppose it? And can you really say you oppose it when you call him a lying scofflaw, say he must have been up to no good, and sarcastically call him a “poor persecuted gun owner”?
ReplyDeleteThe prosecutor is refusing to allow Guy an option to avoid jail time, an option that is normally available in such cases.
This seems to be the thing you glom on to in our arguments- that most people don’t have the book thrown at them, which I don’t dispute. As I said before, this is across the board- not just for gun violations. By why allow that discretion if it is wrong? And as you can see, it does happen- particularly in New Jersey, Chicago, DC, etc. Why not just write the punishment to fit the crime (and I must add that a lot of crimes should not be crimes to begin with, but that’s another discussion)? I find this practice of overcharging to be violation of citizen’s sixth amendment rights by coercing people into forgoing their right to be judged by their peers.
“The law says you get a felony and 10 years… but take this plea deal of a misdemeanor, community service, and a $1000 fine, and you can get your life back.”
When faced with the risk, the cost, and the length of time it would take to defend themselves, an innocent person (or a person guilty of an unjust/unconstitutional crime) will be very tempted to take the deal instead of fighting. Ideally, criminal law should be written such that the system could handle 100% conviction of every crime. Obviously, that couldn’t even be close to happening. If by an act of magic, authorities knew every crime being committed with certainty, the system would break. You’d suddenly have to scrap the majority of criminal code, and severely curtail the punishment for anything not serious, because you couldn’t possibly enforce it. Instead, what we see in today’s system is a mixture of, bad luck and selective bias on who gets punished. And Mike, considering your views on how racist the country is, that selective bias element should trouble you.
I told you, I think we need laws with stronger sentences than will normally be given to a first-time offender for the repeat offenders and those with negative extenuating circumstances.
DeleteWhy don't you and the other pro-gun commenters use the same logic you use on the unarmed drunk teenager who climbs in the wrong window and gets killed for his trouble? For him you say if he didn't want to get dead he shouldn't break into peoples' homes. But for this poor persecuted gun owner we don't hear anyone saying if he didn't want to go to jail in NJ he shouldn't have "forgotten" his gun.
You see how you guys run. A gun owner shoots an unarmed kid and you blame the kid. A gun owner "forgets" his gun on a trip to Atlantic City and you blame the laws of NJ. You refuse to hold fellow gun owners responsible for their actions. That's bias and that's dishonesty.
Then why aren't you advocating for laws to have light sentences for first time offenders and heavier ones for repeat offenders--laws that are intended to be applied the way you suggest are written that way, not written to give full discretion to whichever D.A.'s lap it falls into.
DeleteBecause one-in-a-million anomalies don't merit the attention and they certainly don't support your claims of oppressive laws which hurt good people.
DeleteLook at you. You're calling following the letter of the law an "anomaly".
DeleteMike,
DeleteIf you're going to single out the gun issue and decide that injustices in how we deal with it are ok, then kindly stop advocating for changes in how we deal with drug offenders. By accepting injustice in one area of the law you are undercutting the moral foundation of your opposition to it in other areas.
The rest of us who oppose injustice in our system don't need the liability of an ally so susceptible to criticism that he picks and chooses when injustice is ok and when it isn't. You're doing exactly what many of the worthless Republican leaders do when they advocate gun rights and then turn around and push tough minimum sentence drug laws--you've just comically inverted their position.
Conservawack gunsucks believe that laws are for suckers, and if you are conservative gunsuck, you don't have to obey any laws you don't like. In other words, might makes right, and we are back to feudalism and the rule of force. I am a liberal. I believe that the law governs our behavior. Lock the turd up.
ReplyDeleteHere's hoping that every law you've accidentally or forgetfully violated is prosecuted against you with the same rigor you want for others.
DeletePeople who forget to pay their taxes get punished. People who forget they are driving over the speed limit get punished. Ignorance, or forgetting their was a law is not a defense to evade punishment. And yes, depending on many factors some get much stiffer punishment for the same crime.
DeleteThe get punished with fines.
DeleteSorry TS tax cheats go to jail all the time, so do other law breakers.
DeleteAnd yes, depending on many factors some get much stiffer punishment for the same crime, including jail time.
"Sorry TS tax cheats go to jail all the time, so do other law breakers."
DeleteSpeeders don’t. And I did misreport my tax return one time and the IRS sent me a bill with penalties. I did not end up in jail.
So do gun owners who "forget," except for your two or three anomalies.
DeleteBut Mike, the law doesn't allow speeders or people who make simple tax mistakes to go to prison.
DeleteYou're wrong on both counts, TS. Some speeders and tax cheats do indeed go to prison. But, in your petty contentious way you have to insist they don't thereby turning the discussion into a nit-picking drag.
DeleteWhen they go to jail it is because the law is specifically written from harsher punishments for more serious infractions. Like driving 150mph and killing someone, or wanton tax evasion. The law is not written where any infraction is a prison term but we hope for judges and prosecutors to save it for the bad ones.
DeleteYou insist on calling this guy a lying scofflaw and suggesting he meant to take the gun there and is lying about forgetting that it was in the car.
ReplyDeleteHow does this make sense to you? Put yourself into the shoes of a scofflaw--you're probably not going to get caught by a valet accidentally spotting your gun. You're likely going to have a plan and have the gun hidden so that you can get away with your law breaking, dumping the gun into a briefcase or a backpack as you enter the parking lot, etc.
Could the guy be a scofflaw? Sure. Unlikely, I think, but possible. You, however, have decreed from on high that there is NO CHANCE that he forgot the gun was in the car and that to suggest otherwise is bullshit.
I'm glad we have omniscient people like you!
Regarding your second point, work on your Google Fu. Didn't take much work to find a local Atlantic City report of the arrest:
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/communities/atlantic-city_pleasantville_brigantine/virginia-man-charged-with-having-gun-in-room-at-atlantic/article_bf2e04e6-e40e-11e2-a8e4-001a4bcf887a.html?mode=jqm
Maybe check a bit more before you start throwing false accusations of people making up stories?
Regarding the third point, loved how you slandered the guy explicitly by saying that he was lying about forgetting the gun. As for the extreme charges and the extenuating circumstances you suggest, none of those things have come into play in other cases where Jersey has thrown the book at first time offenders--e.g. Aitken, Reininger. Nor is it the first time that you've made weak statements about how the amount of jail time might be a little excessive, but that the convictions themselves are perfectly appropriate--even in the case of Reininger whose crime was pulling over for a nap for the safety of others rather than powering through to the state border first.
So you think it's more believable that the guy really forgot he had the gun in the glove compartment?
DeleteI just reread the Reininger case which I'd only vaguely remembered. He had a veritable arsenal in the trunk, 21 guns in all. Maybe that had something to do with it.
Mike,
DeleteYes, I find it believable that he forgot it was there--and yes, I find it more believable than that he was clumsily smuggling it--people intentionally violating laws typically try to hide what they're doing quite a bit better.
As for Reininger, yes, he had a bunch of guns--he was moving his entire collection from one state to another. What the heck does that have to do with the fact that he was just passing through the state (something protected by Federal Law) but got into trouble since he decided it was necessary to stop for a quick nap so he didn't kill someone--something that caused him to run afoul of New Jersey's ridiculous interpretation of the Federal law? The number of guns doesn't change the fact that he was just passing through and only pulled off to make sure he didn't doze off and hit somebody.
What about the gun smuggler who's moving his merchandise into Newark or Camden and says the same thing Reininger said when he gets caught. The two situations could be indistinguishable. That's why there are laws against it.
DeleteAbout "forgetting," is that acceptable to you? Is it possible for a responsible gun owner to "forget?"
See, you say that you think prison is excessive for these cases, but you defend the practice every time.
DeleteWhen I am legally transporting guns to the shooting range, it happens to be indistinguishable from a smuggler on his way to Mexico. So I guess I should go to prison because that smuggler might say he’s on his way to the range if he were pulled over.
Mike,
DeleteThat excuse about the gun runner is the reason we have seen our legal system degraded in this country--that is a frequent argument used by lazy prosecutors and by politicians who want to be seen as being "tough on crime."
I'm not just talking about guns here--it started in the drug arena. Prosecutors didn't want to be bothered with needing to prove intent to sell, so they made possession of x amount proof of intent to sell. Eventually we got to the point that we had a granny who bought too much sudafed in a month (because she was raising several snot nosed grandkids) and got treated as if she was a meth cooker. Here's one of the old articles about it:
http://www.tribstar.com/local/x46868452/Wabash-Valley-woman-didn-t-realize-second-cold-medicine-purchase-violated-drug-laws
Everyone acknowledged she wasn't cooking meth, but they kept up the prosecution anyway because that's how the law was written.
Similar things have been done in other areas of the law--you can look at the development of all sorts of laws and watch how something gets passed, and since a few people are getting off, rather than try to amend the law carefully, it eventually just gets amended so that it's more or less a strict liability issue, and we trust prosecutors to only go after "bad guys."
This is an unacceptable reaction across the board, not just on gun laws.
As for the intersection with guns, let the police investigate and prove that the gun runner is running guns into Camden. Jailing a man we Know was not gun running is completely inappropriate as a tactic to make sure we can get the gun runner.
Finally, regarding the issue of forgetting a gun was in the vehicle, I assume you read my comments about gun safety a couple days ago where I talked about the need to keep one's head in the game?
Yes, it is irresponsible to forget that a gun is in one's vehicle. Does it make one an irresponsible gun owner? In that instance, yes. On the whole, it could be an isolated incident of irresponsibility or symptomatic of a pattern.
I don't consider it acceptable behavior to forget that one has a gun, but I don't consider it to be something that needs to be punished by law in every instance. Here, the guy irresponsibly forgot that he had his gun in the vehicle. He then appears to have tried to mitigate the issue by locking the gun in a safe where it would be protected until he left. On the one hand, I don't think that there should be a law banning possession like New Jersey has. However, with that law in place, I think this is an issue where the prosecutor should certainly have used discretion in handling the case--why not a fine and make him pay for shipping the gun to an FFL in his home state for him to pick up when he got home?
A shame guns aren't treated like cars, where legal possession is legal nationwide.
ReplyDeleteLib, considering that there have been cases of the government deciding to not enforce laws it doesn't approve of, why is it ok for the government, and not the citizen?
Prosecutors have legal authority to prosecute, or not prosecute and determine what punishment to ask a court for. Citizens do not have a right to break, or ignore the law. And ignorance of the law, or forgetting a law is not a defense to escape punishment.
ReplyDelete"Prosecutors have legal authority to prosecute, or not prosecute and determine what punishment to ask a court for. Citizens do not have a right to break, or ignore the law."
ReplyDeleteVery true Anon, prosecutors do have that discretion. What I was referring to were instances where jurisdictions decide to not enforce laws. Much has been made of law enforcement officials declaring that they would not enforce various onerous gun laws.
However, not a whole lot has been said of various cities enacting ordinances declaring themselves to be sanctuary cities which forbid their local officials from enforcing immigration law. Can you imagine the response if cities of counties started to declare themselves to be gun law sanctuaries?
Actually, you don't have to imagine, such laws have already been proposed, with much wailing and handwringing following.
Mike, laws are written with different sentences for first time, vs. repeat offenders. These laws allow jail time on first offense. It doesn’t have to be written that way. If you are worried about extenuating circumstances- those circumstances can be the crime as well. Like there being a difference between transporting a gun through New Jersey, vs. transporting a gun through New Jersey and threatening people with it. The threat can be the crime. What extenuating circumstances are you thinking about?
ReplyDelete