Pelleteri, an expert marksman who was once employed as a firearms instructor, won a contest hosted by a police department. He received, from the police, a legal Marlin semi-automatic rifle that held 17 rounds of ammunition. Several years later, the State of New Jersey amended N.J.S.A 2C:39-1(w)(4) dealing with firearms and because his rifle held more than 15 rounds, Mr. Pelleteri’s rifle was subject to the “assault firearm” ban enacted in 1990. The decision in his case says that “[w]hen the police recovered the gun from defendant’s residence in December 1993, it still had the manufacturer’s tags and the owner’s manual attached to the trigger guard.”
To be clear, Mr. Pelleteri wasn’t a criminal before he received this rifle form a police department. There is no indication that he had committed a crime to bring the attention of the police upon him (it is unclear in the record why police were at his home). By all accounts, he was an upstanding, law abiding member of society and this rifle, capable of holding 17 rounds was perfectly legal when a police officer gave it to Mr. Pelleteri in the 1980s. But now, it would now be the cause of his incarceration.
via Just Because I’m Paranoid: Addressing Obstacles to Gun Control- Keith Kaplan @kkaplan.
Some idiot in Twitter was arguing about Gun Owners being paranoid and that the only way to become felons was to purportedly to break the law. He insisted that the government could not make people into felons and that we were smoking some sort of medicinal herb.
As much I tried to explain, he could not understand that the concept of Mens Rea (guilty mind or breaking a law on purpose) is on it way to extinction in the legal framework of the United States. We have become a country of Malum Prohibitum (crimes made so by statute) and that nobody is immune….unless you are one of the special ones.
“There ought to be a law” has come home to roost…but it is an ostrich and not a simple chicken. We are about to be smothered under the fat thighs of unchecked legislation.
Hat Tip: NJ 2nd Amendment Society
that Marlin was a 22………..
Glad you enjoyed it. Yes, it was a Marlin 22, later Marlin came out with a 15 round version nicknamed the “Jersey Marlin”.
p.s. I would appreciate if you could put my name on the post as well.
You can follow me on twitter @kkaplan
Columbia Law Review Sidebar, July 8, 2013. Article entitled Ham Sandwich Nation.
Quick read. It is about how prosecutors have a game where they try to convict a ham sandwich of a felony. It is getting easier and easier every day.