Liberty is an inherently offensive lifestyle. Living in a free society guarantees that each one of us will see our most cherished principles and beliefs questioned and in some cases mocked. That psychic discomfort is the price we pay for basic civic peace. It's worth it. It's a pragmatic principle. Defend everyone else's rights, because if you don't there is no one to defend yours. -- MaxedOutMama

I don't just want gun rights... I want individual liberty, a culture of self-reliance....I want the whole bloody thing. -- Kim du Toit

The most glaring example of the cognitive dissonance on the left is the concept that human beings are inherently good, yet at the same time cannot be trusted with any kind of weapon, unless the magic fairy dust of government authority gets sprinkled upon them.-- Moshe Ben-David

The cult of the left believes that it is engaged in a great apocalyptic battle with corporations and industrialists for the ownership of the unthinking masses. Its acolytes see themselves as the individuals who have been "liberated" to think for themselves. They make choices. You however are just a member of the unthinking masses. You are not really a person, but only respond to the agendas of your corporate overlords. If you eat too much, it's because corporations make you eat. If you kill, it's because corporations encourage you to buy guns. You are not an individual. You are a social problem. -- Sultan Knish

All politics in this country now is just dress rehearsal for civil war. -- Billy Beck

Friday, December 10, 2004

Ben Stein is a Self-Confessed Felon

In the latest Spectator, Ben Stein has a piece entitled Col. Denman’s Luger. It begins:
A few days ago, a package arrived in the mail from the widow of my late father-in-law, Colonel Dale Denman, Jr., of Heber Springs, Arkansas. I opened it and there was a leather holster and inside it, a German Luger pistol. My father-in-law had taken it from a captured German officer in early 1945 and kept it for almost sixty years. He had left his wife instructions that I was to get it.
I'm very happy for Ben that he has received this important heirloom and piece of history, and that he keeps it in a drawer next to his bed, but by receiving a handgun via U.S. Mail, instead of receiving it via common-carrier or through a Federal Firearms Licensee, he has violated federal law, to wit:
May a nonlicensee ship a firearm through the U. S. Postal Service?

A nonlicensee may mail a shotgun or rifle to a resident of his or her own state or to a licensee in any state. Handguns are not mailable. A common or contract carrier must be used to ship a handgun. A nonlicensee may not transfer any firearm to a nonlicensed resident of another state. The Postal Service recommends that longguns be sent by registered mail and that no marking of any kind which would indicate the nature of the contents be placed on the outside of any parcel containing firearms.
If the gun shipped from Heber Springs, Arkansas to Ben in Hollywood, it was an interstate transfer, and that transfer must be through an FFL dealer.

So Ben Stein has been party to not one, but two federal felonies, to which he has confessed in print. Ben says in his piece:
I have relatives and friends who get out of bed every morning and do an hour of exercise to keep them fit. I don't do that. My exercise is that I get out of bed and hit my knees and thank God for waking up in America, where I live in peace and freedom, no Gestapo chasing me, no KGB putting me in the Gulag, no Hamas blowing me up. All thanks to men like Col. Denman and the heroism he showed capturing this Luger.
Except that, by confessing his crime, the BATFE's jackboot squad can now get a warrant and perform a dynamic-entry on Mr. Stein's home to arrest him and confiscate his illegal Luger - or worse.

Of course, this won't happen since Ben Stein is a politically connected celebrity, but it could happen to you or me if we were similarly ignorant of the law.

We have no Gestapo or KGB, but we do have some stupid damned laws and some unrestrained government agencies with a known history of excessive use of force and petty prosecution.

Good luck, Ben.

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