2aguy
Diamond Member
- Jul 19, 2014
- 112,152
- 52,403
- 2,290
Yep, this guy did nothing wrong.....did his best to obey the laws covering guns....and the anti gunners destroyed him...while they let repeat violent gun offenders who have long histories of crime and violence back on the streets over and over again....
My Life as a Convicted Gun Offender Who Did Nothing Wrong
I got sentenced to seven years in prison for legally owning guns. I had purchased them in Colorado and brought them with me to New Jersey, home to some of the harshest gun laws in the country, where I moved to be closer to my young son.
I complied with all of the regulations, but one day the police searched my car and charged me with unlawful possession of a weapon—even though my handguns were locked, unloaded, and in my trunk.
The court said it was on me to prove that I wasn’t breaking any laws, which obviously was very difficult. When Reasonmagazine covered my case, it wrote, “Even the jurors who convicted him seem to have been looking for a reason to acquit him. But the judge gave them little choice.”
On the road south out of Austin, my phone buzzes with a new email. It’s from the Manchester Business School, where until recently I was trying to get an MBA. It’s one of the world’s more prestigious business schools, and I was on a partial scholarship for “exceptional entrepreneurship,” but the last time I flew out there for a workshop I had my passport seized by a customs agent. My problem, he explained, wasn’t with the UK government, but with the US. Thanks to my status as a convicted felon, I was no longer free to travel to other countries.
It’s also impossible for me to pass a background check. That means no apartments for me. A friend of a friend got me into a guest house in Austin—really just a studio apartment on the backside of the owner's garage, with no stove or microwave. But it’s nice. I’ve been working and writing so much I don’t have time to cook anyway.
What have I been working on? Lots of stuff related to my case, for one. Speeches at gatherings like the one I’m headed to right now, the Gun Rights Policy Conference. I tell people about my experiences both in court and in prison, about how, after I spent four months behind bars, governor Chris Christie signed an executive order releasing me and commuted my sentence to time served. But I also tell people about how he signed S2804 into law two months ago.
S2804 was a bill that amended the Graves Act, the law I was convicted of breaking. It changes the mandatory minimum sentence for offenders from 36 months to 42 months—an extra six months in prison for gun owners who haven’t been convicted of any crime other than owning a gun, which isn’t even technically illegal. (You need a piece of paper in order to buy a gun and another piece of paper to carry one around on your person, but it's technically legal to own one.) Without a concealed carry permit, which is extraordinarily difficult to get, many innocent gun owners wind up being labeled as criminals. Even retired cops have a hard time meeting the “justifiable need” standard the state requires for anyone looking to get a concealed carry license. In 2011, a pet store owner who was kidnapped and feared being attacked again by the same men was denied a permit to carry a handgun.
My Life as a Convicted Gun Offender Who Did Nothing Wrong
I got sentenced to seven years in prison for legally owning guns. I had purchased them in Colorado and brought them with me to New Jersey, home to some of the harshest gun laws in the country, where I moved to be closer to my young son.
I complied with all of the regulations, but one day the police searched my car and charged me with unlawful possession of a weapon—even though my handguns were locked, unloaded, and in my trunk.
The court said it was on me to prove that I wasn’t breaking any laws, which obviously was very difficult. When Reasonmagazine covered my case, it wrote, “Even the jurors who convicted him seem to have been looking for a reason to acquit him. But the judge gave them little choice.”
On the road south out of Austin, my phone buzzes with a new email. It’s from the Manchester Business School, where until recently I was trying to get an MBA. It’s one of the world’s more prestigious business schools, and I was on a partial scholarship for “exceptional entrepreneurship,” but the last time I flew out there for a workshop I had my passport seized by a customs agent. My problem, he explained, wasn’t with the UK government, but with the US. Thanks to my status as a convicted felon, I was no longer free to travel to other countries.
It’s also impossible for me to pass a background check. That means no apartments for me. A friend of a friend got me into a guest house in Austin—really just a studio apartment on the backside of the owner's garage, with no stove or microwave. But it’s nice. I’ve been working and writing so much I don’t have time to cook anyway.
What have I been working on? Lots of stuff related to my case, for one. Speeches at gatherings like the one I’m headed to right now, the Gun Rights Policy Conference. I tell people about my experiences both in court and in prison, about how, after I spent four months behind bars, governor Chris Christie signed an executive order releasing me and commuted my sentence to time served. But I also tell people about how he signed S2804 into law two months ago.
S2804 was a bill that amended the Graves Act, the law I was convicted of breaking. It changes the mandatory minimum sentence for offenders from 36 months to 42 months—an extra six months in prison for gun owners who haven’t been convicted of any crime other than owning a gun, which isn’t even technically illegal. (You need a piece of paper in order to buy a gun and another piece of paper to carry one around on your person, but it's technically legal to own one.) Without a concealed carry permit, which is extraordinarily difficult to get, many innocent gun owners wind up being labeled as criminals. Even retired cops have a hard time meeting the “justifiable need” standard the state requires for anyone looking to get a concealed carry license. In 2011, a pet store owner who was kidnapped and feared being attacked again by the same men was denied a permit to carry a handgun.
