It’s a secret
Standard Mischief takes a good long look at The NRA’s sooper-seekrit New Orleans judgment:
You see, the NRA was widely criticized for not jumping in right away and filing a suit. I myself blogged, “… when the seize orders came down, and enough members called the NRA, they finally issued a wishy-washy press statement…”, yet in their own pleading, they claim they had every right to file suit, even if they are unsure which of their members were harmed. They do, however, seem to have waited until they could get a Mr. Buell Teel on board with them. Whether or not that was a wise move on their part, I’m not going to say, as I am not a lawyer.
He also discusses how, during the DC sniper incident, that AR15 owners had their weapons illegally seized for ballistic fingerprinting. I’ve heard this claim bandied about before but never any evidence of it. Anyone know if this really happened or is this one of those things gun owners got excited about but was really nothing?
November 28th, 2005 at 10:07 am
What, my two anonymous friend’s hearsay ain’t enough proof? 🙂
Well there’s a small blurb in Gun Week’s 2002 archive. I think it’s part of the deep web, Google may not crawl it.
Gun Week is a Second Amendment Foundation publication.
http://www.gunweek.com/2002/hs111002.html
“People with white vans and box trucks aren’t the only ones who had problems. There have been repeated reports by individuals and in some media of law enforcement contacting people who own .223-caliber rifles, as determined from gun shop Form 4473 records.
“The Times also reported that authorities checked gun shops, ranges and gunowners in hopes of turning up some kind of lead. ATF agents and local police phoned or visited gunowners at home or work. There were verifiable reports of police taking rifles for test-firing experiments, and later returning them.
“But just being a gunowner in that area became a cause for special concern.
“The Times also reported that ATF agents confiscated the sign-in log for the prior six-month period from at least one range, apparently not just for a list of names, but in order to obtain handwriting specimens.”
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Also, I think Countertop blogged a little about it. Also, I know I got a small blurb from the Neal Knox email alert, but all the archives for before his death seem to be offline
I suppose I ought to update my post.
November 28th, 2005 at 10:21 am
Hmm, Google does index http://www.gunweek.com/. I must tell you that during the “sniper” fun I received more than one frantic phone call, but I Googled and Google-newsed, an messed with search terms and search engines without finding a single cite anywhere.
I wrote Neal Knox an email, he (or someone) wrote back, saying he did say something about it and told me which issue. I reread it and he was right, a small mention. Wish I still had a copy.
Needless to say, this little incident has had a big influence in my opinion of the Free Press.
November 28th, 2005 at 10:34 am
I heard about it (the testing, etc) from the regular “mainstream” tests. It wa in the Washington Post or Times. I’ll try to dig it up.
November 28th, 2005 at 6:03 pm
Did a nexis search and didn’t find anything solid. What I did come across was a discussion of the fact that thousands of these weapons exist in the area (and 14 different models of target and hunting rifles use a .223) and that people should be aware of who is living in their surroundings. Also, there was a report that someone was arrested on unrelated charges and had a koran and an AR-15 that the police found after searching their house and at that point it seemed certain it was the sniper (needless to say, it wasn’t. I only vaguelly recall this episode).
I know I got the idea from elsewhere – not the internet – that Doug Duncan (Montgomery County Exec) and Charles Moose hatched on a plan to collect rifles for ballistics testing. I’ll dig it up.
November 30th, 2005 at 11:02 pm
Check out this news story. I read an earlier version during the sniper attacks. Instead of looking for the snipers they were out taking weapons. All for public safety, of course. But that’s life in The Peoples Republic of Maryland.
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=%5CCulture%5Carchive%5C200211%5CCUL20021105a.html