Leader of southern Michigan militia, son avoid longer detention for gun crime

[onehandle]

Source: Washington Post

DETROIT — The leader of a southern Michigan militia once accused of plotting a violent rebellion against the government was given no additional time behind bars Wednesday for possessing illegal weapons after serving two years in jail awaiting trial.

Federal prosecutors wanted David Stone to spend at least nine more months in custody. But a defense attorney said even that punishment would be cut short with good behavior and instead disrupt Stone’s attempt to rebuild his life.

In March, Roberts acquitted Stone and seven Hutaree militia members of conspiring to rebel against the government with a violent uprising that would target law enforcement. The judge found no evidence of a specific plan. It was an embarrassing defeat for the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office in Detroit after months of investigation that involved secretly recorded video and audio, a paid informant and an undercover agent.

Once the more serious charge was thrown out, Stone pleaded guilty to possession of a machine gun. He also admitted having an illegal short-barrel rifle.


Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/leader-of-southern-michigan-militia-son-avoid-additional-prison-time-for-gun-crime/2012/08/08/fd10073a-e178-11e1-89f7-76e23a982d06_story.html

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It's good to see Rightists have to kiss the ass of the justice system they hate.

[freshwest]

1. They were recorded threatening to kill people, law enforcement.

Last edited Thu Aug 9, 2012, 01:01 AM - Edit history (1)

That is serious and they had the weapons to do so. They were convicted for the machine gun, etc. That sounds minor to some but they could have killed with other weapons. Will their RK&BA be restricted, or should it be?

[geologic]

2. What does this have to do with jury nullification???

The judge threw-out the serious charge--
and the perp pled guilty to the lesser charge...

[freshwest]

3. You are correct, I am thinking of another case and posting two other places. I'll edit.

Do you believe they should retain their RK&BA after they were recorded threatening to kill someone?

Just because the judge threw out the case, there were recordings.

[geologic]

4. (I had to look up "RK&BA")

It't seems to be a "done deal".

A North Georgia cop got busted with a machine gun,
a year after he busted me for growin' merrywanna;
bet he got out early too--
if he ever went in...

[freshwest]

5. But should their right to carry a gun be restricted? They're felons.

Or are we not taking this as seriously now?

Hope you've recovered from your trouble.

[geologic]

6. Umm

My trouble was in 1980--
and I'M still restricted...

[freshwest]

7. I think the cop and these guys should be, too. And they were dangerous...

[Equate]

14. Federal law says if you're a convicted felon,

you can't even own so much as a bullet. That's a 10 years in a prison of the govts choice. So, yes, they're RKBA is kaput.

[Lurks Often]

8. It's a pity the sentence wasn't longer

I would have preferred to see 5-10 years in jail before being eligible for parole on the weapons charge and I say that as a gun owner.

If he plead guilty to a felony charge, then under Federal law he is prohibited from ever owning a gun again.

[heaven05]

9. free?

so they are free to still have weapons and start all over again. Typical justice for you know who

[X_Digger]

10. Actually, the weapons possession charge will disqualify him from owning firearms. n/t

[heaven05]

11. you're kidding

right. He's probably got them stashed everywhere. Yeah, legally you're right, real world you must not have a clue.

[hack89]

12. So what is your plan to disarm felons in America? nt

[primavera]

13. This raises an interesting question

If someone buys a gun legally, having, at that time, no felony convictions, and they subsequently are convicted of a violent crime, does anyone take away from that person the gun that they would now no longer be authorized to purchase? There are records, are there not, of who purchases which weapons, right? Could you, as part of he sentencing of a felon, revoke their gun license and require them to turn in their gun? What would gun advocates be likely to say about that? Surely not even the NRA wants to defend the rights of criminals to keep and bear arms, no?

[hack89]

15. I have no problem requiring felons to turn in their weapons

however, the government does not have a method to know what weapons they actually own. There is no national registry that links guns to owners. The system is set up to make it easy to trace guns - if you know a gun's serial number you can trace it through the system to the gun store and eventually to the buyer. But you can't put a person's name in a computer and find out what guns they have purchased.

In the vast majority of states, there is no gun license to revoke. You need a license to carry in public but not to merely own a gun.

The NRA has never supported the rights of criminals to keep and bear arms. The present background check system has the support of the NRA.

[primavera]

17. Any idea why don't we have a system?

Guns have serial numbers, purchasers have names and addresses, wouldn't it be easy to set up a database that linked those serial numbers to the names of the people who purchased them?

[slackmaster]

18. The state of Connecticut has a process for systematically disarming convicted felons

I believe it's the only one that does.

[primavera]

20. Do you know why, slackmaster?

It sounds like something that gun advocates and gun control advocates might actually be able to agree upon that could help reduce the number of weapons in the hands of criminals. So why aren't we doing it? Where's the stumbling block?

[slackmaster]

34. I suspect the main issue is availability of resources, i.e. priorities

It takes a lot of shoe leather to acquire and serve a proper search warrant, dispatch a team of people to thoroughly search a person's residence, etc.

[primavera]

35. Good point, I hadn't thought of that

I hadn't quite carried the idea far enough to get into things like search warrants and searches. That certainly would be very expensive indeed.

[hack89]

26. Government intrusion into personal privacy for one

Exercising a constitutional right shouldn't require me to give up an iota of privacy to the government.

Secondly, many legal gun purchases are made between private parties with no records.

Thirdly, they are obscenely expensive. Canada tried to implement a registry just for rifles and spent a billion dollars before scrapping it as being useless. States can't afford to update the present system as it is - the idea that there is money for a completely new system is nonsense.

[primavera]

30. Hmmm, yeah I sort of agree

I mean, I do respect that privacy is a valid concern. Still, every time we use a credit/debit card to make a purchase, we renew our "informed consent" to a contract of adhesion that authorizes Bank of America, credit reporting agencies, marketing agencies, and god only knows who else to know everything there is to know about us from our credit history to whether we buy hemorrhoid ointment. We unflinchingly surrender that vast storehouse of private information every time we so much as want to buy a lousy gallon of milk, and for no greater purpose than to help corporations maximize their profits. Yet we're going to raise our privacy hackles at the prospect of having our name attached to the serial number of the gun we buy, in a secure database that is never going to be used except to curb an unlawful activity, when doing so might help limit the number of guns in criminal hands? It seems a little hypocritical.

You're right, of course, that guns trade hands freely here between private owners and that dilutes the efficacy of any registry. For which very reason, I would argue that private gun transactions need to be subject to similar monitoring. Not that people can't sell a gun to someone else, only that they need to submit to a registry an update indicating that the ownership of the gun has now been transferred to someone else.

As for the expense, I have no idea what it would cost, which is part of why I'm asking about it here. Certainly every government program needs to be assessed for cost and benefit and, if it would cost an arm and a leg and accomplish nothing, then it's obviously not a good idea. I'm just trying to get a sense for why that cost-benefit ration might be so unfavorable, as, intuitively, it seems like it wouldn't be that difficult a thing to implement and it might potentially be useful in achieving a policy goal that gun proponents and critics alike can agree upon, i.e., getting guns out of the hands of criminals. But again, I know very little about the registry debate. Despite my interest in gun control topics, this is one subset that I haven't explored before, so I'm stuck imposing upon all of you for your knowledge and expertise.

[hack89]

31. "never going to be used except to curb an unlawful activity"

Last edited Fri Aug 10, 2012, 01:51 PM - Edit history (1)

the same thing was said about the Patriot act.

Why should I complain about warrantless wiretaps - they are "never going to be used except to curb an unlawful activity"

Why should I complain about stop and frisk - it is "never going to be used except to curb an unlawful activity". They have actually proven to be very effective.

After all, government and the police have consistently shown an unwavering respect for the law and civil rights - haven't they?


I don't "unflinchingly surrender that vast storehouse of private information" - I flinch all the time. I just don't have the power to change it. I support any effort to claw back any privacy that we can - they have implemented strict privacy laws in Europe and we can do the same here. I resist every effort to erode my privacy further.

[primavera]

32. Touché - n/t

[Equate]

16. Most states don't require registration of guns

The NRA absolutely does not support convicted felons being able to have or keep guns. It is a Federal crime for a convicted felon to be in possession of even a bullet, much less a gun and carry's at least a 10 year sentence.

Once convicted, the felon is required to dispose of any firearm and acc., however, the hardened criminal will either not get rid of them or go get another.

[primavera]

19. Sounds like an enforcement problem then

If criminals are required to turn in their weapons but either fail to or get a new one, it sounds like what is needed is a means of enforcing the requirement to turn in their guns and/or keep them from obtaining a new one. A gun registry database might be helpful in that regard, no?

[X_Digger]

21. Not really, no.

Even our oh-so-civil neighbors to the north scrapped one of their two gun registries- in part because it had such low compliance.

The long gun registry was estimated to only cover 40-50% of the long guns that were subject to registration.

And that's in Canada- what do you think the rate of compliance would be here?

And what would the cost be? Last I heard, it was running into the 450 million dollar range- for about 1/10th the number of guns we're looking at.

[primavera]

23. Seriously? That expensive?

Damn, I wouldn't have thought it would take much more than an Excel spreadsheet on a laptop - it would just be a list of names and serial numbers. Oh well, I stand corrected.

I wonder why the compliance rates are so low. Again, it seems like such a simple thing. You go to a store, buy a gun, you show your ID and fill out a slip that includes your name and address and the serial number of the gun, the store owner files it with a registry, the end. It's more complicated buying nasal decongestant these days. Why would it be so tough to get buyers and sellers to comply with something so simple and minimal?

[X_Digger]

33. It didn't start out that expensive, no.. but it kept snowballing.

One reason for non-compliance there would be one we'd face as well- how do you convince people to register their existing guns.

Sure, *new* guns would be easier to register, but the sticky wicket is the existing ones.

Obviously criminals wouldn't register theirs, but we have 280,000,000+ guns right now. (125 million since 1998, per FBI's NICS)

In short, it wouldn't affect criminals and their existing guns, compliance would be low, and it would be expensive as hell.

And that's setting aside the whole issue that right now, a federal registry is illegal by law, and the fact that any politician who championed such a measure would get trounced- not just by the NRA, but by average gun owners who don't like where that's went in the past.

Both CA and NY have registered specific guns, then later on sent letters saying, "Oh, that gun you have? It can't be registered now, it's illegal. Please do turn it in, kthxbye"

[primavera]

38. Apropos of nothing...

... just a random thought that scuttled across my mind, but it seems a little ironic that gun advocates often find moral justification for unrestricted private gun ownership in their faith in the intrinsic responsibility of most ordinary people. Yet, without skipping a beat, they reject proposals for laws aspiring to reduce gun violence with the blanket statement that no one would ever obey the law anyway. So people are responsible, they just don't obey laws?

[X_Digger]

39. My faith is in people, but reality often disabuses me of my faith.

There's no cognitive dissonance in having faith in people, but realizing that people often can be stubborn. I expect people will follow laws that they feel are sensible, those they have little objection to, and those they think will likely be noticed if they break.

Re intrinsic responsibility though, I'll go back to the numbers. Per the DOJ's BJS (Bureau of Justice Statistics), there are about 350k crimes involving firearms each year, large or small. There are 280-300M guns in the US (depending on whose estimate you use) spread among 80M or so gun owners. If you spread the crime evenly among gun owners (which is silly, but just to make a point), you get 99.6% of gun owners not being involved in a crime with a gun. The chances of any one particular gun (again, assuming even distribution) being involved in a crime? 99.9% of guns are not used in crime.

eta: atrocious grammar

[Equate]

22. It would

but would you trust the govt. with that knowledge? Calif. and the U.K. are perfect examples of why I wouldn't trust the govt. with a gun registry.
Even with such a registry, the criminal will still be able to aquire a weapon w/o much problem, the only people this would affect is the lawful gun owner.
Not trying to rain on your parade, just being honest.

[primavera]

24. Why wouldn't you trust the government with that knowledge?

Unless you commit a crime, no one's going to use the knowledge to take your gun away from you. And, if you have committed a crime, don't we want the government to have the knowledge necessary to enforce a policy that apparently most of us here agree with, i.e., that convicted felons shouldn't have guns?

[Equate]

25. CA and the U.K. did exactly that

when Ca. decided to make certain firearms verboten, they used their gun registry list to collect the now illegal guns, and the U.K. did the exact same thing when they outlawed the possession of handguns.
So, yes, it does happen.

http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/californiademandsaksrifles.htm

[primavera]

27. Okay, but...

... your concern then is not that the government had the information to enforce laws, but that the law made certain firearms illegal. Not liking a law is a separate issue from the government being able to enforce that law.

[Equate]

29. You make a good point

but what if one day, and I'm not one of these conspiracy nuts, but if one day the govt. decided to ban handguns, they would have a ready made list to do confiscation. Not that it would happen because if that day ever came, welcome to civil war 2.
With all the govt. abuse in the past, I just wouldn't trust the govt, especially a RW authoritarian pres. to not do so.

[primavera]

36. You know, it's funny

It sometimes seems like a lot of these conversations ultimately come down to how much do you trust government versus how much do you trust private citizens to act responsible on their own. For many on both sides of the political spectrum, the boogey man under the bed is the threat of government intrusion. Personally, my paranoia centers around human greed and profit motives that inspire human ingenuity to find ways to enrich themselves at the expense of others. So the (at least theoretical) absence of a profit motive on the part of a public, not-for-profit institution buys it a lot of trustworthiness in my eyes and I perceive the greatest threat to that system is the undue, corrupting influence of the private sector looking to minimize government restrictions on their ability to screw people over. But then, as others have pointed out, you get things like the Patriot Act and my confidence in government as an institution takes a serious hit.

[heaven05]

37. nope

impossible. Just a point I wanted to make per original OP. This country is too far GONE!

[surrealAmerican]

28. Why do I have the sneaking suspicion ...

... that this would have turned out rather differently had these men not been white?