This article is conflating a few different things.
1. Cop buys the kinds firearms regular people can buy using law enforcement discounts and then makes an otherwise legal private sale to profit from this. This violates the terms of these law enforcement discount programs. Also, federal law requires people who buy and sell firearms for profit have a federal firearms license. These firearms sometimes are used in crime.
2. In some jurisdictions like California and Massachusetts, law enforcement can buy certain handguns new that normal people cannot. This isn't about safety as these handguns are not capable of anything that the approved handguns are not. It's solely a measure to harm the market for handguns by restricting the kinds of handguns available and increasing their prices. Cops can legally sell these unapproved handguns to normal people. The problem here, again, is doing it for profit. These firearms sometimes are used in crime.
3. Cops buying "assault weapons" and then making illegal private sales to normal people who can't lawfully buy these weapons. This is nowhere near as common as the first two scenarios.
4. Cops playing games with post-1986 machinegun regulations so that federal firearms licensees who pay a special tax can acquire machineguns to rent to the public at ranges or just for their own personal fun. These firearms, which often are significantly more dangerous than the kinds of firearms normal people can lawfully acquire, have never been used in a crime.
Scenarios 1 and 2 have no public safety impact beyond private sales generally. Scenario 3 is only problematic from a public safety standpoint if you believe "assault weapons" are uniquely dangerous, which they aren't. Scenario 4 has not resulted in any violent crime.
> "If I'm guilty of this, every cop in the nation's going to jail," Wendt told CBS News just days before a federal judge sentenced him to a 5-year prison term.
I'm not sure that was the gotcha he seemed to think it was...
Kinda worrying in many ways really - police taking guns from their departments and selling them to criminals and then saying "...but but I had no idea this was illegal or wrong!"
I doesn't even pass the sniff test.
Either the police are total idiots with no concept of right or wrong let alone knowledge of the law, OR they are willingly corrupt and will brazenly break the law to line their own pockets and to fuck with the consequences, which incidentally are pretty negligible because of the corruption and blind-eye turning of their buddies.
Five years for illegal arms trafficking while pot smokers get the book thrown at them. Sometimes I think the US needs a federalized/nationalized police system—I think there would be fewer instances of reluctant prosecution if the cops were not from the local area.
Tons of these cases and quotes come from California because they have a goofy law where there is a list of approved guns (that get there by paying a fee) that, for some reason, police are exempt from. Police can legally buy an unapproved gun and then later decide to sell it to a Californian, legally. What they can't do is buy it with the intent to sell it but many do because the police also think the law is arbitrary and useless.
wl ·18 days ago
1. Cop buys the kinds firearms regular people can buy using law enforcement discounts and then makes an otherwise legal private sale to profit from this. This violates the terms of these law enforcement discount programs. Also, federal law requires people who buy and sell firearms for profit have a federal firearms license. These firearms sometimes are used in crime.
2. In some jurisdictions like California and Massachusetts, law enforcement can buy certain handguns new that normal people cannot. This isn't about safety as these handguns are not capable of anything that the approved handguns are not. It's solely a measure to harm the market for handguns by restricting the kinds of handguns available and increasing their prices. Cops can legally sell these unapproved handguns to normal people. The problem here, again, is doing it for profit. These firearms sometimes are used in crime.
3. Cops buying "assault weapons" and then making illegal private sales to normal people who can't lawfully buy these weapons. This is nowhere near as common as the first two scenarios.
4. Cops playing games with post-1986 machinegun regulations so that federal firearms licensees who pay a special tax can acquire machineguns to rent to the public at ranges or just for their own personal fun. These firearms, which often are significantly more dangerous than the kinds of firearms normal people can lawfully acquire, have never been used in a crime.
Scenarios 1 and 2 have no public safety impact beyond private sales generally. Scenario 3 is only problematic from a public safety standpoint if you believe "assault weapons" are uniquely dangerous, which they aren't. Scenario 4 has not resulted in any violent crime.
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Pikamander2 ·18 days ago
I'm not sure that was the gotcha he seemed to think it was...
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mattlondon ·18 days ago
I doesn't even pass the sniff test.
Either the police are total idiots with no concept of right or wrong let alone knowledge of the law, OR they are willingly corrupt and will brazenly break the law to line their own pockets and to fuck with the consequences, which incidentally are pretty negligible because of the corruption and blind-eye turning of their buddies.
Both options are pretty troubling.
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hiatus ·18 days ago
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parineum ·18 days ago
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