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The ongoing War on Self-defense has never made sense. Respect for facts, logic, and consistency have long since been sacrificed on the altar of political expediency in the never-ending quest for expanded State power.
In a recent story by Kim North Shine in the online Detroit Free Press (11-29-00), however, this trend reaches new heights of absurdity and outrage.
Restaurant cook, Terry Walker, 49, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter, being a felon in possession of a firearm, and a felony firearms charge. The insane kicker here is that Walker sold his 9 mm handgun five years ago...and was fifty miles from the scene of the murder!
Drug suspect, Ljeka Juncaj, smuggled a handgun into the Warren City jail where he was brought for questioning. Once there, he shot and killed Police Detective Christopher Wouters. In the struggle with other officers, Juncaj shot himself in the head and died.
A tragedy, yes, but on multiple levels. First of all, the police "forgot to search Juncaj"! Standard procedure ignored? Well, one would think so. But rather than accepting the blame for their own incompetence, the good folks of Macomb County preferred to find a scapegoat to take the fall. And since Juncaj himself is no more in existence, then...
Walker has been charged with "unlawfully killing Wouters...by failing to fully divest himself of the weapon." In other words, this cook -- who never "knew or met" the killer and who is unlikely to have sold it to Juncaj -- is being charged with manslaughter because of a paperwork oversight. Walker sold his gun give years ago to a totally different person.
According to Shine, "Eric Kaiser, chief trial attorney for the Macomb County Prosecutor's Office" said that Walker is "culpable" despite these facts. Kaiser said that, "It's not relevant if he [Walker] knew him [Juncaj]. He [Walker] put the weapon into the stream of use, so he is responsible. If I have a stick of dynamite in a paper bag and I hand it to you, it might be eight people later before something happens. But it doesn't matter, the damage has been done."
"Stream of use"! "Eight people later"!
Here is an exemplar of the heights to which foolish political nonsense can ascend (or is that descend?). According to this so-called "logic," if you sell your car to someone, and that someone -- or a dozen "someones" and years down the line -- uses that car and deliberately runs over and kills another individual, then you are "culpable" and can and should be charged with manslaughter or worse.
What if you sell someone a knife or a baseball bat or a string that becomes an implement of death in the hands of some criminal? Goodbye your freedom...
(And if the pols are so concerned with blaming the person who put the object into "the stream of use," then why not charge the car manufacturer? Or the knife maker? Or the gun manufacturer... Oops. The guardians of the State are way ahead of me already.)
This is the same kind of craziness already spreading across the legal landscape in government lawsuits against gun makers and tobacco companies. It is only a matter of time before the current civil suits are transformed into kangaroo courts designed to pin criminal liability on entrepreneurs and innocent private citizens.
(Here, too, are the ineluctable and inevitable consequences of the NRA's incessant mantra to "enforce the current gun laws" rather than calling loudly and insistently for the repeal of all anti-self-defense legislation.)
The corrupt notion that you "should know" and, even worse, are responsible for what someone far down the "stream of use" does with a product you sell demands that companies and individuals adhere to the impossible standards of omniscience and eternal responsibility. But we cannot be held liable forever for eventualities that are gossamer thin in their connections to some action we have taken. Such tenuous "cause and effect" assertions form the same ludicrous basis for claims that we witness today when innocent people and businesses (who have done nothing wrong themselves) are "somehow" declared to be guilty of offenses committed by ancestors -- or even mere group members! -- who have been dead for decades or centuries.
This chant is repeated ad nauseum in support of affirmative action. Like zombies rising from the grave, this "principle" of "justice" has found renewed application in claims for "reparations" for Indians or Blacks living now because once upon a time people who shared the same racial type suffered slavery or abuse. Such "eternal liability" is also clearly visible when American Indians claim "ownership" of bones unearthed centuries later by scientists or others. Similar motivations help drive Jews, Arabs, and other ethnic groups to constant conflicts and recurrent wars because each group claims clashing "title" to a segment of land merely because others -- who may have some vague linkage to them -- had a connection with that soil eons ago.
That same essence of collectivism is evident in the case against this poor Michigan cook. According to Shine, Prosecutor Carl Marlinga said "he wanted to bring charges [against Walker] to send a message to gun owners that they will be held responsible if their weapons are used to commit crimes." Attorney Kaiser said, "Owning a gun is an awesome responsibility and with it comes the duty to transfer ownership."
This direct admission that Walker is being singled out because of a group he used to belong to (gun owners) does not dissuade these legalistic social engineers from pursuing their vindictive and baseless course of action.
What is even more ironic and sad is that this situation was largely brought about because the State meddled in areas for which it had neither the constitutional authorization nor the moral right to interfere in the first place.
If not for the War on People (aka the War on Drugs), Juncaj would never have been of any concern to the police, at all. He could have purchased or sold as many drugs as he and other consenting adults cared to. He would never have felt the desire to use a weapon against his jailers...because he would never have been in jail because of drugs.
Walker would not face gun charges if the agents of the government respected the United States Constitution and, in particular, the Second Amendment. Again, the State has neither the constitutional authorization nor the moral right to require gun registration. It is bad enough that the current owner in Michigan is held responsible for registering his weapon. It is far worse that the previous owner is considered to be at fault if the next owner fails to do as the law demands. How, precisely, does the state of Michigan expect a seller to force a buyer to register the gun he has purchased?
It is also wrong to have nonviolent felons forever be denied the right to defend themselves and their families. Once their sentences have been fully carried out, they should be able to resume their normal place in society. They should not be perpetually forbidden to take on the right and responsibility of gun ownership. In Walker's case, his felony was embezzlement, for which he has been on probation since last August. Fine. Deny him the right to purchase or own a gun until his period of parole finishes.
But he sold his gun years before he became a felon! To charge him now with felony possession of a weapon boggles the mind.
As I said at the beginning, however, logic, facts, and consistency do not sully the consciences or intellects of those who wage the War on Self-defense. Justice, fairness, and common-sense are merely inconvenient hurdles to be cast aside. The "ends justify the means"...even though neither means nor ends are proper.
Our legal system already has one foot in the grave as the ideal of a "nation of laws, not men" becomes a standing joke. Whim and vengeance have replaced objectivity and equity. The price we all will pay for this inversion of morality will only grow more dear as examples like Walker's multiply in the coming years.
