Seattle authorities used "Red Flag" gun laws to disarm a Neo-Nazi

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/10/23/seattle-authorities-used-red.html

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Good. Grab those guns.

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100 round mag? Man, what is he planning to hunt*? A swam of bees?

*Probably people, within certain ethic, religious and cultural parameters.

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He may not have been charged with any specific crimes - that doesn’t mean he couldn’t be for advocating armed insurrection.

“ U.S. Code§ 2383.Rebellion or insurrection

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Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 808; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(1)(L), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2147.)”

They should be searching his premises and any storage facility he has from time to time to make sure he’s complying.

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I’m sure the confiscation of this neo-Nazi’s collection will prompt ammosexuals to express great concern here.

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I immediately googled to see if the NRA is offering any kind of defense of Mr. Cole, but it appears they are either keeping their distance (or biding their time), and just made a generic anti-Red-Flag-law statement.

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It’s free…

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Funny, because these are capital crimes if you are brown and Muslim.

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The NRA rarely represents INDIVIDUALS. If their ILA branch takes legal action it’s usually directly challenging a law. If it represents an individual, it’s to legally challenge a law in a way that winning would over turn it. Which means they are extremely selective because the way our legal system works, if you challenge and lose, then it just strengthens the law. Most of the time when a legal decision is made, they look back and say, “Well in X vs Y, they made the same argument and X was awarded, thus we will follow their outcome as well.”

There is this idea that the NRA helps anyone who is in legal trouble over firearms, but that isn’t the case. I recall many cases in the past I heard people wonder if the NRA would represent them, but I don’t recall them ever doing it. They just aren’t in the business of defending individuals. I am not sure where that idea came from. If you look at the cases on their wiki article, it is all large cases challenging a law, not helping out individuals. I suppose at one point they might back an individual who challenged a Red Flag law, but it would be a poster boy, not this schlub.


I like the BB post because it acknowledges the nuance of something like this. Clearly there are people like this gentleman where his actions are causing others to take notice and act. A legal process similar to a restraining order seems reasonable to me - though with a little asterisk that it isn’t abused.

Also:

While felony domestic violence should technically restrict someone’s access to guns, there are lots of ways for someone to get around that

I am not sure of the authors user handle to tag him, but the link in this article is messed up and goes to some spam site. You can delete the part of the URL that takes you to the article.

And I’d like to point out - the language above makes it sound like legal loops holes - when really its more of either a lack of defined legal process, or failure on the courts to follow through. These are systemic issues that could be cleaned up and enforced right now. I guess they are too busy “confront[ing] all the dope fiends”.

In this case I used “defense” not in the legal sense, but in the pundit sense, like Sean Hannity “defending” whatever idiotic thing Trump just said.

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You are right, and you said it clearly.

The NRA has vocally defended countless INDIVIDUALS, and they’ve done it even when a specific law wasn’t in active contention or appeal.

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Ah, my mistake.

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It’s perfectly legal to buy an AR-15 with a 100 round (or yes, a few dozen more reliable 30rd stanag mags) mag, and then gift it with no paperwork at all to any random dude as a private transfer. Even some guy with prior felonies. Because “hey how am I supposed to know?”

Maybe it’s a bad idea to let people legally trade guns around with no liability. It shouldn’t be easy or risk free to just buy a gun and give it to someone else.

As long as the law allows guns to change hands perfectly legally and no dilligence standard is applied for private transfers, all gun control is meaningless.

And the NRA fights tooth and nail for that.

I don’t see why registration for machines meant to kill lots of people/animals should be forbidden when everyone has to register personal vehicles.

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You’re correct, you can sell or gift someone with no paper work. While it is illegal for a prohibited person to take possession, it is only illegal if the seller knowingly sales to a prohibited person. I still haven’t seen evidence of this being a wide spread issue with a random felon tricking a seller into selling to them. People who are knowingly selling to felons now probably won’t stop even if it was illegal for them to do it.

But that wasn’t the point of the article I was referring to, which was more about law enforcement not following up with domestic abuse cases.

I have conceded the point on running private sales through NICS. They should have it so individuals can fill out the paper work and submit it online. OR use licensing scheme.

The reason they fight that is because two examples that people use for “common sense gun laws” resulted in the registration being used to enforce turn ins when certain guns were later made illegal. It’s the same reason people don’t want their date tracked by the government etc - they are afraid that this livable compromise will later bite them on the ass.

You may not agree with it, but that is why actual registration is so frowned upon.

A licensing scheme would do a similar job with out registration.

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@orenwolf should be able to help clean up the link in the article.

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Yep, found and fixed. Thanks for the heads up!

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Holy Hell. Not a peep from Breitbart about this story.

Honestly, I would have expected a “Gun Grabber” story of some sort, which neglected to mention his Neo-Nazi ties, but I guess there is actually some associations they are deeply afraid to make in their article print.

I’d wager comments mentioning this don’t get nerfed though. That seems to be how you know what the editors really think.

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Is he permanently disarmed? If not, what’s the plan when he gets his guns back, or gets new ones?

That’s a tougher story for them to spin when it’s their guys in the White House and Congress. “The government that you helped elect is coming for your guns!”

To be honest, maybe that should be something the liberals should point out, followed up by other examples of the GOP machine stomping all over the hopes and dreams of their supporters?

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Realistically, it wouldn’t be hard to still frame this as a Democratic plot, since this did happen in Seattle, and the rest of Washington State already has a persecution complex about Seattle pushing the rest of the state around (no joke, when I first moved to Spokane there were billboards begging people to vote Republican so that Seattle didn’t “steal another US Senate seat” from them).

I think the motivations of the shooter are the real sticking point… even the far right spin machine seems to still have some semblance of shame when it comes to how vocal they’ll let people get about their quietly-stated aims.

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Brandenburg v. Ohio covers this:
“The court ruled that incitement of events in the indefinite future was protected, but encouragement of “imminent” illegal acts was not protected.”

I think this is solidly a good thing, because any exceptions given to the first amendment are guaranteed to be disproportionately used against marginalized groups and people on the left.

The fact that they’ve been shooting off their mouths for years, and haven’t risen up in arms yet, makes it pretty clear that their insurrection is not “imminent.”