Mike Freeman on why he doesn’t bother prosecuting straw buyers:
So let’s sum it up.
Minneapolis has an epidemic of shootings because:
- The city is full of illegal guns, because
- the DFL county prosecutor doesn’t prosecute gun crimes, in part because…
- the DFL-controlled House hasn’t increased the penalties, and also because…
- the DFL-controlled City Council, Mayor and the state’s DFL Attorney General think public safety is a “privilege” and crime is society’s fault
The common factor is the DFL.
Not to distract from an excellent post, but I’d like to know how or why it is that judges in MN are such malicious knuckleheads as well. I mean, judges play a significant role in that list above such that even criminals who are prosecuted are “freed”. How is that? Why is that?
democrats complain there are too many young black men convicted of crimes in proportion to their percentage of the population which is proof of disparate impact racial discrimination
if freeman prosecuted all straw buyers would his racial discrimination numbers get better because hes sending more white people to jail
or worse because hes sending more black people to jail
or neither because white and black commit straw purchase crimes in exact proportion to their percentage in the population
whos got the numbers
The lawsuit itself makes no allegation that any paperwork laws were broken. It alleges, instead, that Fleet Farm legally sold guns that were later used illegally. From the lawsuit:
Defendants knew or reasonably should have known that the individuals identified above were committing the tort of negligence per se by engaging in straw purchasing and/or unlicensed dealings in firearms to prohibited persons in violation of state and federal law, including
18 U.S.C §§ 922(a)(1), 922(a)(6), 924(a)(1)(a), and 924(a)(1)(D), 27 C.F.R. §§ 478.21(a),
478.124(c)(1), and 478.124(c)(5), and Minn. Stat. §§ 624.7132, subd. 15(a)(4), and 624.7133.
If Fleet Farm had refused to sell the straw buyer the guns he wanted, Ellison would have been the first in line to sue Fleet Farm for violating the buyer’s civil rights.
some questions for ellisons next press conference
your lawsuit says fleet farm should have assumed a pistol purchased by a young black man wearing dreadlocks would end up being used in crime are you encouraging racial profiling in retail sales
you say it wasnt the purchasers age race or hairstyle that should have been the tipoff but instead was the number of guns and frequency of purchase which makes one wonder how many guns are black people allowed to buy and how often
if fleet farm had refused to sell on the grounds that a young black man wearing dreadlocks wanted to buy too many guns too quickly, and the buyer had filed a human rights act complaint alleging discrimination based on race and hairstyle, would your office have declined to prosecute the complaint
The federal penalty for a straw purchase is a felony conviction and a ten year prison sentence, which is more than most murderers get. This is insufficient….why? Even a felony conviction with a one month sentence gets people harshly punished, i.e. no good job opportunities for life.
I am not a lawyer, but the lawsuit looks weird, as though it was intended to go nowhere. It mentions US and MN laws that are intended to prevent straw man purchases, but does not accuse FF of violating any of them. It lists many actual specific crimes committed by the straw purchaser and the people he illegally xferred the guns to, but the lawsuit mentions no specific incidence of FF selling a firearm illegally. The illustration in the Rob Doar tweet comes from the lawsuit, yet the lawsuit itself does not say which gun sale was illegal. It mentions that there are straw buying gun patterns, but doesn’t give a citation for these patterns other than by anecdote.
The lawsuit also says that Fleet Farm should have trained its workers to identify straw buyers and then deny the xfer, but it does not cite any specific training content or any law that says that this training must occur.
There is no case, but remember, X is tougher on crime than Chuck Norris and he has to show he is doing everything he can to prevent next murder at the hands of vibrant youts.
And this case has no chance to reach court because X cannot tarnish his 100% infallability record.
people think this is a ploy by hakim to avoid losing the election
show of hands who thinks the dfl will cheat like the dickens rather than allow hakim to lose this election
You guys are missing the point of this exercise. If this lawsuit succeeds every gun store in every blue state will be targeted with similar suits – the lucky ones will get off with a consent decree that makes their business unprofitable and they get to swirl around the drain until they eventually fold, the unlucky ones will be bankrupted fighting the suit and immediately out of business. With the ATF tie in these lawsuits can rapidly switch from an environment where the fight takes place with nearly unlimited state resources to Federal jurisdiction with the US Treasury paying the bills. This is why they picked Fleetfarm. They want a target that has the resources to mount a credible defense – this is a test case, if it works it will provide case law to crush the smaller gun dealers and it will also create a narrative for a whole new batch of federal gunlaws predicated on the Commerce Clause.
Mac, it will have to go to SCOTUS and be upheld to become a precedent, especially federal precedent. Chances of that happening are less than libturds not attempting to cheat to drag a dead horse across the finish line.
I think there’s a point to what UMMP and what Mac says. It does look a lot like a political stunt to get votes, and at the same time, if it somehow gets traction, it is a great way to shut down gun dealers for anti-human-rights AGs in blue states. Hopefully we can start seeing through this kind of chicanery.
And really, what we need to keep emphasizing is that if we finally start prosecuting straw purchases and the like, we instantly put a fair number of the ultimate sources for criminals’ guns (apart from theft) onto a database with their fingerprints, mugshot, and DNA–and the next time those guys think of committing a crime, they will (like criminals in NYC post-Giuliani) contemplate the fact that any fingerprints or DNA they leave behind will get them convicted again.
All too often, I think prosecutors and investigators are aiming for a moon shot/high profile big crime conviction when the public safety would be better served by a series of open and shut cases that would start helping prosecutors make the links between the circumstances of those big crimes.
Bikebubba, the latest ploy seems to be to shut down free speech using lawsuits. Suppose that in my opinion the covid vax kills kids. I make that opinion widely known. Someone has a kid they vaccinated & he dies. Now they are distraught at the pain and suffering I have caused them, because I have accused them of killing their own child by vaxxing him! So they sue me for the very real damages they have sustained.
At the bottom of this is the fact (or opinion 🙂 that almost all knowledge is really only opinion. Opinions by experts and opinions by non-experts, opinions by the religious minded and opinions by scientists. I think that I have commented on SITD before that while we believe that we live in a world that is 99% facts and 1% opinion, the reality is closer to the opposite.
Stewart Mills III was the Eighth District Congressional candidate a while back so targeting Fleet Farm probably started then, but the timing of the suit serves a current political purpose.
With the sale in 2016 to investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co, Fleet Farm became a soft target. An investment firm is interested in maintaining a revenue stream with the least fuss. They are not likely to stand on any principle and will actively seek a settlement that does not substantially harm the business. For instance to make the lawsuit go away they might agree to create a permanent database of all multiple gun sales (scanned photo id, address, Ph#, # of guns, purchase window, serial numbers,etc) across all stores that they willingly share with the MN-BCA without subpoena – essentially your 2nd, 4th & 5th amendment rights are contravened but not directly by the government so no laws are broken since the business “voluntarily captured and shared” the data.
I seriously doubt this case will survive to the point where SCOTUS might become involved.
If I had the video of Hakim’s son running around during the riots, with his fire extinguisher and brandishing that scary black rifle, I would send it to Fleet Farm’s legal team and say; “You might want to ask Ellison why he didn’t prosecute his son for violating Minnesota law and did he check to make sure that the gun was purchased legally, with a background check? My bet, one of his AntiFa buddies either gave or sold it to him. I’d throw a side bet that it was stolen.
The DFLeft is just pathetic. And the people that vote them in, even more-so. I know several. I am not impressed with their naivety and ignorance. They are all bad drivers too.