The Gun Law Is An Ass?
BY Herschel Smith
9 years, 9 months ago
By now most readers are aware of the sad case of the poor New Jersey retired school teacher who faces felony charges for ownership of an antique handgun.
Gordon Van Gilder, a 72-year-old retired schoolteacher in New Jersey, faces a 10-year prison sentence for possessing an unloaded 18th-century flintlock pistol in his car.
Mr. Van Gilder, a collector of 18th-century memorabilia, said he had the gun unloaded and wrapped in a cloth in the glove compartment of his vehicle when he was pulled over in November by a Cumberland County sheriff’s deputy for a minor traffic violation, according to a video posted last week by NRA News.
After consenting to a search of his vehicle, Mr. Van Gilder said he alerted the deputy of the pistol in his glove box. The deputy let him go that night, but four police officers showed up at his home the next morning with an arrest warrant, he told NRA News.
“Beware of New Jersey. Don’t come here. Don’t live here,” Mr. Van Gilder said. “Here I am, a retired teacher coming out of his house in handcuffs, who had a flintlock pistol and now I’m charged as a felon. It’s unbelievable. It’s outrageous. It’s an insult to decent people.”
New Jersey’s gun laws explicitly include antique firearms, even though federal laws exempt them.
Evan Nappen, an attorney who specializes in gun law cases and is representing Mr. Van Gilder, says that even a plea agreement that avoids jail time but convicts Mr. Van Gilder of a felony would likely jeopardize his teacher’s pension he spent 34 years earning, Legal Insurrection reported.
Charles C. W. Cooke thinks the law is an ass.
The gun in question, Van Gilder says, “was probably made about 1765 in Belgium — for the British market.” A dealer found it in Pennsylvania, and held it for him. “I paid $800 for it. It’s a boxlock pistol, so there’s no hammer. It’s beautiful” …
The idea that he was breaking a law, Nappen concludes, “never crossed Van Gilder’s mind. It’s an antique. He had no intention of shooting it. It wasn’t loaded. There was no flint, no powder, and no ball” …
Putting to one side the myriad problems with New Jersey’s preposterously illiberal laws, Allen’s ordeal was so perplexing because it need never have been brought about in the first instance. In her case — as, now, in Van Gilder’s — the prosecuting authorities had absolute discretion. Then, as now, they did not use it. In this latest case, it seems clear that there was no need to arrest Van Gilder in the first instance, and neither was there any obvious justification for charging him. Indeed, in a reasonable state, the existence of judgment-limiting mandatory minimums would make prosecutors more likely, not less, to drop the fringe cases at the outset. But New Jersey is not a reasonable state, and its authorities are neither kind nor judicious. Rather, they are stubborn and they are zealous. There is something unutterably rotten about the Garden State these days.
Finally, NJ.com is polling folks to see what they think about it. Many of the responses are utterly pathetic and not even worth your time. To begin with concerning the artifact, no gunsmith worth his weight in salt would actually fire the gun. He certainly wouldn’t do it without NDE (non destructive examination) being performed on the firearm to ensure that he didn’t destroy an actual historical artifact while he also allowed someone to be harmed in the process. More likely, he will do an ultrasonic cleaning of the piece, and then wisely talk the owner into sitting this beautiful relic under glass. In doing so, he will have earned his consultative fee. The notion that this is a working firearm is ridiculous.
Second, I am indeed so very sorry for Mr. Van Gilder, and of course there is no reason he should face a felony arrest and lose of his pension. These things are obscene and an insult to the sensibilities of peaceable and God fearing men and women. But the notion of charging Mr. Van Gilder isn’t obscene because he owns and attempted to transport an antique relic. They are obscene because they violate the dignity of an elderly man who has a God given right to own weapons, a right that the constitution codifies, recognizes and specifically stipulates. “Shall not be infringed,” the wording reads.
I am sorry for Mr. Van Gilder, but I disagree with Mr. Cooke, and profoundly so. The law isn’t an ass. The law is words, codified morality. The notion that we cannot legislate morality is ludicrous. All law is legislated morality, as R. J. Rushdoony has pointed out. This law reflects the totalitarian and collectivist morality of the Northeast, where men who spend their lives teaching the little ones lose their dignity because they have an interest in “curios and relics,” as it happens to create a nexus with gun laws of a control freak political mentality. Make no mistake. This isn’t about curios and relics, or even guns. All gun control is about control.
The law isn’t an ass. The people who made the law, and the people who voted the politicians into office, the culture that created this controlling totalitarianism, they are the true ass. They always have been – they always will be. “Can a leopard change its spots?”
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On February 20, 2015 at 12:08 pm, Blake said:
Obviously, Mr. Van Gilder should never have consented to a search, however, are cops now routinely harassing senior citizens through asking to search their vehicles? Seriously?
In what sane world does a cop think it’s necessary to search a vehicle owned by a 72 year old man?
On February 20, 2015 at 1:20 pm, Archer said:
“These things are obscene and an insult to the sensibilities of peaceable and God fearing men and women.”
Agreed, but the government enforcers in NJ are neither peaceable nor God-fearing. When it comes to guns – or anything resembling guns, or used to be a gun, or could be a part of a gun – nothing is too obscene or insulting. They need such total control over their peons that this travesty – over a non-functional antique – is the hill they’ll choose to risk dying on, and the saddest part is, they’ll probably win.
On February 20, 2015 at 5:12 pm, hal said:
NEVER ALLOW AN OFFICER OR GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE IN YOUR HOME WITHOUT A SEARCH WARRANT. NOT EVEN A FIREMAN. I LEARNED A HARD LESSON 10 YEARS AGO BY LETTING POLICE OFFICERS INTO MY GARAGE. NEVER, ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE A SERIOUS ABOUT YOUR HOBBIES, AND HAVE MACHINE TOOLS AND ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT, DUMMY ORDNANCE, HAM RADIO, WELDING TORCHES, WIRE, SCRAPPED OUT GEAR, MIL SURPLUS ETC. RIGHT AWAY THEY PEG YOU FOR A BOMB MAKER OR WORSE.
On February 21, 2015 at 3:08 am, Daniel Barger said:
This is just another example of how EVERYONE is to be made a felon by the passage of countless arcane, bizarre and irrational laws…..Ayn Rand was quite prophetic in her writings.
Question being what to do. The correct and appropriate course of action would of course be branded as extremist terrorism. Sadly though it is the only course of action that will address and
remediate the evil being done in the name of the state.
On February 22, 2015 at 1:42 pm, Josh said:
The notion that all law is legislated morality is naive. Law isn’t legislated morality. Law is a weapon of control and taxation. There are exceptions, of course, but the laws being written today couldn’t have less to do with morality.
Generally, when people say “you cannot legislate morality,” what they mean is that you cannot legislate men in to abiding by a specific set of moral standards, or adopting said morals in to their heart, as has been proven over and over again. Laws dealing in morality (of which there are relatively few), are a product of a society’s worldview or in many cases simple humanism.
No, legislation has little or nothing at all to do with morality, and everything to do with control, taxation, and crony capitalism.