Police designating themselves the “Only Ones” to be trusted with arms and claiming exemptions to infringements the people are subjected to invites corruption, and seeing officials “hoist with their own petard” hardly invites sympathy…So, it’s not unfair to wonder what’s in it for gun owners to come to Wendt’s defense?
The greater danger is ATF subjectively assigning itself powers and having the courts agree with it.
In October, a coalition of public and private firearms rights defenders “filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit opposing the ATF’s unlawful attempt to expand the scope of the 1986 machine gun ban (also known as the Hughes Amendment) through its prosecution of former Iowa Police Chief Bradley Wendt,” a Palmetto State Armory video announces.
“Amici curiae [friends of the court] consist of firearms associations, States, and two companies that design, produce, and sell firearms,” the brief declares, identifying them as the “Firearms Regulatory Accountability Coalition, Gun Owners of America, Gun Owners Foundation, Palmetto State Armory, B&T USA, and the states of West Virginia, Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, Montana, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Utah in support of defendant appellant” Wendt.
“In July, Chief Wendt was sentenced to federal prison for taking his police department machine gun to a public range day event,” the Palmetto State Armory video elaborates. “Knowing that a jury could easily find this conduct lawful, ATF realized they needed something beyond the law passed by Congress to obtain a conviction—namely, jamming into the jury instructions an additional requirement that taking the machine gun to the range be part of his ‘official duties’ — something not found in the law.”
By David Codrea
