smugglers-mugshots

“That family was probably the most anti-gun family I’ve met. … They really didn’t want us to have (guns) there. It made them really uncomfortable. That’s a huge shift, to go from not liking them to theoretically shipping them to somebody.” – Tennants of the Merz family in Friends express surprise over Cedar Rapids gun smuggling charges [at gazette.com]

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45 COMMENTS

    • I believe it goes deeper than that. The older males (one was the father?) were born in Lebanon (or at least the region). People I’ve know from such areas don’t have a gut level understanding of the inalienable individual right to keep and bear arms because they weren’t raised from an early age in an environment that fostered such ideas. Any understanding of the right often has to be synthesized later in life after they learn of the concept. Naturally, they wouldn’t typically understand why the individual would be “allowed” to be armed while at the same time (allegedly) shipping arms off to their home country. Their views on the individual being armed and their alleged shipments make sense to me in light of the patriarchs’ background.

      Control the guns and control the people. They wouldn’t see a moral, ethical, or logical discrepancy like another who was raised on the idea of individual Liberty at an early age.

      • ETA: We had an ideological issue many years back with our Uncle. He was born in Iraq and fled to Israel when he was about 10 years old. It took him years to understand individual Liberty. Even then, he didn’t have a gut level understanding of it.

        • My late Polish friend and Soviet opposite number had a Brother-in-law from Hungary named Attila who could not grasp the 2A. He was aghast that the state does not control arms here. Stockholm Syndrome on steroids.

      • Regardless of our distaste for nasty bad firearms, everyone knows that unbelievers must be put to death, along with jews and americans!

      • “…don’t have a gut level understanding of the inalienable individual right to keep and bear arms because they weren’t raised from an early age in an environment that fostered such ideas. Any understanding of the right often has to be synthesized later in life after they learn of the concept.”

        Much like most Americans who have gone through public schools in the last couple of decades. Unfortunately.

  4. Not very good smugglers if you ask me. Must have been real easy to notice and catch. It is hard to believe the intended recipients remain unidentified.

    • Article doesn’t mention how the guns were obtained, either. I’d kind of like to know that, too. Let’s see some results of the much touted “tracing”, no?

  5. Well no sh!t they were antigun. The harder something is to get, the more value it has.

    • They were smuggling the guns to Lebanon, so making them harder to get here would be pretty bad for their business model.

  6. Wonder who they were shipping them to ? Muslim extremists, Hezbolla, Syrian rebels or folks that want to protect themselves from the extremists? Probably pretty easy to catch as someone else said. When the NICS checks for a few people show up that many times for that many guns I would guess that would raise someone’s suspicions and lead to an investigation.

    • “When the NICS checks for a few people show up that many times for that many guns I would guess that would raise someone’s suspicions and lead to an investigation.”

      Except NICS is ‘supposed’ to destroy those records in 24 hrs.

      You and I know know exactly what that means.

      *cough*.

      They realistically could have been buying them for cash from individuals.

    • There is a large population of Maronite Christians in Lebanon, and in some areas they are under siege from Sunni terrorists, some connected to ISIS. They are thus reviving their civil war era militias. Many Lebanese-Americans are Christians who fled Lebanon during their 25 year civil war, some came much earlier. I don’t know anything about this family, but it’s my guess.

  9. barry and holder don’t like guns either. And they shipped a bunch to mexico where we know they were used to commit murder.

    Wonder why they ain’t sharing a cell with this family?

    • Because they shipped *thousands*, not just hundreds, and they didn’t pay for them. Thus, they must be big wheeler-dealers and therefore above the law.

    • Like most Liberals, especially the wealthy ones, BO and his gang of fascists are above the law. Laws are written to control all the stupid sheep who put their lives into the control of the State.

  10. Deport these people! take all their wealth, send them home in a pine box oh I’m not PC!

  11. If I were an arms smuggler, I’d probably tell everyone I hated guns, and were so screwed up the mere presence of them made me uncomfortable… Stupid people actually believe what they hear.

    Really?

    Who still falls for words?

    • Dustin, think about your question for a minute, Brother. Obama got reelected, didn’t he?

  12. Do as I say-not as I do. I have a business acquaintance who is married to a Lebanese gal( who’s family has $). They travel to Lebanon a few times a year-for God know what. It’s slightly hilarious to hear his anti-semitism knowing that he is a long time antique dealer-in a trade dominated(at least in Chicago) by the Hebrew tribe. Yes a large number are nominally Christian as his wife is catholic. My own uncle married a lebanese woman in the 1950’s and I have half Lebanese cousins. My uncle was stationed in the south(Army) and my aunt was in an accident and was placed in the “colored” ward of the hospital. Yep in the Jim Crow south…

  13. Are their neighbors really that stupid or naive to believe these guys were anti-gun one minute and gun smugglers the next and not realize it was part of their (admittedly nor very good) cover?

    Wizard’s First Rule . . . people will believe anything.

  15. LOL @ people in this thread who consider “gun smuggling” to be an actual crime.

      • That is true.

        But at least have the decency to call them entrepreneurs instead of “criminals”. That word stinks of government pejorative.

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