Vedder Holsters Daily Digest: Progress in NJ, Legal Action in MN and an Imposter in WA

1. Props to Chrispy Creme. With no obvious political benefit too…

   • Heh heh; he knows darn well that he failed to get traction on the national stage precisely because of his lack of credentials on this and other issues among non-NJ ‘republicans.’ But on gun control the lack of sincerity was most obvious given his past bad acts and failure to do any significant good subsequently.

     • He’s veto’d plenty of bad bills sent to him by the legislature. And he hasnt done anything bad on firearms since taking office.

       Not going to hold statements as a Morris County Freeholder in the past against him. Many, many people have changed their minds on guns over the past decade or two.

       I will miss him when he’s gone. His successor will likely be worse (though I havent researched Joe Piscopo on guns yet….).

2. Looks like about $30K in cash (they say $20K), a QP, or at max a HP (if it’s highly compressed) of pot and some guns.

   I’ll go out on a limb here and say either they sell A LOT of pretty good pot, their minimum sale is something on the order of a 1/4oz and the cops caught them when they were really, really low on product, they sell something else in large quantities or the cash comes from mainly from something that isn’t sticky green and these boys ain’t street level folks.

   Either way, that pot ain’t worth CLOSE to $50K. If it’s a half pound of high grade stuff it’s worth like $3K if they’re street level dealers, less if they’re higher up the chain. Unless someone bothered to bag up a ton of H bags… which I rather doubt, the value claim is total horseshit. Based on how cops regularly inflate the numbers, I’d guess it’s pot and this is a bullshit claim to get more money.

   • You do know that seized money is more valuable to cops than pot, right? Why wouldn’t they time the raid for maximum profit? It’s a well known fact that this method is employed for maximizing revenue reaped from meth labs, even though it makes the raid more dangerous/toxic/volatile for officers since the next batch is being made simultaneously from the proceeds.

     • “You do know that seized money is more valuable to cops than pot, right?”

       That depends on which federal agency they cozy up to and how close they are to what metric marker. Drug values taken off the street in terms of a dollar value are one of the ways the DEA hands out money to local LEO’s for “being effective”. This is how you end up with something I saw in high school, the front page of the local paper with a picture of a porky cop holding a sad little marijuana plant with the root ball carefully bagged in plastic and a headline screaming it was worth $15K.

       They weigh the whole thing, call it by street value per gram and total that as the “bust”. So here are the cops with a pathetic little ditch weed plant (common where I grew up) which might in total weigh 30 grams, it has NO actual street value at all, but add in a few pounds of dirt and water and all of a sudden they’ve “taken more than two pounds of marijuana off the streets”. Of course they rate it as high end stuff and inflate the street value too.

       The cash, generally speaking, is simply confiscated and divvied up between whatever fedgov agency is willing to take it and the local LEO’s under civil asset forfeiture but may also bring in more money from another agency who has a metric for getting money out of the hands of drug dealers because they link that to the War on Terror.

       • One of the guys I used to work with had his house raided by our Elite Drug Task Force, SW PA Division. He used to hide his weed plants in his garden. He would tie his tomato plants to his weed plants for concealment. The headline in our local paper was “Major local drug raid seizes in excess of 100 pounds of premium marijuana.” Only problem was in the accompanying photo, you could see the tomato plants, the stakes they were wired to, and the huge dirt clods that were clinging to them.

       • 100lbs!? Damn, people really are stupid.

         One pound of dried, cured pot fills a very large trash bag. 100 pounds, even wet would fill the back of multiple pickup trucks. I mean damn, has no one ever bought oregano or bay leaves? A pound of bay leaves is a whole contractor bag full!

       • I don’t know about pot, but as someone who buys loose leaf tea by the pound, and processes our kitchen herbs through the dehydrator, that doesn’t sound quite right. A pound of loose-leaf tea fits into a half-gallon bag easily.

3. So now, instead of “He’s trying to kill me now,” police chiefs will now be able to accept, “He’s trying to kill me.” Whoopee. Even if the police chief signs off on it, it still has to go to a judge for approval, and we all know how that will go.

   The only thing that’ll solve places such as New Jersey and New York City will be either a federal law forcing reciprocity, or a SCOTUS ruling, and I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for a SCOTUS ruling.

   • Reciprocity will solve nothing. It will allow people from out of state to carry in NYC (maybe, but it will go kicking and screaming, perhaps by imposing a reg that you can only carry guns registered in NYC or some other BS) and NJ, but will not increase the number of permits issued for either. The bills currently proposed only allow reciprocity for resident permits, not nonresident permits, so NYC residents and NJ residents will be SOL.

     • You’re right about the Senate bill. The House bill would allow you to get a license from another state and then carry in any. I’m not too hopeful either will get to Trumps desk. I’m even less hopeful that the House bill will.

   • Yup, and I think the approval process will still take months or whatever, so “he killed me” is more like the actual justification. Kind of like how they put the approved permit on the casket lid of that lady who was stabbed to death by an ex boyfriend while justice was delayed/denied. Actually, I don’t think they even ended up approving the permit in that case.

4. The Iowa bill is more of a broad tweeking of Iowa gun laws rather than ‘sweeping changes’.

5. What’s the practical outcome of what Christie signed in New Jersey?

   • There is no practical effect unless your local law enforcement chief wants to hand out carry permits. If he or she does, for some reason, that chief can use a less individual threat of harm (i.e. I am at risk because my ex has assaulted me on three occasions this year) and use a more general form (i.e. there have been three murders on my block this week!).

     But if your NJ Chief of police is not gun-rights friendly, this has no practical effect whatsoever.

     • And it will still take six months to a year for them to process your denial, since not one police department int he state complies with the state mandate of processing apps in 30 days, from what I’ve heard tell.

       • Yup, you might as well put your justification in the past tense on the form, since whatever you’re afraid of will have already happened by the time it’s approved.

       • By the time they review your application their argument will be you didn’t get killed yet so there is nothing to worry about. Unless you’re dead and in that case nothing for you or them to worry about.

   • In practice, instead of 99.9% of applicants being denied, that number will go all the way down to 99.5% (and that’s optimistic). It’s a joke and won’t have any real effect. That’s because both a police chief and a judge have to approve the permit. Even if the cops sign off on it, the judges most likely won’t (save for maybe a handful of extreme cases). And of course the communists, I mean democrats, will fight it all day everyday, so it may not happen at all.

6. If someone buys guns and has them sent to you, as an FFL, and then someone ELSE comes to pick them up and you fail to go any deeper than that or run a check on the person who ordered\bought the guns I can’t feel sorry for you when you get sued.

   • I understand what you’re saying.
     However, I also understand that if the person in front of the FFL says he used an alias to do the ordering (which is totally legal, as long as there’s no intent to commit fraud, and how may FFLs can read minds?), and can demonstrate knowledge of the order, and otherwise passes the imposed tests, what legal theory prevents that FFL from completing the transfer?
     Of course, I also understand that prosecutors have been known to “stretch” facts to fit the case, and juries are often ignorant of the underlying laws (it’s the job of the defending attorney to explain them, but all too often that just doesn’t happen), so justice goes wanting.

     When it comes to the law, there are so many conflicting laws/rules on the books that a simple traffic case can go for days. Judges don’t like that, so they often (and I’ve seen this, as an observer in court; yes, I’m retired) simply cut lawyers off, saying “move on, counselor.”
     I believe we have the worst justice system there is, except for all the others.

     • In this case the FFL allegedly knew the actual buyer so he can’t even use your argument.

       …but even if that were not the case I still have no problem with the FFL getting sued here. If someone is using aliases and possibly fraud (who paid for them? with what? under what name?) when ordering a firearm enough red flags go up that any sane dealer would stop and consider the much more likely scenario: someone obviously trying to avoid the background check via a strawman.

7. “How are you celebrating 308 day?”

   By shooting off some 7.62x54R of course, and no a Nagant wasn’t used.

   • I should hope not! It would be very difficult to cram a 54R round into one of those revolvers.

8. No mention of the New Hope City Council member who drew his own handgun?

9. How long did it take the Flint, Michigan PD to spread out those bills and array all of that ammo for the cameras?

   What’s the prize for the correct answer?

   • A one-year supply of bottled water.

     • I can use it to poison feral hogs.

       • My other joke was going to be “there’s almost as much lead arrayed on that table as in the bloodstream of the average Flint resident”.

         I also like how they fanned out all the $1 bills. There must be, like, a hundred bucks there! Must have stopped some homey on his way to a strip club…

         • Strippers that take singles aren’t any strippers I want to see.
           Again with the feral hogs.

10. “How long did it take the Flint, Michigan PD to spread out those bills and array all of that ammo for the cameras?”

    Their tax dollars at work.

11. drugs, guns, cash.. what are we, puritans? why is any of that illegal?

    did they commit violence?

    • Their music sucked.

12. Respect for the subtle “Firefly/Serenity” reference, DZ!

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