Tuesday, February 17, 2015

New Jersey Man Arrested for Possession of a Flintlock Pistol

I think this might have been used by Aaron Burr

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, Bryan, I'd like for you to come up with something extraordinarily stupid. Something the pushes the limits of human dumbness.

Here you go.
Simone reported that Gordon was arrested last November while heading home after lunch. A Cumberland County Sheriff’s Deputy pulled over Gordon for a traffic violation, but wanted to search his car. Upon discovering a flintlock pistol in the glove compartment, VanGilder said that another deputy wanted to let him go since he knew the firearm was an antique. The Sheriff disagreed. VanGilder was arrested the following morning, and faces up to ten years in prison; three and a half to five years of that sentence must be served before parole can be considered.

To make things more absurd, the prosecutor in the case told VanGilder’s lawyer­–Evan Nappen–who’s in the video; that ballistics test will be run on the firearm.

Ok, I'm not a scientist, but how exactly do you run ballistics on a smoothbore firearm? And even if you could, what's the point? Are they going to match it against all the musket balls pulled from unsolved crimes?

Good luck tracking this pistol via serial number, too.

2 comments:

  1. To be completely fair, NJ law does specifically include "antique firearms" on the list of prohibited items. I'm not sure how that made it into the law, as you would think than any rational person would make "antique firearms" an exception to prohibited items.

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    1. Having said *that*, we don't enforce every dumb law on the books.

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