Making Anti-gun theatrics work in our favor

[BigBlueQ 7]

I've been thinking about this for some time, due to the recent legal cases in the news (i.e. Brian Aitken, Revell v. Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, etc.)

 

It seems that so many of New Jersey's anti-gun "feelings" that have been brought up by politicians,

and that are then force-fed to the general population through nightly news stories all hinge on

gun-trafficking, "assault weapons," and "massive arsenals" that law-abiding citizens legally own.

 

However, when the inevitable laws are created and passed, common folk always get

caught up in the policing of these laws, and as is the case in Aitken and Revell,

they are convicted due to overprosecution of said laws, when in fact their situations were NOT criminally intended.

 

We've all seen the results.

 

My question is this: Since politicians like Bloomberg and his type use their resources to get

ambiguous laws passed that harm more law-abiding citizens than actual criminals, should not the laws

have added conditions that those arrested should have to be PROVEN to be engaging in such criminal behavior as gun-running?

 

Just my thinking out loud, but does anyone have any thoughts? Except for "This is New Jersey, get used to it!"

[Anselmo 87]

If the law and prosecution was applied with proper discretion, everyone would be a lot safer. If convicted felons caught with guns were sentenced to long prison terms, if the prosecutors and judges had some common sense things would be a lot better. How the hell does a judge sentence someone to 7 years for having a over capacity magazine and jhp's to 7 years while someone else that actually pulled the trigger and shot someone and has previous violent criminal history gets a similar prison term?

 

The law is written as a tool for prosecutors to not have to prove criminal intent so they can get easier convictions and send the bad guys away. But when it's turned against the common man doing things perfectly legal in lots of other states, that is the problem.

 

If you tighten the law, more bad guys will be on the street. If you tighten the law, more common guys will get into prison. If they applied more common sense and discretion you could get the more bad guys in prison and less common guys in prison.

[BigBlueQ 7]

Your logic is watertight, unfortunately.

 

However, and this is a thinking out loud topic, what if there was some way to hold prosecutors accountable

for over-zealous prosecutions against someone who makes a simple mistake. And by "mistake" I mean something

that merely slips your mind. One of the reasons I had my wife get her own FID was so that if I lost a round

in the car and she was pulled over, she wouldn't get arrested for "gang related activity," or whatever charge

they would attach to that mistake. Or in the case of Revell, who had no options whatsoever, and still got arrested and convicted?

Those laws were never meant for a situation like that. And yet he got arrested for something that was out of his hands.

 

I know that legally prosecutors are "held accountable" when their convictions are overturned by higher courts.

But I thought that attorneys must provide the best defense for their clients, or else they themselves are in violation of the law.

What if prosecutors were held to some sort of similar standard when it came to criminally pursuing "crimes"

which were obviously not criminal to begin with?