Up in arms

Bob Newell/Tribune-Review
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/opinion/guest/s_114372.html

By Alan Gottlieb and Dave Workman
Sunday, January 26, 2003

Anyone who questions why gun owners resist imposition of new laws and greater restrictions on firearms ownership need only look at the case of Erich Olaf Tate, a Georgia man who will spend the next two years in a federal prison for gunrunning.

How Tate wound up incarcerated for gunrunning, and only gunrunning, is a story that offers not only evidence of a broken judicial system, but also plenty of cause for law-abiding gun owners to further distrust a government that seems to single out guns as a crime problem, while ignoring other, more serious threats to the social fabric.

PRISON DESERVED

We are not defending Mr. Tate. He thoroughly deserves his trip to prison, not only because he violated the gun laws, but because the way he did it indicates he is not terribly bright. Tate purchased dozens of firearms at pawn shops in the Augusta area, then sold them illegally on the streets of New York, where many of them no doubt have been, or will be, used to commit crimes.

What tripped up Tate was his rather aggressive way of doing business. In one of those ?What was he thinking?? moves, Tate visited the A-1 Jewelry Shop in April 2002 to order 34 pistols. Law-abiding gun dealers invariably have their radar raised at such a purchase, and in this case, the store owner properly contacted the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Before long, instead of conducting a land office business in illegal guns, Tate found himself in custody. He began cooperating with federal investigators, implicating several other people, and eventually received a 25-month prison sentence, followed by 200 hours of community service. In exchange for a guilty plea, prosecutors dropped 17 counts, including a charge of cocaine trafficking.

That?s outrageous. Here?s a guy who admittedly obtained guns for people who should not have them, and who are probably robbing and maybe even killing other people with those guns. He?s a guy who not only ran guns, he ran drugs, which kill far more Americans ? and especially American youth ? than firearms in any given year.

U.S. District Court Chief Judge Dudley H. Bowen Jr. took some notice of this at sentencing, commenting from the bench, ?What I?m concerned about is that he put 34 handguns on the streets of New York ? and dealt in a significant amount of cocaine.?

WRIST-SLAPPING INJUSTICE

Figure that Tate, with any kind of luck, will be on the streets in less than two years, for running guns and drugs. The prosecutor in this case must be nuts.

Slap-on-the-wrist sentences like this are why the firearms community justifiably feels as though it has become the scapegoat for this nation?s crime problems. Such light penalties are also why gun groups oppose passage of any new laws that merely ratchet down on their rights. How prosecutors could drop a charge of cocaine trafficking, when the flow of illegal drugs into this country is easily more responsible for our social ills than our constitutional right to keep and bear arms, is dumbfounding.

So long as prosecutors and judges appear unable to put this in perspective, gun owners will remain suspicious; convinced on one hand that the judicial system doesn?t work, and disgusted on the other that destruction of their rights is more important to lawmakers than punishing the criminals who flood our streets with drugs.

It should be duly noted that the firearms community has, in many ways, pressed for tougher sentencing for gun-wielding thugs. It was a gun rights activist who developed the ?Three Strikes and You?re Out? and subsequent ?Hard Time for Armed Crime? initiatives. Gun owners have been the loudest advocates of longer prison sentences for violent repeat offenders.

When was the last time you heard a cocaine user call for tougher prosecution of drug traffickers?

Tate?s father, Harold, was quoted in one newspaper acknowledging that his son had made ?a catastrophic mistake.? The same might be said about the federal prosecutor in the Tate case. His willingness to drop 17 different charges against the defendant sends the wrong message, to Tate and anyone willing to step in and fill the void he left temporarily by going to prison.

Erich Tate is no angel. And he?s gone to jail for an inordinately short period, considering the original charges. Something about that simply does not ring right with the firearms community, but it certainly rings hollow.

Alan Gottlieb is the founder of the Second Amendment Foundation. Dave Workman is the communications director for the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.