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D.C. Outrage Equals Brady Norm
Every gun owner, every veteran, anyone in the military—no, every honest citizen of this nation—should be outraged by what happened in the District of Columbia to U.S. Marine Cpl. Melroy H. Cort, a decorated, severely wounded Iraq war veteran.
While on his way to check in as a patient at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center for treatment and rehabilitation, Cpl. Cort—who lost his legs as a result of wounds inflicted by a roadside bomb in Ramadi, Iraq—became a victim of the District of Columbia gun ban law and of inquisitory federal prosecutors.
Cpl. Cort, a Wright State University graduate who enlisted in the Marines in 2004 and served three combat tours in Iraq, expected that he and his wife would be away from their Columbus, Ohio, home for a long stay at Walter Reed. An Ohio Right-to-Carry permit holder, Cpl. Cort had sought the advice of his commanding officer concerning his carry pistol and was told to present it to the armory at the medical center where it would be secured when he checked in.
A flat tire in the District of Columbia on May 8, 2006, changed everything.
When he and his wife, Samantha, pulled into a service station to have the tire repaired, Cpl. Cort transferred his pistol from the glove compartment to his jacket pocket for safekeeping. Someone saw the firearm and called police. When they arrived, officers handcuffed the young Marine in his wheelchair and hauled him off for a night in jail. He was charged with carrying a pistol without a license, a felony punishable by five years in prison; possession of an unregistered firearm and possession of ammunition—both misdemeanor counts.
Cpl. Cort was assigned a public defender who advised him to plead guilty, but he elected to fight. Had he followed the advice of his court-appointed lawyer, Cpl. Melroy Cort would not only have lost his gun rights for life, he would have lost all of his medical and veteran's benefits. And he may well have been dishonorably discharged from the Marines. The stakes were huge.
After juries twice deadlocked, on January 13 of this year—with Cort acting in his own defense—a jury acquitted him of the D.C. gun ban violations but found him guilty of the ammunition misdemeanor. He plans to appeal. His story is resonating across the Internet, on gun rights, veterans' and military websites. The growing anger at the heartless pursuit of this American hero by federal prosecutors is virtually unanimous.
Mr. Cort's nightmare happened in a jurisdiction with runaway violent crime, where armed self-defense of one's
home was a crime; a jurisdiction that the Supreme Court ruled denied the individual Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
But such a nightmare is the sweet dream of the likes of the Brady Campaign, which is pressing for a long list of new vindictive restrictions against gun owners. Among their demands is something the Brady Campaign and the media call closing the "private sales loophole," which would expand the National Instant Check System to cover every now-lawful firearm transfer between law-abiding individuals. Combined with the Brady demand for keeping database records on those transactions, it is national gun-owner registration.
But it is more onerous than that alone. All private transactions between law-abiding citizens could become criminal acts. Selling or trading guns between family and friends without obtaining government permission would be a federal felony.
Just as it happened to Cpl. Cort, you can bet the farm that the gun ban crowd would demand wholesale arrest and prosecution for you and me, something they virtually never do for violent criminals. And you can bet prosecutors like Cpl. Cort's would eagerly comply.
But federal officials steadfastly refuse to enforce laws against violent criminals whose possession or attempted acquisition of any firearm is a criminal act. Under federal law, there is no act committed by real criminals with guns that is not already a crime. If these officials enforced the laws against bad guys, demands for new gun controls would be dead on arrival.
The Brady Campaign, in its zeal to criminalize unrestricted private sales, has actually described the contemptible failure of federal authorities to prosecute violent felons and fugitives who violate federal law. Try this from a Brady "private sales loophole" propaganda piece: "A felony conviction indicates that someone has been found guilty of a very serious crime, like murder or assault with a deadly weapon. Remarkably, felony convictions account for over half of the total number of blocked attempts to purchase firearms by high-risk people, or an estimated 842,000 blocked gun purchase applications submitted by convicted felons. That works out to be, on average, 169 thwarted attempts to purchase a gun by a felon every day."
Here is an even more twisted take, this time on "fugitives from justice:"
"Brady background checks blocked attempted purchases by fugitives from justice 68,000 times from 1994 to 2007, an average of 14 fugitives turned away every day."
Fugitives turned away? Felons blocked? This is catch and release.
If you don't contact your Congressman and Senators today and the Brady Campaign gets what it wants on private sales and the rest of its gun ban agenda, believe this: for gun owners there will be no catch and release, there will be no prosecutorial discretion. We will all live the nightmare of Cpl. Melroy Cort. |
