After all the bitching about how Arizona’s law telling state police to enforce federal immigration laws is going to cause racial profiling… the United States Federal Government, in the forms of both ATF agents and sitting judges, have decided that American citizens had better racially profile… or face jail time:
Yes, yes, I know… “Inforwars” is not exactly the high water mark of non-crazy reporting. But the basic facts of the story seem to check out through other sources:
1) One Paul Copeland was a private citizen at an Austin, TX, gun show in Jan 2010
2) He was there selling a handfull of firearms. Which, as a US citizen, he’s perfectly within his rights to do without obtaining a FFL or any such nonsense.
3) A group of undercover ATF agents as well as Austin PD were at the gun show and observed a group of four Hispanic males. “The agents observed only one member of the group was speaking English, and that the men were avoiding the licensed gun dealers at the show. These observations led the agents to believe that the men might be illegal aliens.”
4) One of the Hispanics (“Aviles”) wanted one of Copelands guns. After the usual haggling, Aviles agreed to buy the gun.
5) Copeland asked to see Aviles identification.
6) Aviles refused to show it.
7) Another one of the group (“Huerta”) produced a seemingly valid Texas drivers license. Aviles gave the money to Huerta, who then bought the pistol from Copeland.
8 ) Huerta then gave the pistol to Aviles. Copeland saw this and objected that he had sold the pistol to Huerta.
9) The ATF agents saw this, and rightly noted that this is what’s known as a “straw purchase…” when someone who is legally notallowed to buy a gun gives the money to someone who is, who then buys it for the other person and gives it to them. This is a federal crime. The criminals here, however, are the straw *purchasers.*
10) The ATF agents stopped Aviles outside of the gun show and determined that he was an illegal alien.
11) The ATF agents then hassled Copeland, claiming he’d sold a firearm to an illegal alien. Copeland countered that he’d sold it to the guy with the apparently valid Texas drivers license.
12) The ATF confiscated all his weapons (the ones for sale as well as the one he was wearing) and let him leave.
13) On March 2, 2010, Copeland was indicted on charges of selling a firearm to an illegal alien, arrested on March 22. At trial, Huerta was brought in as a witness, admitted to being an illegal, admitted to the straw purchace… and was allowed to simply walk out of the courtroom. He has apparently not been arrested for his federal firearms crime *or* for being an illegal alien.
14) Copeland was convicted in federal court on July 20, 2010, and sentenced on August 27 to six months in a “work camp.”
Let me sum up: Copeland was arrested for selling a firearm to someone with a seemingly valid ID. He had no way to determine the legal status of Huerta, Aviles or anyone else. The ATF agents made a preliminary determination that the group of Hispanic males were worth watching as potential illegals because of the way they looked and spoke.
It seems to me that anyone who now wants to discriminate against Hispanics – or pretty much anyone, I suppose – now has a legal precedent for it: simply wave these news articles in the face of anyone who complains. According the the US FedGuv, American citizens will face arrest and conviction if they do business with anyone who *might* be an illegal.
The obvious joke here would be for someone to refuse to serve President Obama a hamburger because he *might* be an illegal.
7 Responses to “Don’t do business with brown people: US FedGuv”
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The important thing — to the ATF folk — appears to be that they exerted some control over an American citizen doing legal business.
Please note: watching people because they are behaving oddly is good police training. They may not be able to tell you exactly what raised their hackles (beyond the excessively silly comment about language) but they knew something was up.
That said, the end result was the result of the District Attorney’s actions, not the ATF officers’. All THEY can do, as any police action in the US, is investigate, arrest if it seems appropriate, and report to the Federal/State/County attorney in the jurisdiction. That’s it!
And then: yeah, the net result was beyond wrong. Thanks, DA, for making Law Enforcement look stupid yet again. Didja get re-elected, too?
> the end result was the result of the District Attorney’s actions…
Actually, no: “Austin’s Federal Judge Sam Sparks sentenced Copeland to spend the next 6-months at a federal work camp followed by 2-years of probation. ”
Note that: FEDERAL Judge. Sentenced a man to a “work camp” for not doing enough racial profiling.
While I disagree with the conviction, it was something that the ATF would have nailed a licensed dealer for doing. When the person did not have valid ID and turned to a buddy to buy it for him, it became what is called a straw purchase. It is the reason that when I have personally sold weapons in the past, I have turned down people who did not want to show me their ID and sign a bill of sale.
Never having been a firearms dealer… if someone does a “straw purchase,” isn’t the *purchaser* the criminal? Or are American citizens supposed to be mind readers as well as racial profilers?
And it doesn’t look like he was convicted for the straw purchase, but for the fact that the buyer was an illegal.
A “work camp”? Really? I just did system wide check of Dept Justice, no such thing exists, so who, exactly, is operating these “work camps”?
Stormy? Tell me, do you excuse the NAZIs for murdering people simply because they “were only following orders” or because you believe the State has the right to do to people as it wishes? A single sentence response will suffice, since the ATF violated 9 Federal Ordinances in this case, don’t break your spine trying to defend their anti-American shit.