NRO: "... it makes no sense to harass the innocent."

[R. LaCasse]

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Date: Sun, April 14, 2013 10:17 am
From: "Dennis R. Young"
Subject: NRO: "... it makes no sense to harass the innocent."

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE

Re: Re: Prosecuting Gun Criminals

By Andrew C. McCarthy April 11, 2013 2:58 P.M. Comments10
Robert, two points. 1. You're exactly right about these non-prosecution
decisions. In my last five years at the Justice Department, I ran the
satellite U.S. attorney's office that covers the six upstate counties (three
on each side of the Hudson) just north of the Bronx. (The mothership of the
Southern District of New York, where I spent most of my government career,
is down at Foley Square and handles the Bronx and Manhattan.) One of my
responsibilities was to review investigative agency decisions to close cases
without charges. About once a month, an ATF supervisor would call or visit
me and go through several investigations the agency believed were not worth
pursuing. Typically, many of these cases involved attempted illegal gun
purchases. Though memory fades, so I may be forgetting one or two
disagreements, I'm pretty sure I concurred in all ATF's recommendations.
Almost always, these infractions involved sympathetic actors who almost
certainly did not know they were ineligible to own guns. A couple of
noteworthy things about this. First, the way this non-prosecution issue is
being framed, people could get the misimpression that gun offenses were not
taken seriously. Quite the opposite. You can only take so many cases - I
supervised 10 to 15 lawyers with heavy caseloads that featured terrorism,
drugs, racketeering, various types of fraud, etc. In the scheme of things,
most attempted illegal purchases are not weighty offenses. When I said
Senator Cruz was right to highlight the paltry number of prosecutions (44
out of 15,000), I was careful to note that this is unreasonable only because
the government has simultaneously turned up the heat on gun owners who have
done nothing wrong - if you're not going to go after the guilty, it makes no
sense to harass the innocent.
READ MORE:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/345341/re-re-prosecuting-gun-criminals-andrew-c-mccarthy

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Re: Prosecuting Gun Criminals
By Robert VerBruggen - April 11, 2013 12:36 P.M. Comments10
Andy and Andrew: You both touch on the fact that very few people who fail
background checks are prosecuted. Interestingly, though, conservatives have
long made contradictory points about this: Some see the fact as evidence
that we need to prosecute more; others see it as evidence that many of the
people who are flagged by the background-check system are "false positives."
READ MORE:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/345323/re-prosecuting-gun-criminals-robert-verbruggen

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Violating the Constitution Is Not the Way to Safeguard Constitutional Rights
By Andrew C. McCarthy April 11, 2013 11:29 A.M. Comments19
Senator Ted Cruz is quite right that the only things the federal government
should be doing in the area of firearms are safeguarding the Second
Amendment rights of law-abding citizens and enforcing the law against
criminals. Personally, I think firearms enforcement should primarily be a
state-level concern. If you are going to have federal gun laws, though,
Senator Cruz is also right that it makes no sense for the Justice Department
to prosecute only 44 out of 15,000 criminals at a time when Washington is
harassing lawful gun owners.
READ MORE:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/345316/violating-constitution-not-way-safeguard-constitutional-rights-andrew-c-mccarthy

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