Do YOU Allow "Prohibited Persons" Into Your Home or Business?

Forwarding this email I just received. Do we need to start running background checks on the Thursday night book club?




Dear MSSA Friends,

MSSA has just filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief in US v. Stegmeier. Why is this important?

If you allow a "prohibited person" (someone ineligible to possess a firearm under federal law) to enter your home, without knowing that that person is prohibited, should you be charged with the federal felony of illegally transferring a firearm to a prohibited person?

In this brief, MSSA argues that you should not. However, Stegmeier was convicted in federal district court for what appears to be essentially this. This case is now on appeal to the federal Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis.

We felt it important to argue the case, so a precedent is NOT established that you or I may be prosecuted for a federal felony just because we allow somebody into our home or place of business who we don't know is a prohibited person - so we don't need to do a criminal records background check on every person who comes through the door.

In our brief, we covered just a couple of issues. Other amici (and the Appellant, Stegmeier) argued other, related issues. You may access and read the MSSA brief from:
http://progunleaders.org/Stegmeier/index.html

Best wishes,

Gary Marbut, president
Montana Shooting Sports Association
http://www.mtssa.org
author, Gun Laws of Montana
http://www.mtpublish.com

MSSA has just filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief in US v. Stegmeier.

If you allow a "prohibited person" (someone ineligible to possess a firearm under federal law) to enter your home, without knowing that that person is prohibited, should you be charged with the federal felony of illegally transferring a firearm to a prohibited person?

... Stegmeier was convicted in federal district court for what appears to be essentially this.

Click to expand...

:shocker:
What an asinine ruling :exclaim:
Judges who do things like this should be immediately retired.
Tell me it wasn't a unanimous ruling. Please? Does at least one judge there have some common sense?

"Transfer" would require at least an agreed-upon exchange of property rights, probably money or something similar, and would definitely apply to physically handing the gun to someone.
But just to be in the same house??
If I'm in your house with your [insert object here], have you transferred it to me just because you invited me in?
If I tried to walk out with it, I'm pretty sure you'd object, thinking it was still yours.

"If you don't have your own pistol, you may have to wait the rest of your life for the police to bring theirs"

Excellent quote! Love it!

TWG2A said:

"If you don't have your own pistol, you may have to wait the rest of your life for the police to bring theirs"

Click to expand...

The quote/signature tag is incorrect. The correct version reads:

If you don't have your own firearm, you may only have the rest your life for the police to bring theirs.

I like both!

Stegmeir is toast.

The conviction hinged on a finding of fact by the jury: that he either knew or should have known the tenant was a prohibited person or fugitive from justice. Even this brief admits there was conflicting evidence. Unless the defense at trial was so horribly incompetent that they didn't even raise the point of an innocent mind, or if such a point was disallowed by the judge, this conviction is going to stand.

It takes a remarkable appeal for a court to overturn a finding of fact. It very rarely happens. It certainly won't happen due to the efforts of this amicus brief, which treats the facts as secondary and focuses on the outcome. It's the 2A equivalent of pleading orphan status to get out of a charge of patricide.