From the Shooting Wire news release that I receive via email:
hillbilly
FEATURE
Neo-Second Amendment Guy?
In Seattle, the trial of former neo-Nazi accused of selling machine guns to a federal informant has Second Amendment groups foaming at the mouths. Keith D. Gilbert, 66, is faced with 12 counts of gun violations, including possession of machine guns and dealing in firearms without a license. The former Aryan Nation member, once an aide to Aryan Nation founder Richard Butler, allegedly sold two automatic and two semi-auto firearms he says were owned or built by friends to a government informant.
This isn't Gilbert's first brush with the law. In the 1960s he spent five years in a California prison for possessing 1,400 pounds of stolen dynamite. Dynamite he once admitted was part of a plot to kill Martin Luther King, Jr.
Gilbert moved to northern Idaho in the 1970s and joined the Aryan Nations before splitting off to form his own group. He served several years in an Idaho prison for welfare fraud and other violations before moving to Seattle where he managed apartments.
In what has to be one of the funniest pieces of bad advice ever given, Gilbert told one of his friends with money problems that he should consider working as a paid police informant. Gilbert says he thought the friend would "rat out the meth dealers" living in the apartments he managed.
Instead, the informant told authorities Gilbert was involved in gun dealing. He later used government money to buy the four firearms from Gilbert in 2003 and 2004.
Gilbert had another acquaintance turn on him as well. The man who built two machine guns for him pleaded guilty and testified against him.
Regardless of the outcome of this trial (now being deliberated), Gilbert faces other felony charges, including being a felon in possession of a firearm. Although his previous convictions couldn't be introduced into evidence in this trial because of concerns about jury bias, the previous convictions will be introduced in that trial.
So what does this have to do with Second Amendment groups?
In his remarks, Gilbert's lawyer says his client is "no longer a white supremacist." In fact, Walter Palmer says, "he's a Second Amendment guy."
Yep, Gilbert now says he sold the guns "expecting to be arrested." He felt his trial could provide a forum for challenging gun control laws.
The prosecution may be chuckling, but the Second Amendment Foundation's howling.
'Hogwash" says Joe Waldron of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA), "for Gilbert to claim some kind of martyr status in this case is ludicrous."
Waldron didn't stop with there. "That kind of remark is an insult to every genuine, law-abiding gun rights activist and gun owner in the Pacific Northwest, if not the country," he says, "Gilbert is a convicted felon, who once admitted to a plot to kill Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with stolen dynamite. To now contend he got himself arrested so his grandchildren will remember him as some sort of gun rights crusader is outrageous beyond words."
Gilbert does seem to have the ability to "embellish" facts. In his comments to the jury Monday, he recalled how federal agents handcuffed his 10-year-old grandchild during the raid of his home. Prosecutors say they don't believe Gilbert has any grandchildren, and none were handcuffed during his arrest.
While I admit being more than a little amused at the brass displayed by Mr. Gilbert, his is one of those stories that can be more than slightly dangerous to anyone naïve enough to allow the anti-firearms crowd to paint a picture of Keith Gilbert as being representative of the gun rights community.
That part of the story really is alarming. On that point, I don't believe Joe Waldron's engaging in counter-feverish rhetoric when he says "Law-abiding gun rights activists, and average gun owners, do not engage in illegal gun trafficking, nor are they white supremacists or would-be assassins."
Mr. Gilbert's defense may have a particularly fishy smell about it, but I think he'll fail the Second Amendment smell test.
We'll keep you posted.
--- Jim Shepherd
hillbilly
FEATURE
Neo-Second Amendment Guy?
In Seattle, the trial of former neo-Nazi accused of selling machine guns to a federal informant has Second Amendment groups foaming at the mouths. Keith D. Gilbert, 66, is faced with 12 counts of gun violations, including possession of machine guns and dealing in firearms without a license. The former Aryan Nation member, once an aide to Aryan Nation founder Richard Butler, allegedly sold two automatic and two semi-auto firearms he says were owned or built by friends to a government informant.
This isn't Gilbert's first brush with the law. In the 1960s he spent five years in a California prison for possessing 1,400 pounds of stolen dynamite. Dynamite he once admitted was part of a plot to kill Martin Luther King, Jr.
Gilbert moved to northern Idaho in the 1970s and joined the Aryan Nations before splitting off to form his own group. He served several years in an Idaho prison for welfare fraud and other violations before moving to Seattle where he managed apartments.
In what has to be one of the funniest pieces of bad advice ever given, Gilbert told one of his friends with money problems that he should consider working as a paid police informant. Gilbert says he thought the friend would "rat out the meth dealers" living in the apartments he managed.
Instead, the informant told authorities Gilbert was involved in gun dealing. He later used government money to buy the four firearms from Gilbert in 2003 and 2004.
Gilbert had another acquaintance turn on him as well. The man who built two machine guns for him pleaded guilty and testified against him.
Regardless of the outcome of this trial (now being deliberated), Gilbert faces other felony charges, including being a felon in possession of a firearm. Although his previous convictions couldn't be introduced into evidence in this trial because of concerns about jury bias, the previous convictions will be introduced in that trial.
So what does this have to do with Second Amendment groups?
In his remarks, Gilbert's lawyer says his client is "no longer a white supremacist." In fact, Walter Palmer says, "he's a Second Amendment guy."
Yep, Gilbert now says he sold the guns "expecting to be arrested." He felt his trial could provide a forum for challenging gun control laws.
The prosecution may be chuckling, but the Second Amendment Foundation's howling.
'Hogwash" says Joe Waldron of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA), "for Gilbert to claim some kind of martyr status in this case is ludicrous."
Waldron didn't stop with there. "That kind of remark is an insult to every genuine, law-abiding gun rights activist and gun owner in the Pacific Northwest, if not the country," he says, "Gilbert is a convicted felon, who once admitted to a plot to kill Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. with stolen dynamite. To now contend he got himself arrested so his grandchildren will remember him as some sort of gun rights crusader is outrageous beyond words."
Gilbert does seem to have the ability to "embellish" facts. In his comments to the jury Monday, he recalled how federal agents handcuffed his 10-year-old grandchild during the raid of his home. Prosecutors say they don't believe Gilbert has any grandchildren, and none were handcuffed during his arrest.
While I admit being more than a little amused at the brass displayed by Mr. Gilbert, his is one of those stories that can be more than slightly dangerous to anyone naïve enough to allow the anti-firearms crowd to paint a picture of Keith Gilbert as being representative of the gun rights community.
That part of the story really is alarming. On that point, I don't believe Joe Waldron's engaging in counter-feverish rhetoric when he says "Law-abiding gun rights activists, and average gun owners, do not engage in illegal gun trafficking, nor are they white supremacists or would-be assassins."
Mr. Gilbert's defense may have a particularly fishy smell about it, but I think he'll fail the Second Amendment smell test.
We'll keep you posted.
--- Jim Shepherd