I've been meaning to write about this. Say Uncle has some links to a couple of news stories about KT Ordnance. They can be accessed by clicking here & here.
It honestly sounds like a bad novel. The sheriff asked him to come in to his office. when he arrived there were ATFU & FBI agents as well as Canadian cops. He was shown a search warrant that said the items to be searched for would be listed in an attached affidavit. The affidavit wasn't attached & the LEO's told him it was sealed by the court. so they proceeded to his business & confiscated all his inventory as well as copying (& crashing) his hard drive.
While there the ATFU asshats claimed (without offering any sort of corresponding information) that 5 of the handguns he had sold were used to commit murders in Canada. They also questioned him about the "subversive" literature that he sent to the sheriff which presumably started this whole thing. Among the radical material was The Citizen's Rulebook & some works by George Washington. They also wanted to know about his connection to Aaron Zelman of JPFO & a few others which is speculated the LEO's could have only known about if they had been reading his e-mail. Did I mention they ignored the bathrooms inside the building & chose to piss on his building’s outside wall? Class I tell ya - those banes of Darwin are nothing but class.
That's where things stand as of now as far as I know. The only things missing are Jeff Goldblum & Shannon Tweed.
Really; think about it. Sealed affidavits? Canadians? One of the forefather’s writings being called subversive? Canadians? Unsupported accusations of crime guns? Canadians? E-mail taps? Canadians? Urinating on private property? Canadians?
From everything I've heard the ATFU hates JPFO. so them asking about Mr. Zelman isn't a surprise. The ATFU is generally a bunch of little barely post pubescent-minded egomaniacal jerks with delusions of grandeur & they're looking to get back at anyone who bad mouths them. The JPFO definitely bad mouth them. Unfortunately for all concerned their "badmouthing" is merely stating the truth. Matter of fact the JPFO has another movie in the making about our favorite asshats with badges & a constitutional literacy deficiency. So I'd imagine the ATFU asshats are foaming at the mouth to find something - anything - on anyone in the JPFO's office.
But Canadians? Damn, how far do ya have to reach to justify a bogus warrant these days? & claiming the handguns used in murders had anything to do with this raid? KT Ordnance sells incomplete frames. Someone had to A: finish the machining B: purchase the rest of the necessary parts & C: assemble them in a working order. This would have had to occur before anything could have been done to harm someone else. what's next? will they serve search warrants on Bethlehem Steel Plant because their stock was used to make a shotgun whose purchaser put his birth date in the wrong numeric order?
Asshats. The lot of them.
Rick Celeta, the owner of KT Ordnance needs some help. Jed mentioned it below & on his site that Claire Wolfe has the scoop on the fundraising. There's also an E-bay auction with some nice stuff donated by JPFO. Gary Marbut of MSSA has a page up which includes info on how to make your donation tax deductible (with the help of Larry Pratt).
But Canadians? It's bad enough we have our own friggin’ gun gestapo but they go enlist the aid of foreigners with more experience in gun control?
Really, I hope every single ATFU agent in or with experience in the firearms division contracts an irritating social disease that they have to explain to their husband/wife/veterinarian. May decent parking elude them. May they never know what it means to be regular. & may some judge bring back tar & feathering as a punishment for anyone convicted of having worked in the firearms division.
Or as someone once suggested:
If you see an ATFU agent in a bar buy him/her a drink. Then another. Then a shot or two. Then another. When they leave to go home or wherever the hell they go to sleep it off walk out into the parking lot, write down their license plate number, then call the cops to report a drunk driver.
No it's not a nice thing to do. But these asshats will throw you in jail or sink you in debt over any technical violation they can allege. By comparison I'd say it's being sweet, especially since they could have always opted for a cab.
Again though KT Ordnance needs your help. As far as I can tell they've not been charged with anything & the raid seemed to be a fishing expedition which turned up nothing of substance so the ATFU is gonna try to drain finances by making Mr. Celeta lawyer up to get his property back. It's a very old & sadly very effective ATFU tactic; if ya can't book 'em bankrupt 'em.
& be on the look out for ATFU activity in your area. I might or might not writ e a separate post on it but the word I have (from sources i trust but unfortunately cannot link to at the present) is that the ATFU wants to go after the Do it Yourselfer crowd & they're encouraging (or at least not reining in) local efforts to find creative solutions to the home builder problem. If they find something that works in one area they'll try to take it national.
Federal gun police. In America. I wonder what would a subversive like Washington would think about this?
Posted by Publicola at July 19, 2006 04:08 AM | TrackBackDid KT ordinace sell any firearms parts at all? I thought they sold Ar-15 parts kits at one time? 'Cause if they did, and they sold any of them to canadians, that's a really obvious and serious legal problem (both under U.S. export regs and Canadian law). Its just an idea that might explain the canadian law enforcement presence. Likewise, I'm not sure exactly how canada defines what part is the serial numbered part of a gun, I know that some countries differ from the U.S. on that, and it definitely matters legally. For example, there are lots of deactivated M16's in the UK that have a lower reciever that would be easy to restore, in a couple of minutes to an operational lower. If a man in the UK sells a case of them to a U.S. citizen, and Fed Exs it here, he's commiting a felon under U.S. law, and certainly could be subject to extradition for it, even if it didn't violate any UK law.
Up to a point, I simply hope that KT didn't ship a damn thing to Canada at all, since between export regs and Canadian law, it would be a giant can of worms to open.
Oh, and as a side note, all criticism of the BATFE aside, they really are following correct procedure when they didn't use the bathrooms inside the house. It is a really bad habit for police to get into when executing warrants being that it potentially contaminates, or flushes away evidence still caught in the toilet's trap.
I'm curious as to exactly how the emails were recovered, since there's a wide vareity of legal methods to have done it, and it would be interesting to see if the BATFE is using some of the newer patriot act ones.
Oh, as a side note on the parts kit importing changes, is the BATFE issuing import permits for kits without barrels? I would have expected to see lots of cheap kits without a barrel on the market by now, since it has been nearly a year since the import of kits with barrels stopped.
Posted by: Bob at July 22, 2006 08:21 PM