For a long time, I’ve ascribed to the idea that if you don’t want to go to prison, you shouldn’t break the law. To be sure, that’s an important first step, to say the least, but we all know that’s never been enough. Still, most of the cases of wrongful conviction were uncovered and corrected, because we want the innocent to be free and the guilty to be punished.
Or so I thought.
Patrick “Tate” Adamiak first popped up on my radar when he was convicted. Like many other people, I accepted the conviction as evidence he did something wrong. I latched onto it to show that no, gun control laws don’t work, because this dude had a freaking RPG! If he could get that, he could get anything.
It wasn’t until later that I learned that no, he didn’t have any such thing. He had a demilled RPG like those you can get off the internet easily and have lawfully shipped to your home. It’s not illegal. In fact, nothing he was convicted of possessing was illegal.
Now, as Lee Williams notes, Adamiak was arrested four long years ago over nothing more than vengeful prosecution, a judge who wouldn’t let the truth be heard, and the overall ignorance of the jury.
Only the last is excusable.
From non-firing replicas being described to the jury as machine guns, including one that had to be so heavily modified to fire a single round that it’s laughable–it couldn’t chamber a second one because of the modifications, mind you–and others they didn’t even try to modify. The ATF just made its declarations and called it a day.
Experts have examined the evidence and argued that Adamiak shouldn’t just have never been convicted, he shouldn’t have been charged.
And what scares me the most is that what happened to Adamiak could happen to any of us.
After all, the RPG was perfectly legal and perfectly cool to have. I want one. I have no interest in converting it to fire, either. I’m just a kid who grew up on the original Red Dawn and wants one as an adult.
However, as someone who is outspoken on Second Amendment issues as well as on other political issues, what’s to stop the ATF from kicking in my door and convicting me of having something I don’t really own? What about the non-firing replica Sten gun Adamiak was convicted of having as a real machine gun? I’d love to have one of those, too, since I’ll never be able to afford a firing one. They’re still available on the internet. I just don’t dare take that chance.
The average person commits three felonies per day without knowing it. That’s scary enough all on its own, but the fact that Adamiak was convicted for stuff he didn’t even do is troubling.
Following his arrest, just a month later, Adamiak’s mother died. He was supposed to go and see her, but he was arrested just before the planned trip. He never saw her again, either. The ATF robbed him of that, and they did it over absolute BS.
For all the talk of fascism since Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office, no one on the anti-gun side seems to have the least bit of concern for the Navy sailor whose life was destroyed not just by the laws they advocate for, but by the application of those laws in a way they should never have been applied.
There but for the grace of God go I.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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