FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED NOV. 12, 1997
In the old days, our delegates passed laws, and most citizens (finding them reasonable and simple to understand) obeyed them.
What did we used to say about someone who drove 43 miles per hour in a 45 mph zone? We used to say he "was obeying the law," didn't we?
No more.
Purportedly in order to stymie drug dealers (but really to keep us all from moving our assets around in defiance of the taxman), the nation's federally-regulated bankers (that's all of them) were advised a few years back they had to report to the federal government any cash withdrawal in excess of $5,000.
You can be a 60-year-old granddad with a 30-year history at your bank, pulling $10,000 out of a Certificate of Deposit to buy your granddaughter her first car. You'll still have to submit your Social Security number, be asked to explain yourself and be reported to our federal overseers, for all the world like some shady Colombian with a ponytail, a gold earring, and a bad sinus condition.
Now, let us suppose you decide to avoid this hassle by going to three different banks where you have accounts, and drawing a $3,400 money order at each.
Guess what? Although the purported "law" only says transactions over $5,000 have to be reported, you have just committed the newly-invented federal felony of "structuring," which is to say, engaging in cash transactions designed to avoid the stipulations of the law that sets the $5,000 limit.
In the old days, we would have said you were "obeying the law," since you engaged in no single transaction over $5,000 without reporting it. Today, by thus obeying the law, you have broken the law.
And "failure to file" turns out to be no joke. Hosep Bajakajian, a Syrian businessman who owns two service stations in Hollywood, was heading home from Los Angeles in 1994 with $350,000 in cash -- legal profits from his businesses, with which he intended to pay back friends and relatives who had staked him in his move to the United States, reports David Savage of the Los Angeles Times.
Fearful that corrupt Middle Eastern border guards might seize his money if they saw it declared on his paperwork, Mr. Bajakajian failed to file required currency reports. He needn't have worried about corruption overseas; our own American currency-sniffing dogs turned up his stash, and America authorities promptly seized all his money.
A federal judge -- and now the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals -- fined Mr. Bajakajian $5,000 for failing to fill out the proper paperwork, and let the government keep another $15,000 -- as a kind of bonus, I guess -- but ordered the rest of the merchant's money returned.
Fat chance. The Justice Department has now appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard arguments Nov. 4. Few legal experts expect Mr. Bajakajian to prevail.
Now, a similar philosophy is creeping into the attempts of the freedom-haters in Washington to flush away our rights under the Second Amendment.
Republicans keep breaking their promise to repeal Dianne Feinstein's ridiculous "assault weapons ban," which really only banned semi-automatic weapons that (start ital)look(end ital) like real assault weapons, in the first place.
Real assault weapons will fire in either semi-auto or full-automatic mode (like a machine gun), at the flip of a switch. Such weapons are already banned from further import or manufacture, which has driven up the price of a common G.I.'s Second World War surplus M-2 carbine to about $1,400 -- plus the $200 federal "transfer tax."
Gun people rightly call the Feinstein-Schumer "assault weapons ban" the "ugly gun bill," since all the congresscritters' thumb-sucking socialist staff really did was sit around paging through gun catalogues, making lists of features they found ugly or scary.
So, foreign arms manufacturers read this ridiculous law, redesigned the weapons in question to obey the new law by removing the offending bayonet lugs, flash hiders, etc., and promptly began re-exporting them to the United States.
So guess what President Clinton is now considering?
Lisa Myers of NBC news reported late last month: "Within days, President Bill Clinton is expected to close some of the loopholes that have allowed assault weapons to proliferate, according to a senior White House official. As an NBC investigation found, a much-touted assault-weapons ban passed three years ago is in tatters.
"The president is expected to suspend future imports of modified assault rifles while new standards are written to keep weapons not primarily for sport out of the country, said the White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity."
On Oct. 22, the Los Angeles Times in a celebratory front page article quoted Jose Cerda, a "White House official who specializes in gun control policy," stating "We are taking the law and bending it as far as we can to capture a whole new class of guns."
The L.A. paper, of course, has been running an ongoing series on how terrible it is that these weapons -- so useful in opposing government tyrannies everywhere -- are still available to the average American.
And the saber-rattling is having an effect. Within a week of this not-yet-announcement, the price of a newly-imported Bulgarian SLR-95 or 96 -- best of the current AK-47s -- had jumped from $270 to $350. (Get yours right away.)
Next time: Ms. Myers explains the "flash suppressor."
Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The column is syndicated in the United States and Canada via Mountain Media Syndications, P.O. Box 4422, Las Vegas Nev. 89127.
-- Samuel Adams