My new job has me spending a good deal of time in court, which is generally quite exciting and enjoyable. However, a recent court proceeding that I observed reminded me that gun misinformation doesn’t stop at the courthouse door:
Last week, I got to the courtroom a bit early, and had to wait through a couple hearing that preceded my client’s hearing. During one of those hearings, a police officer testified that he had executed a search warrant, and found “a loaded magazine for a “TEC-9 machine gun,” but not an actual TEC-9 handgun. No objection was raised, and neither the defense attorney, prosecutor, or judge seemed to notice the problem with that officer’s statement.
For those that don’t see the problem with the officer’s testimony, allow me to explain: A TEC-9 is just a semiautomatic handgun – not a fully automatic “machine gun.” That TEC-9 magazine was designed for use in a perfectly lawful-to-own semiautomatic TEC-9, and the officer had no basis in fact to say that it was for a “machine gun.”
Had that been my case, I would have objected. But, since it wasn’t, I could do little more than shake my head with disappointment.
“a loaded magazine for a “TEC-9 machine gun,”
Now that's quite an assumption, if I find a tire along the road, can I assume it belongs to a drunk-driver driven Ford Taurus? As a former police officer, all I can say is stick to the facts, not the assumptions.
We recently had a local man arrested and the police found an SKS assault weapon in his trunk, "similar to an AK47 machine gun" it said in the newspaper. Give me a break!