New Haven

WHEN federal authorities raided the headquarters of the Gibson Guitar Corporation in late August, seizing wood they said was illegally exported from India, conservative critics denounced the episode as an example of regulatory overreach. Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and now Republican presidential hopeful, accused the Obama administration of having a “vendetta” against small businesses; the current speaker, John A. Boehner, invited Gibson’s owner, Henry E. Juszkiewicz, to sit in the speaker’s box during President Obama’s jobs speech last month.

The law that investigators enforced in the August raid is indeed flawed — but not for the reasons critics cite. Large companies like Gibson, if they source their wood carefully, should be O.K. The people who are truly in jeopardy are some of the finest artisanal guitar makers in the United States and Canada. Unlike Gibson, these independent artisans — also called luthiers — have been charged with no crime, but their livelihoods and life savings are at risk nonetheless.

The root of guitar makers’ trouble is the Lacey Act, a law originally enacted in 1900 to prohibit the interstate sale of poached game. In 2008, the act was amended to combat illegal logging around the world. Protections for endangered plants were extended to cover trees logged in violation of foreign law; and importers of wood were required to declare the species and country of harvest for all commercially traded timber, sawed lumber and finished wood products.

Acting on suspicions raised by inaccurate Lacey declarations, armed agents raided Gibson’s factory in Nashville in November 2009 and again in August to determine whether Gibson had accepted ebony imports in violation of laws in Madagascar and India. Gibson has denied any wrongdoing.