The antis are rejoicing...

Four Irvington men were arrested when police found a loaded machine gun and handgun in their car Monday morning, police said.

While retrieving identification from the Pontiac to check for active warrants, officers smelled what they say was marijuana  and they found a Tec-9 machine gun in plain sight on the floor of the car, Servidio said. As officers retrieved the Tec-9, they found a Glock model 27 also on the floor, police added.

All four men were charged with possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, unlawful possession of an assault firearm, unlawful possession of a handgun, possession of a defaced assault firearm, possession of hollow-point bullets, possession of body-armor penetrating bullets and possession of a large-capacity magazine, police said.

Respected attorney and Second Amendment scholar Dave Kopel soundly debunked this notion nearly a decade ago, explaining that the Teflon coating did nothing to enhance a bullet's ability to defeat armor, but only served to protect the rifling in the barrel from damage caused by extremely hard and dense tungsten bullets. It is the tungsten that provides the bullet with the ability to penetrate armor, and federal law bans tungsten handgun bullets (the "mere metallurgical content" standard that Speier says is inadequate).

... because they have finally found a machine gun used in crime But wait...Both the Tec-9 and the Glock 27 are semiautomatic handguns, not "machine guns".See? They were not charged with anything under the National Firearms Act of 1934 that regulates real machine guns.There's also an interesting side issue here. Note, they are charged with having "hollow point bullets" AND "body-armor penetrating bullets". I suspect that, in context, this means they were charged with possessing "ammunition", and whatever type of ammunition they happened to possess would be either hollow-point or armor-piercing. Possibly with .22lr ammo as the exception.Why? Bullet-resistant vests are rated to stop different levels of ammunition, and ordinary .40 caliber ammunition in the Glock 27 will penetrate a Level II vest (but not a level III or higher). New Jersey's law in this area is relatively new . Specially-designed armor-piercing ammunition is very rare, federally-regulated, and is typically a military item:Read the whole article, linked at the top, and it becomes clear that these are criminals casing an area for their next robbery or car theft. (One of them is a prohibited person, another one was charged with drug possession, at least one of the firearms had a defaced serial number, and their actions alarmed the neighborhood enough to provoke a call to police). These people have nothing to do with a positive, law-abiding gun culture. They are criminals, and they will ignore the gun control laws.

This entry was published Thu May 22 18:11:57 CDT 2014 by TriggerFinger and last updated 2014-05-08 00:56:37.0. [Tweet]

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