USA – -(AmmoLand.com)- In August 2015, Brian took a course from me to get his Utah & MA permits. A month later, he was arguing with a woman he was dating. He took his clothes and headed out. After a verbal argument, she called the police. His girlfriend didn’t even know that he had a gun in his trunk.
They called Brian and asked him to come downstairs. Four police officers greeted him at the door with guns drawn waiting for him. They searched his vehicle and he said he had a firearm and a permit. It was unloaded, locked and secured. There was a temporary restraining order and the police confiscated the firearm. A year later when the restraining order was supposed to be dropped, the district attorney extended it. And pressed charges. He had to spend $13,000 to hire an attorney to fight his case for 2 years.
He was really being “red-flagged” before “red flags” existed.
It seems like the district attorney was the one pushing to get Brian jailed. The DA pushed and said that Brian was a ‘resident’ of Massachusetts. He was staying at his girlfriend’s house often during the week, but the DA tricked the jury to believe that he was a Massachusetts resident, when he really wasn’t. Even in the time from when he took the class to when this incident happened, he wouldn’t have had time to get a License To Carry (LTC) as a non-resident in Massachusetts.
In his court, they only used 6 jurors. The one juror that was an NRA member is on the one they threw out. The trial lasted 3 days. The DA twisted a case that had to do with sexual abuse and rolled it to include Brian’s gun charge of not obtaining a permit as a resident of Massachusetts, which he isn’t and wasn’t.
After fighting as much as he could, he still ended up doing 18 months in jail, for exercising his constitutional right to travel with a firearm, without any criminal intent. While he was there, he did a LOT of reading of gun cases and gun laws.
While he was in jail, even some of the correction officers and sheriffs worked at the jail where shocked Brian was there. He worked in the kitchen for a while. Then he applied for the youth mentor program and was selected. He mentored some of the young men in the jail, helped them earn income, and show them out to develop a life when they get outside of jail.
Brian wants to turn this horrible experience into something good. He’s starting the Live Free Or Die Guys YouTube channel, which will get into more about what he went through and what he learned in jail. He’s also learned a lot about the political process, too. Which may lead to a career in politics for him in the future!
Favorite quotes:
“So 1791, the Second Amendment is written into law. If I rode a horse from North Carolina into South Carolina, could I go to jail? In 1791, would that be a felony? That’s essentially what I did.”
“We need reciprocity, bad, to prevent like me from going to jail.”
“No one’s ever been thru this scenario in Mass”
18 U.S. Code § 926A.Interstate transportation of firearms
You can find their links to Brian’s show below.
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