LA County Deputy pleads guilty to building short barreled rifle
Probably could have just gotten a department letter:
A Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy has agreed to plead guilty to illegally building an assault rifle, marking the first plea agreement by one of 20 sheriff’s officials charged or indicted since December in an ongoing federal investigation of the Sheriff’s Department, authorities said Monday.
Richard White Piquette admitted in a document filed in federal court last week that he manufactured a Noveske Rifleworks N-4 .223-caliber rifle with an eight-inch barrel. Under federal law, the rifle’s barrel length should have been at least 16 inches, said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.
Also, this:
Piquette’s attorney, Ronald Hedding, described his client as “a good man” who has family members in law enforcement. Hedding said he believed it was common practice for sheriff’s deputies to have weapons like the ones his client possessed.
I guess he thought the law didn’t apply to him. Gee, wonder why he’d have thought that?
April 30th, 2014 at 6:25 pm
A little ground truth here: the LASD is largely a very honorable organization. I’m saddened that several deputies are having their lives ruined over what is a ineffective law.
Secondly, most of California’s grossly stupid gun laws specifically exempt law enforcement. It’s easy to see where the sheriff’s deputies might well have assumed they were a special class and above the law.
April 30th, 2014 at 7:07 pm
Ineffective? I think you mean pointless. About as pointless as a law against short barreled macaroni.
April 30th, 2014 at 7:54 pm
Poor babies. NOT! Just some entitled only ones overstepping their bounds.
April 30th, 2014 at 9:07 pm
How did he get caught? Most would not question a Deputy in possession of an SBR.
May 1st, 2014 at 1:18 am
This is bullshit, hopefully they appeal and get the law overturned. Who gives a shit that cops didn’t follow the exact paperwork and them possessing a slightly shorter barrel weapon. An Unjust law is no law at all.
May 1st, 2014 at 8:08 am
Yeah, hardcop, why not another “Only One” exemption? Yeah, after all it’s only a FEDERAL REGULATION/LAW(can you say ATFEetc; I knew you could).
May 1st, 2014 at 9:58 am
I feel for this officer.
I have had many, many experiences of “Why is that required, or forbidden, under gun laws? That makes no sense!”
And I am sure that every other gun owner has experienced the same thing.
If you don’t know what the law is, and don’t bother to find out, you will likely violate the law when firearms are involved, because treating the manufacture, use, storage, etc. of guns logically will fall afoul of some non-logical law every time.
May 1st, 2014 at 9:59 am
I agree with HardCorp. It’s a stupid ass law.
May 1st, 2014 at 10:09 am
I think every cop in LA, or California, Hell the whole USA should strike until these unfair firearm laws are overturned.
, Waiting…………….
May 1st, 2014 at 11:54 am
I’ll put off deciding whether I should feel sorry for Piquette until I hear his sincere answer to one simple question: If your boss had told you to arrest someone for doing exactly what you did, would you have refused?
May 1st, 2014 at 12:04 pm
You can imagine them to be rocket scientists,treat them like rocket scientists and pay them like rocket scientists. Just don’t expect them to act like rocket scientists. It ain’t there.
May 1st, 2014 at 12:23 pm
Throw the damn book at him.
higher standard, and all that. Or hell, at least the same standard.
May 1st, 2014 at 1:01 pm
Yes, it is a stupid law, but it is the law.
If you enforce the law you need to obey the law.
If you cannot keep track of the laws to enforce, we need to reduce the enforceable laws, but that is management, not enforcement.
May 1st, 2014 at 1:56 pm
Seems HardCorps is calling for civil disobedience regarding short-barreled rifles. If so, he should be happy to be arrested and show the unfairness of that law.
Perhaps he should regard the L.A. police as martyrs to “The Cause”. As for me, I believe that laws should be uniformly applied to all, regardless of their position in society or government.
May 1st, 2014 at 3:27 pm
I suspect he literally thought the law deliberately and factually didn’t apply to him, given how many exemptions LE organizations have to NFA requirements (at least in effect).
(Contra HardCorp no appeal is going to get the NFA overturned – the law is stupid, but not unconstitutionally so, at least under any plausible jurisprudence we have now.
Merely being “unjust” in the sense of “not conforming to what we think a good gun law would be” is not sufficient.
Certainly ain’t nothin’ in Heller leads me to think the Supreme Court thinks you can’t regulate SBRs pretty heavily.)
May 1st, 2014 at 4:30 pm
He also admitted (but not charged) being in possession of a shotgun that had been STOLEN from the Sheriff’s Dept.
I strongly suspect that he wasn’t the proverbial good guy who inadvertently ran afoul of an unjust law.
May 1st, 2014 at 6:14 pm
And how many of those California police are enforcing other unjust firearms laws on non police? Hmmm?
May 2nd, 2014 at 1:20 am
I should clarify, I don’t think this law should exist regardless of who it’s applied to. We should be outraged regardless if this is a regular person or a Leo. I tend to believe in effective disobedience over being a martyr. You don’t need to rot in jail to show the unfairness of the law, this guy already lost his career and is probably paying heavy legal bills not to mention the impact on his family.
Unjust laws should be applied to the least amount of people Majmike, hopefully 0. The IRS has the authority to audit you annually, would you be happy if they did that to you? Or how about in some states they have road blocks, how about getting stopped by that shit daily on your commute?
Do you agree and support the SBR laws since your NOT advocating their repeal? In fact you seem to promote persecuting people for owning inanimate objects, who’s side are you on buddy??
May 2nd, 2014 at 9:11 am
I see this LEO as someone who see himself as above the law, just another thug with a badge. LEOs should obey the laws they are charged with enforcing.
I’m on the side of justice that is fairly administered regardless of social/economic class or professional position.
Don’t like the law? Work for its repeal. Support civil disobedience? Then break the law and suffer the penalty to publicize the immorality of that law. But don’t make a martyr out of a self-serving thug with a badge.
May 2nd, 2014 at 9:33 am
Sigivald, nothing in Heller SHOULD or COULD affect regulation of SBRs. Heller was an extremely narrowly defined case, designed specifically to develop a Supreme Court precedent defining one specific 2nd Amendment right, to keep a commonly used firearm in one’s home for self defense, as an individual right in a federal enclave.
It was meant, and has been, to be a single step on a journey of a hundred miles, so to speak.
Whenever people say Heller made constitutional decisions about all 2008 gun regulations nationwide, I have to laugh. Scalia wrote that Heller did not impact any regulations other than the DC handgun ban. Liberals took that to mean everything other than a ban was therefore OK constitutionally.
While liberal judges may make that argument, and do, they are wrong when they do, and it behooves us to avoid making it for them.
May 4th, 2014 at 7:09 pm
He needs a better lawyer. There’s at least one court ruling that NFA does not apply to LEOs.