By Charles C. W. Cooke
Tuesday, July 19, 2022
Yunis Isaac Mejia is in federal prison. Hunter
Biden is not. Americans who wonder aloud why their compatriots remain so
habitually skeptical toward stricter federal gun-control laws need look no
further than that to understand why.
Earlier this month, a former 911 dispatcher named Yunis
Isaac Mejia was sentenced to 21 months in jail for having attached a buttstock
to a pistol. Under the terms of the 1934 National Firearms Act, any firearm
that has both a stock and a barrel shorter than 16 inches in total length must
be classed as a “short-barreled rifle,” obligating the owner to federally
register it and pay a $200 tax. In the course of his conversations with an FBI
informant, Mejia made it clear that he understood the contours of this law
— and that he had even followed it before — but that he did not wish to
bother doing so with this particular firearm because he was not a “criminal”
and did not want to “pay the government two hundred extra dollars just to put
pieces of metal together.” For this, he was arrested and charged with a felony.
As Lee Williams explains over at The Gun Writer, Mejia’s infraction is
as peculiar as it sounds:
Picture Mejia sitting at his
kitchen table with his Scorpion in one hand and the after-market stock in the
other. When they’re attached, he’s committing a felony. When he takes them
apart, he’s abiding by the law. Together — felony. Apart — no crime. That is
the absolute lunacy of the National Firearms Act.
The National Firearms Act is, indeed, ridiculous. But
that is no excuse. Like it or not, the National Firearms Act exists, and Mejia
knowingly violated it. The transcripts — and his guilty plea — make that clear.
And yet one might reasonably ask why exactly the federal government went to such
great lengths to prosecute him. It is not every day that the FBI teams up with
the ATF, recruits citizen-spies to befriend peaceful gun owners, commissions
the surreptitious photographing of legally purchased firearms, and seeks a
lengthy prison term for a person who otherwise has no record of wrongdoing.
Why, then, did it do so here?
If the answer is, “because it is important to enforce
federal gun-control laws,” then the federal government has some explaining to
do. Over the last five years, the president’s son, Hunter Biden, has provided
the executive branch with enough evidence of wrongdoing to at least justify
an investigation pertaining to his purchase of a gun, and yet,
at each point, that executive branch has simply yawned. As Politico has reported, back in 2018:
Hunter responded “no” to a question
on the transaction record that asks, “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted
to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other
controlled substance?” Five years earlier, he had been discharged from the Navy
Reserve after testing positive for cocaine, and he and family members have spoken
about his history of drug use.
According to Hunter Biden’s memoir, Beautiful
Things, he was “smoking crack every 15 minutes” during the period in which
he bought the gun. Which matters a great deal, because, in large part thanks to Hunter’s father, Joe Biden, lying
on Form 4473 is a federal felony that is punishable by up to ten years in
federal prison.
These rules do not stop at the gun-store door. Under
federal law, it is also illegal to use prohibited drugs while in possession of
a firearm. Which, again, matters a great deal, because, a week or so after he
purchased his firearm, Hunter Biden appeared in a bunch of sordid photographs “with one hand on the
trigger of the gun and his other hand cupping his penis and pelvic area,” while
“what appears to be crack cocaine can be seen on a plate alongside used and
packeted condoms, along with drug paraphernalia and a spoon.” According
to Politico, Biden’s then-girlfriend, Hallie, became so alarmed by how he was behaving with his new gun
that she confiscated it from him and threw it in a trash can across the street from a
school.
The penalty for using unlawful drugs while in possession
of a firearm is up to five years in federal prison.
It is true that the federal government does not
investigate — or prosecute — many federal firearms crimes. It is not true that this lets
the federal government off the hook for ignoring Hunter Biden while going after
other suspects (though Hunter is under investigation concerning his taxes).
Typically, Form 4473 violations are ignored for a lack of evidence; if a person
lies about his drug use on his application, the government will rarely know.
The same is true of possession while under the influence of illegal substances
— which, in most cases, happens behind closed doors. By writing a book in which
he admits to having been a regular drug user during the same period as he
bought a firearm, and by uploading videos to the Internet that seem to show him
waving a firearm around while smoking crack, Hunter Biden has provided the federal
government all the evidence it needs to open an investigation.
Why has it not done so?
The answer cannot be that Hunter Biden’s alleged behavior
was innocuous whereas Yunis Mejia’s represented a threat. Yes, Mejia broke the
law. But there is no suggestion that he was sufficiently dangerous to warrant
the special attention that he received. At the time the FBI’s sting was
ordered, Mejia had no criminal record, no documentation of mental illness, and
no history of substance abuse. He was prohibited neither from purchasing nor
possessing firearms, and he had passed background checks at both the state
level (for his concealed-carry permit) and at the federal level (for his
suppressors). Mejia’s crime was a crime, but it was a crime because it’s a
crime, not because it represented an obvious ethical transgression. In the law,
infractions such as Mejia’s are known as malum prohibitum — as
acts that are deemed immoral because they are illegal, rather than because they
are immoral. There is no practical difference between a 15-inch and a 16-inch
barrel on a modern sporting rifle. This change does not make the weapon more
deadly; it does not turn its owner into a monster; it does not put one at more
or less risk than one was at before. It is a paperwork crime — and nothing else
besides.
This is not true of the crimes that Hunter Biden has
allegedly committed, all of which fit into the alternative category of malum
in se — that is, of crimes that are illegal because they are immoral.
One does not have to be a drug warrior (and I’m not) to grasp that the federal
government has a clear interest in preventing people from purchasing,
possessing, or brandishing firearms while smoking mind-altering drugs. Where
Mejia’s crime was the equivalent of illegally modifying his car, Hunter’s
alleged crimes are akin to driving drunk. If, in an attempt to make the most of
its limited resources, the federal government felt obliged to investigate
just one of these transgressions, it should clearly have
looked into Hunter’s. That it has not tells us a great deal about how the
bureaucracy regards our existing thicket of gun laws and why, for all their frustrated emoting, Joe Biden and his party have
proven so incapable of convincing the public that their desire to “do
something” will result in their doing so without fear, favor, or good
old-fashioned political caprice.
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