I think this will help Biden. One of his son's lost a battle with cancer, the other lost a battle to addiction and is going to prison. Makes Joe a sympathetic figure and completely ruins the stupid "weaponization of government" argument.
It's honestly refreshing to me to see Trump and Hunter convicted as both seemed guilty from what I had read/seen. I'd like them both to disappear.
I hate laws putting addicts in prison. it's a disease. rehab should be the goal.
Here I thought the crime was purchasing a gun and lying about the addiction on the form....for me, I think it's tough to be for gun control and against that being a crime.
It is often unclear to me if the drugs have made a person shitty or it's just a shitty person that happens to use drugs.
It's honestly refreshing to me to see Trump and Hunter convicted as both seemed guilty from what I had read/seen. I'd like them both to disappear.
I hate laws putting addicts in prison. it's a disease. rehab should be the goal.
Here I thought the crime was purchasing a gun and lying about the addiction on the form....for me, I think it's tough to be for gun control and against that being a crime.
It is often unclear to me if the drugs have made a person shitty or it's just a shitty person that happens to use drugs.
It can go both ways. Or it can be that a person is in pain and gets addicted to pains killers because they haven't been able to find a better way to cope. I was addicted to Xanax (which almost killed me). I eventually found a better way to cope. I hope I wasn't/am not a shitty person!
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man [or woman] who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
It's honestly refreshing to me to see Trump and Hunter convicted as both seemed guilty from what I had read/seen. I'd like them both to disappear.
I hate laws putting addicts in prison. it's a disease. rehab should be the goal.
Here I thought the crime was purchasing a gun and lying about the addiction on the form....for me, I think it's tough to be for gun control and against that being a crime.
It is often unclear to me if the drugs have made a person shitty or it's just a shitty person that happens to use drugs.
let me rephrase. I'm against sentencing laws that put addicts in prison.
It's honestly refreshing to me to see Trump and Hunter convicted as both seemed guilty from what I had read/seen. I'd like them both to disappear.
I hate laws putting addicts in prison. it's a disease. rehab should be the goal.
Here I thought the crime was purchasing a gun and lying about the addiction on the form....for me, I think it's tough to be for gun control and against that being a crime.
It is often unclear to me if the drugs have made a person shitty or it's just a shitty person that happens to use drugs.
I could be mistaken, but it's my understanding that there isn't a norm for punishing this particular offense because it's rarely if ever prosecuted on its own. I recall reading where one former prosecutor said something to the effect that this violation is usually only discovered when they're looking into drug dealers' pasts, trying to find as many violations as possible with which to charge them.
(apologies, can't find the link to that article, it was some time ago)
Lying to ATF on gun-purchase form yields few prosecutions, data shows
“Lying on an ATF form 4473 is a federal violation and can lead to severe penalties and jail time. Don’t lie and buy.”
— Tweet from the Houston office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), Sept. 8, 2021
Form 4473 — the Firearm Transaction Record — is a six-page document that must be filled out whenever someone buys a firearm from a licensed firearm dealer.
The form asks questions including whether the person buying the gun is a felon, whether the person is a fugitive from justice or convicted of domestic abuse, whether the person is addicted to drugs and whether the person is the actual buyer of the firearm.
This tweet by ATF’s Houston office led a swarm of Twitter users to askwhy the bureau didn’t charge Hunter Biden, the president’s son, for allegedly lying on Form 4473 when he purchased a handgun in October 2018. The controversy prompted us to request statistics from the Justice Department to determine whether someone falsely filling out the form faced much of a risk of prosecution.
It took months to obtain the data. The answer, it turns out, is no.
The statistics are newly relevant as Congress discusses how to strengthen gun laws in the wake of high-profile mass shootings. This is a prime illustration of how, for a variety of reasons including prosecutorial choices, existing laws are not always rigorously or consistently enforced.
The Facts
Starting with the National Firearms Act of 1938, Congress has sought to limit gun purchases by certain individuals such as fugitives and people convicted of a felony. After high-profile assassinations and the occupation of the California Capitol by armed Black Panthers, President Lyndon B. Johnson urged passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968,which among other things expanded the list of prohibited people to include someone who is “an unlawful user of or addicted to marijuana or any depressant or stimulant drug.”
The reason for adding drug users to the list is a bit obscure, according to experts we consulted. Johnson did not mention the issue in his speechcalling for a new gun-control law or in his remarks when signing the bill. But the mid-1960s witnessed the rise of counterculture, with its abundant drug use, while marijuana at the time was often believed by law enforcement to be the drug of choice for people of color.
The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993, ushered into law by then-Sen. Joe Biden, at the time chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, made Form 4473 a key part of background checks for gun purchases mandated by the law.
Lying on the form is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. For being a user of unlawful drugs in possession of a firearm, the punishment is up to five years.
But according to newly revealed Justice Department records, the odds of being charged for lying on this form are virtually nonexistent. In the 2019 fiscal year, when Hunter Biden purchased his gun, federal prosecutors received 478 referrals for lying on Form 4473 — and filed just 298 cases, according to data extracted from the U.S. attorneys’ case management system. That’s out of approximately 27 million background checks undertaken in a 12-month period.
The numbers were roughly similar for fiscal 2018 (444 referrals and 271 cases) and fiscal 2020 (433 referrals and 243 cases). The data does not indicate the success rate of the prosecutions.
At issue is when Biden answered“no” on the sixth question on the form when purchasing a gun Oct. 12, 2018: “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?”
According to the U.S. code, “the term ‘addict’ means any individual who habitually uses any narcotic drug so as to endanger the public morals, health, safety, or welfare, or who is so far addicted to the use of narcotic drugs as to have lost the power of self-control with reference to his addiction.”
In a guidance document for the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), ATF has emphasized drug use within the past year could trigger the prohibition on Form 4473. “An inference of current use or possession may be drawn from evidence of a recent use or possession of a controlled substance or a pattern of use or possession that reasonably covers the present time,” the document said. “The ATF has determined that the present time is represented by the time frame of within the past 12 months.”
Biden had been discharged five years earlier from the Navy Reserve for drug use. According to a memoir published in 2021, he was actively using crack cocaine in the year he bought the gun.
In the spring of 2018, “I drove my rental to the Chateau Marmont, in West Hollywood, where I checked into a bungalow and by 4 a.m. had smoked every crumb of crack I’d brought,” Biden wrote in “Beautiful Things.” In the fall of that year, he returned east in an effort to clean up but failed so badly, he writes, that his parents staged an intervention and insisted he go to a rehab center.
Biden said he only walked into the lobby of the center and immediately called an Uber to take him to a hotel for two days. While everyone “thought I was safe and sound at the center, I sat in my room and smoked the crack I’d tucked away in my traveling bag,” he said.
About two weeks after the purchase of the gun, Biden’s then-girlfriend, Hallie, his brother’s widow, threw the .38 revolver into a trash can behind a grocery store across the street from a high school. “I think she believes I was gonna kill myself,” Biden told police, according to the police report obtained by Politico. The gun went missing but was later recovered and no charges were filed.
An attorney for Hunter Biden did not respond to a request for comment.
The data released by the Justice Department does not show how many people might have been prosecuted for falsely answering the question about active drug use. But a review of such cases in Delaware, also provided to The Fact Checker, shows that in fiscal 2019, only three Form 4473 cases were referred for prosecution in the state — and the U.S. attorney opted not to bring them.
Many of the prosecutions concerned obvious instances of “straw buyers,” such as a woman purchasing a gun while on the phone with a friend receiving instructions about what type of gun to buy. Straw buyers are often acting on behalf of people who would not pass a background check, such as a felon. Keeping guns out of the hands of people who already have committed heinous crimes is probably a higher priority than a drug abuser.
The names in the referrals were redacted for privacy reasons, but a Justice Department official said none of the referrals mentioned Hunter Biden.
A 1990 Justice Department feasibility study noted how difficult it was to bring cases against people who falsely answer questions on Form 4473. Unlike the rich paper trail that exists for felons, no such record exists for drug abusers, the study said, noting that it is against the law to disclose “the medical records of persons who have been engaged in a drug rehabilitation program funded by the federal government.”
Erik Longnecker, an ATF spokesman, said only that “the tweet is accurate.” He referred questions about the pace of prosecutions to the Justice Department.
In a statement to The Fact Checker, another Justice Department official indicated that the Form 4473 cases were determined not to have enough evidence for a successful prosecution.
“Declinations of matters referred to a U.S. attorney’s office can occur for a variety of reasons,” the statement said. “Initial declinations typically occur when the prosecutor makes an immediate determination that a matter is not sufficient or suitable for prosecution. The large majority of ‘later declinations’ — declinations where a USAO has delved into the facts and circumstances of the matter — show that suspects investigated [under false-statement statues] were declined for federal prosecution due to a lack of sufficient evidence in the matter referred.”
I don't mean to overreact, but I think Joey Chestnut not competing in the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest on the same day that Hunter Biden is found guilty is the sure sign that America has fallen.
The irony is that this is what the right wanted, but they can't celebrate it because it doesn't fit the narrative that crooked Joe weaponized the DOJ against conservatives. They're all waiting for instructions on their outrage and hidden conspiracy theories from tonight's Fox and Newsmaxx talking heads.
The irony is that this is what the right wanted, but they can't celebrate it because it doesn't fit the narrative that crooked Joe weaponized the DOJ against conservatives. They're all waiting for instructions on their outrage and hidden conspiracy theories from tonight's Fox and Newsmaxx talking heads.
The narrative seems to be that Biden still used the DOJ to protect him by not introducing more serious charges. Not sure what those charges would have been but that seems to be what they are pushing.
Remember the Thomas Nine !! (10/02/2018) The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago 2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy 2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE) 2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston 2020: Oakland, Oakland:2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana 2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville 2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
It's honestly refreshing to me to see Trump and Hunter convicted as both seemed guilty from what I had read/seen. I'd like them both to disappear.
I hate laws putting addicts in prison. it's a disease. rehab should be the goal.
the crime charged wasnt in service of the addiction. I think thats the distinction that needs made for mitagation. addiction may explain an act. it shouldnt excuse one. we are still accountable for our actions. as everyone should be.
now these charges, I'd like to know what sentences were handed down if charges were even brought at all in other cases of similar type.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
The irony is that this is what the right wanted, but they can't celebrate it because it doesn't fit the narrative that crooked Joe weaponized the DOJ against conservatives. They're all waiting for instructions on their outrage and hidden conspiracy theories from tonight's Fox and Newsmaxx talking heads.
The narrative seems to be that Biden still used the DOJ to protect him by not introducing more serious charges. Not sure what those charges would have been but that seems to be what they are pushing.
Saw someone on twitter arguing that this was a smoke screen to distract from more serious charges, so that tracks.
The irony is that this is what the right wanted, but they can't celebrate it because it doesn't fit the narrative that crooked Joe weaponized the DOJ against conservatives. They're all waiting for instructions on their outrage and hidden conspiracy theories from tonight's Fox and Newsmaxx talking heads.
The narrative seems to be that Biden still used the DOJ to protect him by not introducing more serious charges. Not sure what those charges would have been but that seems to be what they are pushing.
Saw someone on twitter arguing that this was a smoke screen to distract from more serious charges, so that tracks.
Haha....yeah that seems to be their marching orders. Fucking idiots.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
“The biggest difference between the Donald Trump jury and the Hunter Biden jury is that the Hunter Biden jury can go on TV without fear of getting death threats against them and their families.”
Comments
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Yet another maga fail.
www.headstonesband.com
www.headstonesband.com
It is often unclear to me if the drugs have made a person shitty or it's just a shitty person that happens to use drugs.
It can go both ways. Or it can be that a person is in pain and gets addicted to pains killers because they haven't been able to find a better way to cope. I was addicted to Xanax (which almost killed me). I eventually found a better way to cope. I hope I wasn't/am not a shitty person!
www.headstonesband.com
www.headstonesband.com
(apologies, can't find the link to that article, it was some time ago)
Lying to ATF on gun-purchase form yields few prosecutions, data shows
“Lying on an ATF form 4473 is a federal violation and can lead to severe penalties and jail time. Don’t lie and buy.”
— Tweet from the Houston office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), Sept. 8, 2021
Form 4473 — the Firearm Transaction Record — is a six-page document that must be filled out whenever someone buys a firearm from a licensed firearm dealer.
The form asks questions including whether the person buying the gun is a felon, whether the person is a fugitive from justice or convicted of domestic abuse, whether the person is addicted to drugs and whether the person is the actual buyer of the firearm.
This tweet by ATF’s Houston office led a swarm of Twitter users to askwhy the bureau didn’t charge Hunter Biden, the president’s son, for allegedly lying on Form 4473 when he purchased a handgun in October 2018. The controversy prompted us to request statistics from the Justice Department to determine whether someone falsely filling out the form faced much of a risk of prosecution.
It took months to obtain the data. The answer, it turns out, is no.
The statistics are newly relevant as Congress discusses how to strengthen gun laws in the wake of high-profile mass shootings. This is a prime illustration of how, for a variety of reasons including prosecutorial choices, existing laws are not always rigorously or consistently enforced.
The Facts
Starting with the National Firearms Act of 1938, Congress has sought to limit gun purchases by certain individuals such as fugitives and people convicted of a felony. After high-profile assassinations and the occupation of the California Capitol by armed Black Panthers, President Lyndon B. Johnson urged passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968,which among other things expanded the list of prohibited people to include someone who is “an unlawful user of or addicted to marijuana or any depressant or stimulant drug.”
The reason for adding drug users to the list is a bit obscure, according to experts we consulted. Johnson did not mention the issue in his speechcalling for a new gun-control law or in his remarks when signing the bill. But the mid-1960s witnessed the rise of counterculture, with its abundant drug use, while marijuana at the time was often believed by law enforcement to be the drug of choice for people of color.
The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993, ushered into law by then-Sen. Joe Biden, at the time chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, made Form 4473 a key part of background checks for gun purchases mandated by the law.
Lying on the form is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. For being a user of unlawful drugs in possession of a firearm, the punishment is up to five years.
But according to newly revealed Justice Department records, the odds of being charged for lying on this form are virtually nonexistent. In the 2019 fiscal year, when Hunter Biden purchased his gun, federal prosecutors received 478 referrals for lying on Form 4473 — and filed just 298 cases, according to data extracted from the U.S. attorneys’ case management system. That’s out of approximately 27 million background checks undertaken in a 12-month period.
The numbers were roughly similar for fiscal 2018 (444 referrals and 271 cases) and fiscal 2020 (433 referrals and 243 cases). The data does not indicate the success rate of the prosecutions.
At issue is when Biden answered“no” on the sixth question on the form when purchasing a gun Oct. 12, 2018: “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?”
According to the U.S. code, “the term ‘addict’ means any individual who habitually uses any narcotic drug so as to endanger the public morals, health, safety, or welfare, or who is so far addicted to the use of narcotic drugs as to have lost the power of self-control with reference to his addiction.”
In a guidance document for the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), ATF has emphasized drug use within the past year could trigger the prohibition on Form 4473. “An inference of current use or possession may be drawn from evidence of a recent use or possession of a controlled substance or a pattern of use or possession that reasonably covers the present time,” the document said. “The ATF has determined that the present time is represented by the time frame of within the past 12 months.”
Biden had been discharged five years earlier from the Navy Reserve for drug use. According to a memoir published in 2021, he was actively using crack cocaine in the year he bought the gun.
In the spring of 2018, “I drove my rental to the Chateau Marmont, in West Hollywood, where I checked into a bungalow and by 4 a.m. had smoked every crumb of crack I’d brought,” Biden wrote in “Beautiful Things.” In the fall of that year, he returned east in an effort to clean up but failed so badly, he writes, that his parents staged an intervention and insisted he go to a rehab center.
Biden said he only walked into the lobby of the center and immediately called an Uber to take him to a hotel for two days. While everyone “thought I was safe and sound at the center, I sat in my room and smoked the crack I’d tucked away in my traveling bag,” he said.
About two weeks after the purchase of the gun, Biden’s then-girlfriend, Hallie, his brother’s widow, threw the .38 revolver into a trash can behind a grocery store across the street from a high school. “I think she believes I was gonna kill myself,” Biden told police, according to the police report obtained by Politico. The gun went missing but was later recovered and no charges were filed.
An attorney for Hunter Biden did not respond to a request for comment.
The data released by the Justice Department does not show how many people might have been prosecuted for falsely answering the question about active drug use. But a review of such cases in Delaware, also provided to The Fact Checker, shows that in fiscal 2019, only three Form 4473 cases were referred for prosecution in the state — and the U.S. attorney opted not to bring them.
Many of the prosecutions concerned obvious instances of “straw buyers,” such as a woman purchasing a gun while on the phone with a friend receiving instructions about what type of gun to buy. Straw buyers are often acting on behalf of people who would not pass a background check, such as a felon. Keeping guns out of the hands of people who already have committed heinous crimes is probably a higher priority than a drug abuser.
The names in the referrals were redacted for privacy reasons, but a Justice Department official said none of the referrals mentioned Hunter Biden.
A 1990 Justice Department feasibility study noted how difficult it was to bring cases against people who falsely answer questions on Form 4473. Unlike the rich paper trail that exists for felons, no such record exists for drug abusers, the study said, noting that it is against the law to disclose “the medical records of persons who have been engaged in a drug rehabilitation program funded by the federal government.”
Erik Longnecker, an ATF spokesman, said only that “the tweet is accurate.” He referred questions about the pace of prosecutions to the Justice Department.
In a statement to The Fact Checker, another Justice Department official indicated that the Form 4473 cases were determined not to have enough evidence for a successful prosecution.
“Declinations of matters referred to a U.S. attorney’s office can occur for a variety of reasons,” the statement said. “Initial declinations typically occur when the prosecutor makes an immediate determination that a matter is not sufficient or suitable for prosecution. The large majority of ‘later declinations’ — declinations where a USAO has delved into the facts and circumstances of the matter — show that suspects investigated [under false-statement statues] were declined for federal prosecution due to a lack of sufficient evidence in the matter referred.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/09/lying-atf-gun-purchase-form-yields-few-prosecutions-new-data-shows/
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Joey Chestnut Banned from Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest Over Deal With Competitor | News, Scores, Highlights, Stats, and Rumors | Bleacher Report
But, first time offenders don't get that.
I'm sure whatever it is that some will complain it wasn't enough?(Especially since they can't Bitch since he was found Guilty)
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
www.headstonesband.com
Interesting that we haven't seen Hunter nor Joe railing on the judge, jury, prosecutor, etc. Unlike Captain FuckFace
The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14