Fire Chief Jailed by ATF for Possession of Fuel Filters. No… Really!

NJ Fire Chief Arrested by ATF for Possession of Fuel Filters.  No…Really!

Gun Lawyer Season 1 Episode 3 – Transcript

NJ Fire Chief Arrested by ATF for Possession of Fuel Filters

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

gun, rights, attorney, fuel filters, anti, gun owner, second amendment, NRA, safety, guns, suppressors, people, assault weapon, gun laws, group, constitution, reality, Evan, firearms, gun rights

Welcome to Gun Lawyer, I’m attorney Evan Nappen. Just recently, a client retained us on a case that I find to be very disturbing, yet at the same time, typical, and there are lessons that every law-abiding gun owner can learn from this. It involved my client who was on Instagram, and he saw an advertisement on Instagram to purchase fuel filters. The fuel filter ad on Instagram shows cars, shows the filter, shows where it goes, shows how to use it, how they look cool, and they go on the vehicle. They come from China, and they will give you a great deal. I think two of them for 45 bucks if you bought two. I think he got a deal at 45 bucks a piece if you buy two. So, he ordered two of these fuel filters.

When they came in from China, he was trying to figure out how these things get used as fuel filters. He went to his friend at Napa Auto Parts, and he asked them do they sell whatever material might go into the filter or how does this work. His friend said none of these are not filters. This is something that really could be a problem because it could become a silencer or suppressor for firearms, and you don’t want to have this. You want to get rid of it. As soon as he learned that he should get rid of it – the very next day – he went to his local police, which was the Carlstadt Police in New Jersey, and he voluntarily surrendered these two fuel filters to this police department. He spoke at length with the Detective. He was the one that initiated the contact, got rid of it, told the detective he doesn’t want them and what the issue was.

He also explained that he had placed a second order because there was a huge delay in this other one coming to him, he thought they had lost it and there was kind of a mix up. So, he ordered a second order. He said detective that’s coming, and he’s gonna cancel that. In fact, he contacted the vendor via email – said don’t send it, I don’t want it. He canceled his PayPal payment and contacted his bank on that as well. And even told the US Post Office not to deliver it. But approximately 10 days later, to his surprise, a package shows up at his door from this company. He immediately takes it in the car, and he immediately goes to the police with the package. He parks at the building and he’s walking into the station to surrender. He is suddenly arrested by a cadre of Federal and State law enforcement, Homeland Security, the County Prosecutor etc. And they arrest him. Now they had been obviously surveilling him. In fact, Homeland Security apparently got the package and made the delivery, not the Post Office. He tried to not take it, and they purposely set a trap for him.

Let me just tell you, they then charged him with possession of silencers, and it led to his home being raided and all his guns seized. They then proceeded on a smear campaign where they immediately did a news release that this is part of an international arms trafficking issue for investigation and that he had quote “smuggled these, smuggled, – it’s called mail from China – as if you smuggled them, blew it so out of proportion. It’s just outrageous because what it stands for, is if you try to do the right thing and surrender this, it’s gonna get you is arrested, charged, your home raided, and your rights taken. Now we’re engaged in fighting to save him from this ridiculous scenario.

Of course, the real question is if Homeland Security’s involved, then why are these ads still on Facebook and Instagram. Just today I was looking, and there they are – fuel filters – you know blah, blah, blah, same thing, they didn’t take them down. Considering how fast Fascist Book will rip down free speech and Instagram, which they own as well, right. Considering how fast they’ll particularly knockout conservative voices without any problem, they let ads from China with suppressors disguised as fuel filters allegedly – no problem – keep selling them boys, all okay. And Homeland’s fine with that

They’ll just set up law-abiding citizens that mistakenly order these things. I mean it’s outrageous. Of course, I don’t even think these were complete. There are, you know, just like there’s 80 percenters on guns, there’s 80 percenters on suppressors. I don’t even know if they were drilled. I haven’t had a chance to look at them. I don’t think they were so I don’t even think they were operational to begin with. But didn’t matter. This whole thing comes down, and this is what the government does to make it look like they’re doing something about crime, right? Useless and just out to cause incredible damage to good people.

My client is a volunteer fireman for 24 years – unpaid, okay. And he is a current Fire Chief in the town. This is a guy who is a dedicated person to serving and helping the public and his community. Doing it for free, because he believes in it. A guy who also is active in not one, but two, churches that he belongs to where he’s very active with their programs. He’s a community-minded individual who has no priors, no convictions, and a law-abiding gun owner, too. That all came crashing down when he ordered fuel filters, you know, it’s bad.

This is the lesson, the takeaway. You’ve just got to know that if you involve the government in your life, you can’t trust them. Anytime the government wants to get involved in your life or you need to get the government involved in your life, something like with my client, then you absolutely need to have an attorney. You need an attorney to be between you and the government. The attorney is the shield between you and the government. The attorney is the filter, talking about fuel filters. This is the filter that you need because that attorney can do and say things that you cannot do and say because anything you do or say can be used against you as evidence, but not so with your attorney. You may think well, that’s just attorney selling attorneys. No. There’s a reason why our founding fathers in our Constitution made the Sixth Amendment.

I mean, we love the Second Amendment, I would hope you do. That’s why you’re listening to me. If you’re not, I don’t know why you’re listening to me, because it’s all about loving our guns, our gun rights, our gun culture, and the Second Amendment. But I love the whole Constitution. I cherish it. I defend it. Absolutely. And you know, there’s more than just the Second Amendment. One of those brilliant things that our founders did was put many of other precious guarantees of our rights into that document, and the Sixth Amendment guarantees your right to counsel. Why do you think the founders knew that you should have an attorney, and it needs to be a right that you have an attorney. Because many of them were attorneys themselves, and they know that when dealing with government, it hasn’t changed one bit. You need someone as your champion, someone to protect you, someone to be the one that deals between you and the government.

It’s even more than that today because your attorney is the one that can negotiate on your behalf, can protect you, can enforce your rights, and can defend you in the system. Your attorney has this ability to discuss with law enforcement and prosecutors, things that you would not be able to, nor would they feel as free to discuss the case with you. Whereas the attorney can have down to earth discussions and things can get resolved much better. The protection that it affords is tremendous. Once you have an attorney, that attorney is going to invoke your other rights under the Constitution, such as your Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate yourself, not to make any statements or say anything that in any way could be used against you. The attorney will protect your Fifth Amendment rights.

The attorney will enforce your Fourth Amendment right to searches and seizures not being done in conformance with the Fourth Amendment and be able to enforce and see that your Constitutional rights are guaranteed and applied. These are very important things the attorney does. If I were to ask you, what rights do the Constitution and the Bill of Rights give us? What rights does it give us? You might talk about the Second Amendment, you might talk about the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, the Sixth Amendment, but I don’t care what you’re talking about. Because whatever right you believe is the answer to that question, you are absolutely 100% wrong. You are absolutely wrong. And you may say, “What do you mean, I’m wrong?  I have read it. I know what it is. I’m not wrong.” Yes, you are wrong because I asked you what rights are you given in the Bill of Rights? And the answer is none. Those are not rights given. Those are rights that are guaranteed.

There’s a huge difference here, and you better keep it in your mind. Rights are our God-given, fundamental, natural rights that exist, whether or not there’s a Bill of Rights or a Constitution. If the evildoers one day wipe out our Constitution, that doesn’t mean we still don’t have rights. What we don’t have is a guarantee of those rights. Our founders knew darn well what that meant. If I had asked the Founding Fathers what rights does the Constitution give us? They probably would hit me. What do you mean they’re not given right, sir. Those are our rights; these are guaranteed. That’s an important distinction when it comes to rights. So, you want that guarantee enforced? You want that guarantee enforced and the enforcer of your guarantee is your attorney. It’s your attorney, enforcing it through the judicial system that we have in this country. And we have to be very thankful because no system is perfect. And is there room for improvement? Of course, there is. But all things being equal, and looking at the rest of the world and those systems, we’re very blessed. Come back, I got some more exciting and interesting things to discuss. So hang in there.

For over 20 years, Attorney Evan Nappen has seen what rotten laws do to good people. That’s why he’s dedicated his life to fighting for the rights of America’s gun owners. A fearsome courtroom litigator. One of the first lawyers to ever get a Federal injunction against this state gun law. An unrelenting gun rights spokesman tearing away at the anti-gun propaganda to expose the truth. Author of six best-selling books on gun rights, including Nappen on New Jersey Gun Law, the bright orange gun law Bible that sits atop the desk of virtually every lawyer, police chief, firearms dealer, and savvy gun owner in New Jersey. That’s what’s made Evan Nappen America’s Gun Lawyer. Gun laws are designed to make you a criminal. Don’t become the innocent victim of a vicious anti-gun legal system. This is the guy you want on your side, keep his name and number on a post-it note in your wallet, and hope you’ll never have to use it. But if you live, work or travel with a firearm, the deck is already stacked against you. Keep his number with you always. You can find him on the web at evannappen.com or follow the link on the Gun Lawyer resource page. Evan Nappen – America’s Gun Lawyer. You’re listening to Gun Lawyer with Attorney Evan Nappen available wherever you get your favorite podcast.

Hey, welcome back in. I would like to explain about some confusion and things that the anti-gunners particularly have set out to fool law-abiding gun owners and have literally fooled them. You may know Bloomberg is one of the biggest supporters of destroying our Second Amendment rights and many other problematic things that he’s about. But he’s set up these front groups, these anti-gun groups that make believe they have thousands and thousands of people supporting them. But in fact, in reality, they don’t. It’s just a facade of fraud. There are very few, relatively speaking, that are actually part of this and care about it as far as the anti-gun movement goes. But they’re still very problematic and very troublesome, because they have a lot of money. With that money, they can put paid people out there to do all kinds of things to try to present an anti-gun picture. They can also fool and get people who are emotionally concerned about guns and naively think that somehow gun laws are the answer.

It becomes the ox to be gored for them when they’re frustrated over what is much bigger problems that need real solutions, not gun law. So, we’ve been fighting the other side for a long time, and it’s gotten worse because of big money. It was always kind of humorous how the other side would call “NRA the gun lobby” and it’s funded by all these great manufacturers. It’s gun money, blood money. What’s hilarious is, in reality, it is just the opposite. What makes NRA and the gun groups so strong isn’t really money -its their members, members are the key. Whereas the anti’s don’t really have members, what anti’s have is money. They’re the ones with the big money from individual billionaires that have a particular hatred, and they do hate us, for us. And that’s the reality of it. So, the anti-gun lobby is way more of a lobby for a very limited interest by elitists that don’t trust us with firearms, hate us, want to disarm us, and want to change really the fundamental Heritages and traditions of America. That’s what they’re all about.

Well, in the process of doing this, they do get very creative. I give them credit, at least there. They come up with all kinds of little nitpicky things they can go at any angle they have to take away a right. They constantly are coming up with new innovative approaches to this particular thing. Of course, their propaganda throughout their campaigns is always gun violence. Like there’s some distinguisher about gun violence compared to other violence. Why is that? Well, they’re just emphasizing gun violence, and you see them talk about every pejorative. They come up with terms to scare people, even the very term “assault weapon”. The truth is that assault weapons are not assault weapons in reality. Because assault weapon goes back to the Germans, and they had what was called the Sturmgewehr (Stg 44). The German Sturmgewehr was the first “assault weapon”. The key distinguishing factor that made for its design is that it was a medium caliber and fired fully-automatic and semi-automatic. So that in reality, every time we talk about assault weapon ban, it’s really not what assault weapons are. But see, they just use that word. Then they put their bill forward that ends up banning anything that walks or crawls, you know, just expand it to the maximum. So .22 target rifle, everything under the sun, that they can get in, and they just use a scary word. So this is their normal tactic.

What I really want to make you aware of is some of their other more dirty, sneaky, underhanded tactics that aren’t just in the world of their propaganda mill. Recently, we see a very important example of that. One of the other prominent anti-gun groups is Gabby Giffords’ group. Giffords is a very active anti-Second Amendment organization. You may remember that she was shot in the head and recovered, and she now is on her crusade. I often wonder if this crusade is because she was shot in the head because a lot of this is so ridiculous and absurd for her to attack the Second Amendment, especially when she was Pro-Second Amendment before her episode. She must feel better as long as you can blame guns for some evil act of some wrongdoer.

Well, her anti-Second Amendment organization is put together as a coalition. Technically, it was actually set up in 2018. But of course, it was right before a presidential election, and especially one where they’re going to want to push some of the most severe and horrible gun laws that ever had been proposed in our country. They’ve created a group called Gun Owners for Safety. Now keep this in mind. This is a group for gun owners created by an anti-gun group. And it’s called Gun Owners for Safety. The idea is to build this group and get them to say gun owners who are tired of the NRA, that are tired of all the anti-gun propaganda that is thrown at the NRA and you’re tired of the NRA. Here’s a group for you – Gun Owners for Safety. I mean, how can a gun owner not be for safety, right, but the problem is tje word safety, again hijacked by the anti-gunners. So that safety to anti-gunners is getting rid of guns, and passing every conceivable gun law they can come up with. To them, safety is just the elimination to the maximum degree that they can accomplish of the Second Amendment and our right to keep and bear arms.

If you are a member of Gun Owners for Safety and you are a gun owner, then you are being played as a sucker. Because your gun is going to be up for grabs as well. This is about the anti-gun movement. And what will this group do? They will push for gun control measures nationwide. All right. So think about that. Why would a gun owner want to join a gun group that pushes for gun control? You are slitting your own throat. You’re getting rid of your own rights and you supposedly appreciate that, but you’re not. Remember, Giffords is the wife of Mark Kelly, who is a Senate candidate in Arizona. And of course, Giffords says she’s a gun owner and just so you know, and this is just about. So, of course she must be okay because she’s a gun owner. But she is this horrible anti-gun organizations setting up a phony gun owner organization to suck people in. Then claim they’ve reached out to 50,000 gun owners who are “Fed up with the NRA. Fed up with the NRA, right.

If you’re so fed up with the NRA and you’re going to join Gun Owners for Safety, then you are going to lose your rights, and you’re not gonna have to worry about NRA anymore. Because there aren’t any guns to protect So, they are trying to play this group up, as including hunters, collectors, veterans, and former law enforcement. Supposedly, they value firearm ownership but want to reduce gun violence. How noble, right? Good grief. It’s a load of garbage. They get their typical lefties in there, and they move them forward in this tactical way to crush our rights. To basically use these turncoats and traitors and in fact, they’re masochistic because they’re imposing this on themselves. I guess they love it.

They go at our rights. Always making NRA the bad guy; the punching bag. NRA, you know how bad they are, and this and that. But in fact, the NRA is the reason we have any gun rights left at all. Because the NRA hadn’t been fighting, and look, they made mistakes. I’m the first to admit it. They’re not perfect. They made mistakes. There’s things to criticize NRA about without a doubt. But without them, we would have no guns, our rights would be stripped, and the fight would have been long, long ago lost. The anties know that if they can try to put these groups together, this is a way for them to exert the influence to the other side to provide cover for the anti-gunners. They can keep trying to destroy what we love. The key is for you to know about this, to not fall for their trick and their trap, and to know that anytime you see the words, gun safety and safety bantered about in any type of gun organization. Be very, very careful and very, very much aware as to whether they’re talking about bonafide safe use of a gun, or whether they’re using safety as simply a cover to attack and get rid of our rights. Really think about it.

Anytime you hear the anti’s talk about wanting gun safety, they’re the last group in the world that knows anything about genuine gun safety. You can see it every time with all their foolishness of how they hold firearms, how they display firearms, how they come up with terms that they don’t even know the meaning of (like a barrel shroud – it’s not “like the shoulder thingy that goes up”. They don’t even know what it is, and they’re trying to ban it. These people are clueless, and you need to be very much aware that they don’t know what they’re talking about. They use these nice words to try to persuade you because who would be against safety, but it’s just a trap. And it’s just a ploy. So beware and don’t fall for it. Stand strong. Be a proud NRA member. Fight for our rights.

Until next time. This is Evan Nappen. Reminding you that gun laws don’t protect honest citizens from criminals. They protect criminals from honest citizens.

Gun Lawyer is a Counter Think Media Production. The music used in this broadcast was managed by Cosmo Music, New York, New York. Reach us by emailing Evan at gun.lawyer. The information and opinions in this broadcast do not constitute legal advice. Consult a licensed attorney in your state.

Gun Lawyer S1 E3