The skunk shooter
Vintage Remington 12C Octagon 22. My favorite for the property here. Woodpeckers and skunks beware!
Posted on 03/10/2006 5:57:14 AM PST by Utah Binger
BOUNTIFUL - When Gregg Revell packed his bags for a trip to Pennsylvania last April, he had no idea how far he'd be traveling. Before the week was out, the 57-year-old suburban real estate agent and grandfather would be arrested, thrown into one of the country's most notorious jails, strip searched and inoculated against his will. The soft-spoken Utah native would be on his way to becoming a poster child for the National Rifle Association in a $3 million lawsuit.
During a nearly five-day stay in a Newark, N.J., jail, he would meet a terrifying side of America that most Utahns see only on television and briefly would become a jailhouse mentor to drug dealers and violent criminals. It started as a trip to pick up a BMW in Allentown, Pa., for a relaxing road trip back to Utah. "I fix them up and sell them," Revell says. "Sometimes I make a profit. It's something I do for fun."
Revell, who has a Utah concealed weapon permit, usually takes a handgun with him for protection on his car trips. Transporting a firearm in your luggage across country on an airline is not illegal, but involves some paperwork. Revell who has made a couple dozen such car-buying trips, knows the process. He fills out the Federal Aviation Administration paperwork, packs his .45 caliber pistol in a locked case, his hollow-point ammunition in another locked case and puts both in his checked luggage. He declares the gun to the ticketing agents. "Sometimes I get a look, but it's never been a problem," he says. Unfortunately, for Revell, his Allentown trip required a change of planes in Newark, N.J. His plane was late arriving in Newark Liberty Airport and he missed his connection. Five hours later, he found himself boarding an airline chartered bus for Allentown, 90 miles away.
Revell also discovered his luggage had not made the connection. Northwest Airline agents apologized that his bags had been mismarked to stop in Newark. By the time he tracked the bags down, his bus had left and he was stuck overnight in New Jersey. When he returned to the airport the next morning, April Fools' Day, and rechecked his bags - again declaring his handgun and ammunition - he was stopped by security officers of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. "I wasn't the least bit nervous," Revell says. "I was only nervous about missing another flight." Despite his explanations, Utah concealed weapon permit and his FAA document, Revell missed the flight because he was arrested and handcuffed: "I have never been arrested before. I have never felt anything degrading like that in my life." "You don't have a permit to carry a gun in New Jersey," a Port Authority officer told him, according to Revell. "And you don't have a permit to carry hollow-point ammunition." "I asked an officer if this had something to do with April Fool's Day," Revell remembers. "He said it most certainly did not." In 1986, Congress passed the Firearm Owners Protection Act (FOPA) for citizens who are transporting firearms through various jurisdictions.
"Law abiding citizens who happened to wander into anti-gun jurisdictions could wind up being harassed and imprisoned," says Scott Bach, a New York-based attorney and member of the NRA board of directors. "FOPA was passed to end abuses." Under the law, a citizen can transport an unloaded gun between two jurisdictions that don't prohibit it - as long as it is locked in a hard case with the ammunition locked in a separate hard case, "regardless of what local law says," explains Bach. The law is routinely violated in "anti-gun" jurisdictions, Bach says, notably New York, Los Angeles and New Jersey. Revell soon found himself in Newark's Essex County Jail. "It is the lowest, it is the worst and it has the most hardened criminals of any correctional facility in the nation," says Bach. "It is horrific." Revell, who would spend nearly four days in the jail, agrees. "The jailers asked me, 'What the heck did you do to be in here?' They felt bad for me. But there was nothing they could do." A judge set his bail at $15,000 and required the amount be paid in cash, not through the usual bail-bond arrangement. "It's tough to come up with $15,000 on a weekend," Revell says.
While his family back in Utah got the money together, he spent nearly five days in jail, sometimes in holding cells crowded with 28 other prisoners. "People were passed out on the floor in their own vomit," he says. Prisoners were strip-searched in an a public room. "For the only person with a white butt in a jail with 1,000 people, it was not a good situation," he says. "I could have given some people some ideas." Revell figured that for survival, "I'd better make friends as fast as I could." He listened to the hard luck stories of his cell mates. "I would give them encouragement because a lot of them weren't very happy to be there. Because I was older than everybody, I was known as 'Pop.' '' Everyone knew he was in on a gun charge, and some prisoners assumed it was for a violent crime. "They all talked jive. It was hard for me to understand," Revell says. Until one of them asked him, "How many people did you waste?" After a heart-to-heart with the prisoner, the man asked Revell if he would get him guns. "He would give me a great price." Several prisoners befriended Revell despite the suburbanite's many faux pas, such as asking about their tattoos. "There are some tattoos you just don't ask about," he says. "But some people would stand up for me if there was a problem." His jail savvy friends told him they were in a tuberculosis quarantine for a few days, but after testing would join the rest of the jail. "We can't protect you when we get in with the general population," his friends warned Revell. "That scared me."
Hours before being transferred into the general prison population, a bail bonds employee finally showed up with the bail money. Ultimately, the bail was lowered, but by the time he had met the bail bond company's requirement that he pay in advance for a bounty hunter to track him back to Utah if necessary, Revell was out $20,000. He was also 10 pounds lighter and had a blister on his arm from a tuberculosis inoculation. But he was free. "I took the best shower of my life." Within two months, prosecutors dismissed the charges against him. New York and New Jersey Port Authority officials did not respond to requests for an interview. But the Utahn's story had come to the NRA's attention. The NRA is funding the $3 million lawsuit filed in January in federal court in New Jersey against the Port Authority. Revell and the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs are co-defendants. Though he had grown up in a hunting family and had a concealed weapon permit, Revell had never been a guns-rights activist or even a member of the NRA. "I am now," he says. "As is my wife." The $3 million damage figure was set to make sure the case gets the attention of airports across the country, says Bach, who is president of the New Jersey gun clubs association. "Unfortunately, that's the way things work," Revell says. "We want to get the laws adhered to or get new laws made if we need to do that. If I should win, a fair amount of the settlement will go to the NRA as a donation." Revell never got his .45 back; Essex County never responded to his lawyers' requests. But he did drive the BMW home from Allentown despite his traumatic experience. "My family offered to fly me home," Revell says. "But I told them I needed a few days to clear my head. It was good to have a little thinking time."
Don't take your hollow points to New Jersey.
This guy did nothing wrong.
"The NRA is funding the $3 million lawsuit filed in January in federal court in New Jersey against the Port Authority."
That's not enough money for what they did to him.
I'd like to find out the judges name who set the ridiculous bond condition even after it was clear this was a law abiding citizen who missed his flight. That judge deserves bad publicity.
He woke up one morning with a blue moon in his eye, I suppose.
badabing.
Gungrabbers are all petty tyrants at heart.
I think there's a much much simpler lesson here:
Don't effing go to New Jersey!
It's reputation as the moral, physical, and mental armpit of the nation is richly deserved.
Or he could have bought a new on in Pennsy. We are an enlightened state.
I hope he punished those fools in Jersey, they need it.
Sorta like the story about a conservative being a liberal who's been mugged, eh?
Wonder if he's a Life member, or merely an annual?
Sad but true....
Not legally.
Yes legally.
Sales to Out of state CCW holders (depends on state) happen all the time. Go to a reputable FFL and ask.
--bttt-
... and last I knew, "not returning phone calls" was not considered a defense when breaking the law. (athorities involved)
You're absolutely right. Pictures of the judges who do this sort of thing need to be posted on every available web forum.
And, you're right again. Three Mil is not nearly enough money for what was done to this guy.
Sorry, sport, but it just doesn't happen that way, unless you're talking aobut long guns, which wasn't the case in theis sad story.
Refer to the ATF website for details, but the only way you purchase handguns from out of state if you find a local FFL to handle the transfer IN YOUR HOME STATE.
If you're flying to Pa or elsewhere, that doesn't do you much good.
This guy's only alternative would have been to ship his own firearm to an FFL in Pa and pick it up there - for a *small* fee...
I apologize for my state. I also want to get out of my state, but that's another story.
Mrs VS
Far left wing states only want guns in the hands of the police, criminals and the thugs who guard the gun grabbing
tyrants.
Shouldn't Revell be a co-plaintiff and the Port Authority the defendant?
That's exactly right - and I hope his lawsuit makes New Jersey hemorrhage gazillions of crisp green U.S. dollars. When a government agency pulls this kind of crap "under the color of law", they need to suffer and the voters of that state need to suffer in ways that will make them change their voting habits.
Yet the system has time and energy to hassle this man. What in the hell is wrong with our criminal justice system?
The Left is the outgrowth of the drug-dazed, brain-impaired tantrum that was the Hippie Movement of the '60s, propagated by a collection of morons, sociopaths, and other assorted fools. Let these people gain control, and the result will be what any lucid person would expect.
I do not hunt. In fact, I hate hunting. My wife and I are vegetarians. Neither of us is a member of the NRA. However, I have an arsenal of guns for protection, and I know how to use them.
By the way, anybody ever been to East Orange, New Jersey?
A nutcase Leftist (but I repeat myself) houseguest from a Leftist enclave, visiting my wife and me a while back, was horrified to learn that we have guns in the house.
"I think such things are better left to the police!" she cried in alarm.
"Out here in The Middle of Nowhere?" my (brilliant, intelligent, well educated wise, Phi Beta Kappa, advanced degrees, extremely clear-thinking, serious musician) wife replied. "I don't think so."
Or if he'd had a friend in Pa, he could have shipped his handgun to that friend, care of himself to be opened only by himself.
Did not bring any guns though!
Funny how we folks out here in "fly-over" country never think about these devices until it is too late.
That's how to do it.
All these lawsuits against organizations (like school districts) to just win the right to have your kid bring a pencil to school that says "jesus loves you" on them are a waste of money.
MAKE THE BA$TARDS PAY! That way word gets around.
...and what, pray tell, might the inference be? I've tried membership in the NRA on more than one occasion. I have not been particularly pleased with the direction the NRA was, is, or will be going. It appears to me that much too much emphasis is placed on governments approval of carry laws.
All gun laws are repealable, all government manufactured rights to do whatever with your weapons, are nothing more than attempts to water down and denigrate the power and authority of the Constitution of the United States of America vis-a-vis the second amendment.
It is high time the NRA fight the real fight instead of burying themselves in legal nuance for, and in behalf of governmental entities who in the name of, who knows what, wish to tie the hands of their citizens when it comes to possession, ownership, use of, collecting, legalities involving type, style, model, caliber, looks, etc etc, etc, to the point of insanity, all of which leads to the ridiculous situation the poor man from Utah found himself in.
I for one do not fly on airliners since 911 for much of these reasons. He would have been wise to rent a one way car and carry illegally through all of the states. Interesting isn't it, that when it comes to guns trying to live in accordance with law, can get you in a heap of trouble. No one needs to know about your guns unless you want them to. That applies in spades to anyone from any governmental or bureaucratic agency.
New Jersey is beautiful. Princeton!!!
OMG, I've never heard this story.
It is truly horrible the abuses that go on against law abiding citizens...I have a couple stories of my own, but I just rolled over and gave up, feeling that I, as an individual had no power.
I have been a member of NRA, then let it lapse when I felt the powerlessness of being a member of a huge organization. I suppose I might need to rethink that position.
The surprising thing is that his fellow inmates, of all persuasions, were better to him than the law and its minions.
Couldn't agree more.
I love that area. Morristown too!
I take you are opposed to tort reforms that would limit punitive damages to $250,000?
"I take you are opposed to tort reforms that would limit punitive damages to $250,000?"
Yes.
The skunk shooter
Vintage Remington 12C Octagon 22. My favorite for the property here. Woodpeckers and skunks beware!
I do think there should be limitations on punitive damages and also restrictions on how attorney's fees can be structured, but I don't think they should apply when the government is the defendant.
Jesus. How long is that barrel?
A sweet little 24 inches.
I believe that model is highly sought after. Our board member on the pheasant hunt would pay dearly for that one.
He'll never sell. My brother still lives in the house, built in the 1890's, that my Great-Grandfather built for his second wife. In my family, once you aquire something...you never sell it.
That's why we're so rich in junk and so poor in cash! :-)
And how exactly do you think the NRA is going to present a case to the Supreme Court without a Second Amendment majority?
The NRA and the other gun organizations don't have a magic wand no matter how many fantasy scenarios you have in your head.
The Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs, Inc. (ANJRPC) announced that it has commenced a lawsuit against the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and one of its police officers for wrongfully arresting and imprisoning for nearly five days a 57-year old Utah man delayed at Newark Airport by a baggage error while traveling from Utah to Pennsylvania.
The lawsuit seeks more than $3 million in damages for civil rights violations and a permanent injunction forcing the Port Authority to follow Federal law on interstate transport of locked, unloaded firearms that have been secured in luggage and declared by law-abiding citizens.
But Mr. Revell’s travels were protected by the Firearms Owner Protection Act, a Federal law passed in 1986 to protect law-abiding citizens who travel with firearms. (See 18 U.S.C. § 926A.)
That law trumps state and local gun laws and protects interstate travel with firearms under certain circumstances, all of which were present in Mr. Revell’s case. Several months after the arrest, all charges were withdrawn and the prosecutor’s case administratively dismissed.
"The Port Authority blatantly violated Federal law when it arrested Gregg Revell," said Scott Bach, President of the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs and a member of the NRA Board of Directors.
"Those charged with enforcing the law have a special responsibility to follow it themselves," Bach continued. "Mr. Revell’s arrest is part of a pattern of similar misconduct by the Port Authority throughout the New York-New Jersey metropolitan areas."
http://www.anjrpc.org/fopalawsuit.htm
Text of the Firearms Owner Protection Act (18 U.S.C. § 926A)
http://www.anjrpc.org/fopa.htm
Apparently you're not too familiar with "voting" in NJ. Take a look at the last Senate race of Forrester vs. Lautenberg for an example of how contests by voters are controlled in totalitarian states.
Thanks for the ping & link.
WRONG! Mr. Average Citizen is prohibitted by federal law from pruchasing a handgun out of state through a Federal Firearms Licensed Dealer.
Since it might be hard to read from the dim light of a jail cell, I quote the federal law here: The Gun Control Act of 1968, Public Law 90-618, ss 922. Unlaw Acts. (b) It shall be unlawful for any licensed importer, licensed manufacturer, licensed dealer, or licensed collector, to sell or deliver (3) any firearm to any person who the licensee knows or has reasonable cause to believe does not reside in the State in which the licensee's place of business is located, except that this paragraph (A) shall not apply to sale or delivery of any rifle or shotgun ...
Practical & legal alternatives have already been listed by Redbob. Thanks.
Jeez, what's wrong with woodpeckers??
Do you have a ceder sided house, barn, outbuilding?
Do you have bugs living in your house?
Do woodpeckers and flickers think you have bugs in your house.
Seen plenty of damage here in SD from the pesky critters. They can easily peck right through a house made of wood, and brick is rare in this part of the country. UT on the other hand has lots of brick at least in town.
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