Guntards.net

Big Brother is Watching You

Posted by simonov on 1 May 2007

Our buddies over on Calguns have been in a frenzy since the weekend over the arrest on Thursday of East LA College Student Body President Matthew Arthur Corwin, who posts at Calguns as Blackwater OPS. There’s a bit of legal maneuvering happening as I write, but he is to be charged with nine counts of manufacture, possession or sale of assault weapons (CPC 12280), plus two counts of possession of deadly weapons (a shuriken and sap gloves, CPC 12020), as well as a single count of receiving stolen property.

Aside from Mr Corwin being one of Guntards.net’s biggest fans, what makes this case particularly interesting to guntards everywhere is he probably didn’t do anything wrong besides posting photos of his gun collection on his MySpace Page, and leaving them up there in the wake of the Post-Virginia Tech shooting national hysteria. According to news reports linked to below, the warrant for Corwin’s arrest alluded to the MySpace page, and no other justifications of the warrant have yet been revealed. We haven’t actually seen the arrest warrant, but if the sole basis for its issue was the MySpace page, this has disturbing implications for the right to free expression by all Americans, not just gun nuts.

Corwin’s bail has been set at a breathtaking $360,000.

The charges are posted on Calguns, and frankly, all the assault weapon charges are probably bogus (it is almost certain the M1919s are perfectly legal semi-automatic variants, and very likely the other firearms listed are so-called “off-list” variants specially modified to conform to California’s assault weapon ban). Sure, the shuriken and sap gloves are banned items, but who knew? The same CPC section bans the possession by Californians of wooden billy clubs. The “stolen military property” will doubtless be explained by the fact that Corwin appears to be an Army reservist.

The credit card fraud charges mentioned in some of the earliest arrest reports do not appear on the charge sheet.

Nonetheless, as a result of the MySpace page and the arrest, Corwin has gone overnight from being a model student to a campus pariah: on top of the felony charges he was slapped with a restraining order to stay away from the ELAC campus.

Assuming we are correct about the MySpace-inspired warrant, you don’t have to be a California gun owner to find this a frightening abuse of law enforcement powers. If I wasn’t such a curmudgeonly type, I’d start having second thoughts about some of the things I’ve got posted on my Flickr account (scary -looking weapons, and more firearms, of various types, than it is reasonable for any one man to possess, to say nothing of the thousands of rounds of ammunition). What other free expressions on MySpace can we expect to inspire arrest warrants in the future? Admission of a fondness for cannabis? Open sympathy for Arabs and Muslims? Once we have cowed California gun owners, who’s next?

East L.A. College student held in gun probe
Student leader faces weapons charges
Student Charged In Alleged Possession, Sales Of Assault Weapons
College Leader Charged With Dozen Felony Counts

Update: As of 15 May most of the assault weapons charges have been dropped and Corwin’s bail reduced. See our latest entry.

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