A correct decision

A Maricopa County, Arizona judge has dismissed all charges against George Iknadosian, a Phoenix gun shop owner accused of being a conduit for firearms being shipped to Mexico:

"Because the gun buyers all were eligible to acquire firearms, he said, their deception did not amount to a "material falsification." Consequently, [Judge Robert] Gottsfield ruled, the evidence did not show felonious conduct by Iknadosian."

We have no idea whether Iknadosian was or was not involved in such a trafficking scheme. Hopefully, if he was mixed up in such behavior, the prosecution will be able to re-file charges using proper evidence and prove his involvement sufficiently to send him to prison. We here at the Muckraker have no sympathy or tolerance for gunrunners, and hope that any such individuals get caught and punished for their murderous actions.

We do, however, support the rationale behind the judge's decision in this case, in that a seller of anything to a customer legally able to purchase a product simply cannot be responsible for what the purchaser subsequently does with that item. Mr. Iknadosian may yet be proven to be a perpetrator of crimes, but selling a firearm to an ineligible purchaser wasn't one of them.

Should a car dealer be held liable if one of their customers drives drunk and kills someone in their brand new Buick? What about the liquor-store owner who sold the impaired driver his vodka earlier in the day, while they were still sober? Or maybe a hardware store worker who sells a hammer to someone, who then bashes a victim in the head with it?

The same concept applies to firearm sales as well. A gun dealer cannot be a mind reader; he can only establish that someone is qualified to make the purchase by having the buyer fill out a worksheet that's a Federal crime to make false statements on, and by performing the required Brady NCIS instant check. After that, the dealer's obligations have been satisfied, and a legal transfer takes place. Any subsequent crimes have to have the blame for them put on the person who committed them, not the person who legally sold an object to the criminal. If Iknadosian was in fact an arms dealer, then prove his personal involvement, and not some second-degree guilt by association for his store merely being the point of sale for the guns.

What seems to be the most disturbing aspect of this case is that it appears that other employees of the store seem to have been leaned on quite heavily, and perhaps wrongly, to "flip" on Iknadosian:

"About a dozen co-defendants pleaded guilty to felony charges before other judges. Gottsfield's ruling on Wednesday appears to question whether they committed the crimes for which they were convicted." (Emphasis mine)

Perhaps the workers were threatened with trumped-up charges that carry multiple decades of hard prison time if they didn't immediately roll over and cooperate with whatever the prosecutors wanted, even though concrete evidence of their involvement wasn't evident. These connected cases should be immediately reopened and the plea negotiations fully examined, as there have been far too many past examples of official misconduct from prosecutors vastly overcharging minor or nonexistent crimes in order to obtain a quick plea and (sometimes fraudulent) testimony against a higher-up.

We'll put this case on our follow-up list.