Lying, Stolen Valor and Illegal Weapons Transfers - From the NRA

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MTT TL

New member
Here is a curious case of good intentions gone awry.

http://www.bakersfieldnow.com/news/...-man-lie-about-being-Navy-SEAL-138528704.html

Several questions come to mind.

Foremost: can the NRA be held accountable for transferring a weapon(s) to a felon?

Is this a good case for stolen valor act? The argument against Stolen Valor is that the liar gets no benefit (other than a perverted mental high I guess), and therefore it should be free speech. Here through his lies he was given an elk hunt, this is a valuable thing.

Thoughts?
 
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Tom Servo

Staff
Truitt may very well be prosecuted for being in possession of a firearm as a felon, but I don't think a DA would find Stolen Valor charges worth pursuing. As far as the NRA, it would need to be proven that they knew Truitt was a felon.
 
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C0untZer0

Moderator
Have we even been in Afghanistan long enough for someone to do 7 tours?

Now that I remember the Navy has a shorter length of time for what comprises a tour, still though, 7 tours - man... time flys.
 
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MTT TL

New member
I think I remember reading awhile back that the Stolen Valor Act had been ruled unconstitutional.
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I am sure you did, many people would like that to be true. However it is going to the SCOTUS for the dude out in California who claimed that he rescued the Ambassador to Iran during the Iran Hostage crisis. Should come up in a few months.

Have we even been in Afghanistan long enough for someone to do 7 tours?
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Yeah. However anyone should have figured that guy was a tard just from talking to him for five minutes, hell looking at him.
 
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TurkeyOak

New member
A case is going to the Supreme Court. Some will say that lying is protected speech ( lucky for me!)
But advertisers get sued and fined for false advertising. They cant say beer cures cancer. You also cant bootleg as that violates intellectual property and copyrights. I cant make grips and sell them as Hogues, for example.
The case going to the Supreme Court is about a guy claiming to be a marine with the Medal of Honor. Doesn't that infringe on the Marine Corps brand?
If I claim to be a lawyer, dentist, or senator I'd be jailed. Why not for the MOH?
If they dont uphold it I'll print business cards claiming to be a law clerk at the Supreme Court who graduated 9th from Harvard.
 
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MTT TL

New member
I say it was careless though. I guess if the law allows them to be careless that is too bad. A law defining how careful one should be is fraught with issues.

In a way they are lucky. The guy clearly has a screw or two loose by all counts. It could have been a lot worse if he had taken it into his head to start shooting people.
 
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Mike Irwin

Staff
The way I'm reading the story is that the NRA supplied the rifles to the organization that organized the hunt, and that organization then supplied the rifle to Truitt.
 
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MTT TL

New member
I did not get that from the story but it is possible. If that is the case then they are really opening themselves up to a media circus by trusting third parties like that.
 
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johnbt

New member
"Foremost: can the NRA be held accountable for transferring a weapon(s) to a felon?"

I believe the law says, "knows or has reason to know". It does not say that anyone has to make an effort of any sort to discover/research/ask around about a buyer, etc. I have always asked, but nothing keeps a buyer from lying and I have no way of checking their answer.

If the feds wanted us to run background checks as private parties they'd let us use the background check system.
 
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Aguila Blanca

Staff
MTT TL said:
I think I remember reading awhile back that the Stolen Valor Act had been ruled unconstitutional.
Click to expand...
I am sure you did, many people would like that to be true. However it is going to the SCOTUS for the dude out in California who claimed that he rescued the Ambassador to Iran during the Iran Hostage crisis. Should come up in a few months.
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As a Vietnam veteran, I fully support the Stolen Valor law. That doesn't mean the courts agree with me.

If you know it is going to the SCOTUS, which way does it stand as of now? Did a circis court rule it UNconstitutional and the gummint appealed, or did the circus court uphold it and the doofus appealed?

[EDIT]Never mind -- I found it. Circuit Court split:
http://www.military.com/news/article/supreme-court-to-review-stolen-valor-act.html

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the federal law. In California, the 9th Circuit struck it down.

This split means residents of a 10th Circuit state like Kansas and Colorado face Stolen Valor Act prosecution while residents of a 9th Circuit state like Washington, Idaho and California do not. The Supreme Court picks cases to resolve such circuit splits.
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Double Naught Spy

New member
Given Truitt's story, I would be very curious to see how it was that he qualified for the hunt. If it was based on the claims reported here, red flags and warning lights should have been going off. After all, how many folks would have been special forces, served 7 tours, shot 11 times, and have been taken prisoner and tortured? Either you have the top .000001% of soldiers standing in your presence about whom you had never heard anything previously, or you have a fraud. Extraordingary claims should require extraordinary proof.

He might have gotten away with his scheme had he only claimed to be a typical grunt, maybe wounded in a mortar attack, disabled after a short tour, and sent home. That would not call much attention to him, but no, he had to claim to be a SEAL.

Have we even been in Afghanistan long enough for someone to do 7 tours?
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We have been there long enough for 7 tours and there are probably folks who have done 7 tours. We started action there back in October of 2001 with Operation Enduring Freedom. The first US loss of life on the ground was Sgt. 1st Class Nathan Chapman who was 31 when he was shot to death Jan. 4, 2002. Not all tours are a year long, if that is what you are thinking. Some are shorter, some go longer.
 
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C0untZer0

Moderator
^ At first I wasn't catching on that he was in the Navy. In the Army, tours for Iraq /Afghanistan are 15 months. In the Navy they can be as short as 6 months IIRC.

The main guy who caught on to it was a Marine and probably the Marines are more familiar with the length of a Naval tour of duty. But if someone would have told me they served 7 tours of duty in Afghanistan my first thought would have been "Holy crap, thats over 8½ years!"

But as I delved into a little further, Army tours were 12 months before 2007.

But anyway, besides the Stolen Valor issue there is the issue of obtaining somethng by fraud. Truitt can probably be hit up for the cost of the hunting trip. On the other hand... this guy is such a mess, he's probably going to end up killing himself. He needs money to get counseling and probably needs anti-depressant meds. Pounding a mentally ill misfit who got chaptered out of the service on a medical doesn't seem worth it...
 
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MTT TL

New member
He might have gotten away with his scheme had he only claimed to be a typical grunt, maybe wounded in a mortar attack, disabled after a short tour, and sent home. That would not call much attention to him, but no, he had to claim to be a SEAL.
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I don't know what it is about Navy SEALS that causes so many of the fakers to want to be one. I like to swim but; joining the Navy? No thanks.

How did he make so far without any proof makes one wonder. POW network offers ways of checking people out with their idiotic claims of medals earned for heroism. They should have done that here. The fact that he had to borrow a rifle to hunt elk with tells you right there he most likely was NOT a SEAL.

If you know it is going to the SCOTUS, which way does it stand as of now?
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It is weird. On the one hand I support free speech implicitly. On the other hand I see trash like this taking advantage of the patriotism and good nature in people and wonder where to draw the line. This is fraud for gain, not just trying to pump an ego up with a false sense of accomplishment from the deluded good feelings of tricked well wishers.

I understand that there are people in the world that need this in their life to make it through the day. I guess people lie about all kinds of things on job resumes and college applications. To take from people who risk and sacrifice quite a lot for darned little strikes me as particularly vile.

I would submit that everyone really needs to check out anyone who claims any type of military service and is seeking some kind of benefit due to that service. I hope the NRA learned a lesson here.
 
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C0untZer0

Moderator
The NRA only donated the rifles to the Hunt for Heroes project. The NRA had no way of knowing how that organization would fail to screen their participants.
 
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MTT TL

New member
The NRA had no way of knowing how that organization would fail to screen their participants.
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:confused:

Broken mouth, could not ask?

Look I am not throwing it all on them. The other organization is culpable; but I think the leaders have a duty to the members to exercise good judgment. So I can't really hold them blameless either.
 
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nate45

New member
MTT TL said:
I like to swim but; joining the Navy?
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Thats how I always felt about it. To try out for SEALs you have to join the Navy and if you don't make it, you're still in the Navy.:p
 
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