Ben Stein is a Self-Confessed Felon

In the latest Spectator, Ben Stein has a piece entitled Col. Denman’s Luger. It begins:

A few days ago, a package arrived in the mail from the widow of my late father-in-law, Colonel Dale Denman, Jr., of Heber Springs, Arkansas. I opened it and there was a leather holster and inside it, a German Luger pistol. My father-in-law had taken it from a captured German officer in early 1945 and kept it for almost sixty years. He had left his wife instructions that I was to get it.

I’m very happy for Ben that he has received this important heirloom and piece of history, and that he keeps it in a drawer next to his bed, but by receiving a handgun via U.S. Mail, instead of receiving it via common-carrier or through a Federal Firearms Licensee, he has violated federal law, to wit:

May a nonlicensee ship a firearm through the U. S. Postal Service?



A nonlicensee may mail a shotgun or rifle to a resident of his or her own state or to a licensee in any state. Handguns are not mailable. A common or contract carrier must be used to ship a handgun. A nonlicensee may not transfer any firearm to a nonlicensed resident of another state. The Postal Service recommends that longguns be sent by registered mail and that no marking of any kind which would indicate the nature of the contents be placed on the outside of any parcel containing firearms.

If the gun shipped from Heber Springs, Arkansas to Ben in Hollywood, it was an interstate transfer, and that transfer must be through an FFL dealer.

So Ben Stein has been party to not one, but two federal felonies, to which he has confessed in print. Ben says in his piece:

I have relatives and friends who get out of bed every morning and do an hour of exercise to keep them fit. I don’t do that. My exercise is that I get out of bed and hit my knees and thank God for waking up in America, where I live in peace and freedom, no Gestapo chasing me, no KGB putting me in the Gulag, no Hamas blowing me up. All thanks to men like Col. Denman and the heroism he showed capturing this Luger.

Except that, by confessing his crime, the BATFE’s jackboot squad can now get a warrant and perform a dynamic-entry on Mr. Stein’s home to arrest him and confiscate his illegal Luger – or worse.

Of course, this won’t happen since Ben Stein is a politically connected celebrity, but it could happen to you or me if we were similarly ignorant of the law.

We have no Gestapo or KGB, but we do have some stupid damned laws and some unrestrained government agencies with a known history of excessive use of force and petty prosecution.

Good luck, Ben.