Federal Agents of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service raided the factory and offices of Henry Repeating Arms (NJ) on Wednesday, seizing wood pallets, electronic files and rifles
Federal authorities are apparently investigating Henry for the alleged importation and use of illegal wood.
The Wall Street Journal reported this morning on this highly “aggressive enforcement of overly broad laws to make the company cry uncle.” The Journal reports that the raid this past Wednesday was not the first time that agents of Fish and Wildlife came after Henry.
Henry is already fighting a federal lawsuit that stemmed from a 2009 federal raid, but this raid seems to have upped the stakes. As the Journal described the ongoing case:
“The question in the first raid seemed to be whether Henry had been buying illegally harvested hardwoods from protected forests, such as the Madagascar ebony that makes for such lovely rifles… but with the new raid, the government seems to be questioning whether some wood sourced from India met every regulatory jot and tittle.”
The real issue here seems to be the bureaucratic minutia of federal environmental regulations that increasingly pervade all aspects of American life. Environmental regulations cover your home and your business. To lay out the over-regulation in this case, the Journal quoted John Thomas, a law professor at Quinnipiac University, who described the enormous burden of proof on rifle owners to show they aren’t carrying endangered wood:
“It’s not enough to know that the body of your old rifle is made of walnut and maple: What’s the stock made of? If it’s ebony, do you have the paperwork to show when and where that wood was harvested and when and where it was made into a stock? Even if you have no knowledge—despite Herculean efforts to obtain it—that some piece of your rifle, no matter how small, was obtained illegally, you lose your rifle forever.”
Certainly, the dedication of federal resources for the harassment of a private rifle producer reinforces already negative perceptions about the Obama administration’s hyper-regulatory environment.
" APRIL FOOL " ! !............
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