{"id":2269,"date":"2017-01-17T21:30:36","date_gmt":"2017-01-17T20:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/firearms-united.com\/?p=2269"},"modified":"2019-10-12T19:30:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-12T17:30:00","slug":"guilty-until-proven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firearms-united.com\/cz\/guilty-until-proven\/","title":{"rendered":"Guilty &#8211; until proven innocent?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"qtranxs-available-languages-message qtranxs-available-languages-message-cz\">Je n\u00e1m l\u00edto, tato polo\u017eka je k dispozici pouze v  <a href=\"https:\/\/www.firearms-united.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2269\" class=\"qtranxs-available-language-link qtranxs-available-language-link-en\" title=\"English\">English<\/a> For the sake of viewer convenience, the content is shown below in the alternative language. You may click the link to switch the active language.<\/p>Stereotypes &#8211; they are nice and they save time &#8211; its easy to label people, especially in media these days.<\/p>\n<p>Gone are the days when news agencies reported only facts &#8211; if they ever did. And in media these days you are pretty much always labeled guilty &#8211; whether your are guilty or not. And if you are not &#8211; nobody bothers to &#8220;correct&#8221; the news afterwards.<\/p>\n<p>We have a nice example of &#8220;investigative journalism&#8221; for you today:<\/p>\n<p>In Spain the local police (in cooperation with EUROPOL &#8211; just about week before IMCO vote) seized huge number of what they call &#8220;illegal firearms&#8221;.<\/p>\n<div class=\"x-embed x-is-rich x-is-twitter\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"es\" dir=\"ltr\">Estas son las 12.000 armas, algunas capaces de derribar aeronaves, intervenidas al crimen organizado. Su precio: 10 mill \u20ac en mercado negro <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/iJwcC3PGz9\">pic.twitter.com\/iJwcC3PGz9<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Polic\u00eda Nacional (@policia) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/policia\/status\/820636138083905537?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">January 15, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/div>\n<p>Press release [1] was later issued by the Spanish authorities:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The short version: Several &#8220;weapons of war&#8221; were found (CETME, BERGMANN, BERETTA) and they even found anti-aircraft guns which were, I kid you not, &#8220;capable of knocking down aircraft&#8221;. According to Firearms United team of experts, those are the more dangerous type of anti-aircraft guns, when compared to those other anti-aircraft guns that are incapable of knocking down aircraft. Or something.<\/p>\n<p><span data-ft=\"{&quot;tn&quot;:&quot;K&quot;}\"><span class=\"UFICommentBody _1n4g\">In addition to that according to reports, 80 000 euros of cash were found. And stamps, which could be potentially used to &#8220;falsify documentation&#8221;.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-ft=\"{&quot;tn&quot;:&quot;K&quot;}\"><span class=\"UFICommentBody _1n4g\">During the &#8220;raid&#8221; the agents seized approximately 10,000 to 12,000 weapons (I bet they are still counting&#8230;), spare parts, which obviously are the type of parts that can be used, you know, in guns, so that they work. Duh.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The article was immediately published by the Mirror [2] and in that article the journalists acts as the judge, jury and executioner, labeling the 5 persons as criminals, who had running a gun shop as a front, and stated that they had sold firearms to black market:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>&#8220;Four men and one woman were arrested in in the towns of Olot (Girona), Liendo (Cantabria), Gald\u00e1cano and Guecho (Biscay) following a lengthy investigation.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The criminal organisation was part of a network which bought unused weapons of war under the pretext of running a sports firm.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>They then sourced spare parts, reactivated the guns and put them up for sale on the black market.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Once the decommissioned weapons were legally sourced, they were taken to a &#8220;sophisticated workshop&#8221; in Guecho and reactivated&#8221;<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h3>Again &#8211; what happened to &#8220;innocent until proven guilty&#8221;?<\/h3>\n<p>Firearms United does not know if the allegations are true or not. We really dont. We do not know if the firearms were all deactivated or not.<\/p>\n<p>But we do know that there are always two sides to every story.<\/p>\n<p>There are some things that are conveniently not mentioned in the news articles and in the press release:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The person(s) does have a store through which he (allegedly) sold deactivated firearms and militaria for over 25 years.<\/li>\n<li>Until August 2011 deactivated firearms only required valid ID in Spain.<\/li>\n<li>The person acquired stock of old firearms factories (Astra, Star, Llama) and according to his own story, deactivated them. This could explain the huge stock &#8211; and the &#8220;sophisticated machine shop&#8221; because generally one needs more than a spanner and a hammer if one deactivates thousands of firearms&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>According to our sources <span data-ft=\"{&quot;tn&quot;:&quot;K&quot;}\"><span class=\"UFICommentBody\">firearms were deactivated by the spanish Official Proof House of Eibar and came with a certificate for each firearm guaranteeing the deactivation<\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The sophisticated machine shop&#8221; according to other-than-media-sources is a workbench, with attached bench vice and a drill.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The same sources indicate that the (non-local) authorities were busy taking selfies with confiscated firearms and EUROPOL agent, which surely explains why they have not even yet calculated the number of firearms.<\/p>\n<p>No we have two versions of the same story &#8211; and apparently details have been declared &#8220;secret&#8221; for a month or so. I guess it will a whole month for the &#8220;selfie-squad&#8221; to finish counting&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The question one needs to ask &#8211; was this just a merchant who could not bring his inventory up to EUs new deactivation rules fast enough due to big inventory or something more serious?<\/p>\n<p>Time will tell, whether the firearms were deactivated or not. Unfortunately &#8211; this happens after the critical IMCO vote.<\/p>\n[1] http:\/\/www.interior.gob.es\/es\/web\/interior\/noticias\/detalle\/-\/journal_content\/56_INSTANCE_1YSSI3xiWuPH\/10180\/6803659\/?redirect=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.interior.gob.es%2Fes%2Fportada%3Fp_p_id%3D101_INSTANCE_pNZsk8OxKI0x%26p_p_lifecycle%3D0%26p_p_state%3Dnormal%26p_p_mode%3Dview%26p_p_col_id%3Dcolumn-2%26p_p_col_pos%3D2%26p_p_col_count%3D4<\/p>\n[2] http:\/\/www.mirror.co.uk\/news\/uk-news\/spanish-police-seize-12000-illegal-9629386<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"qtranxs-available-languages-message qtranxs-available-languages-message-cz\">Je n\u00e1m l\u00edto, tato polo\u017eka je k dispozici pouze v  <a href=\"https:\/\/www.firearms-united.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2269\" class=\"qtranxs-available-language-link qtranxs-available-language-link-en\" title=\"English\">English<\/a> For the sake of viewer convenience, the content is shown below in the alternative language. You may click the link to switch the active language.<\/p>\n<p>In media &#8211; guilty until proven innocent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1985,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[47,120,93,61,34,87,139],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firearms-united.com\/cz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2269"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firearms-united.com\/cz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firearms-united.com\/cz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firearms-united.com\/cz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1985"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firearms-united.com\/cz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2269"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.firearms-united.com\/cz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2274,"href":"https:\/\/www.firearms-united.com\/cz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2269\/revisions\/2274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firearms-united.com\/cz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firearms-united.com\/cz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firearms-united.com\/cz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}