RMB Jailhouse Rock Update
I got the following email from RMB this evening. It seems relevant to the current discussion:
Hi Mark,
I have no clue why Bruce Smith is sniffing around at my past, but I don't mind admitting what happened. I may even do an article about it. Yes...I have been arrested twice as he says.
In 1998 I was living with a woman named Sally. She had a son in law, and this guy came to my house when I was alone there one day. I hardly knew him, but he seemed okay. He had some boxes of old toys still in the packages. Said his mother let him have them out of her storage unit because he needed money. He had a young baby and a new wife. Since I knew his mom had a storage unit, I had no reason to doubt him. But...he didn't have a drivers license and asked me to sell them for him to a local auction house which required ID to do business.
So...I took him up to the auction house and used my ID to get him the money. A couple of hundred bucks. I never took a dime. Six full months later...the cops come to my house with a warrant. The son in law had taken the boxes from a storage unit NEXT DOOR to his mom's. On the next auction date, out of blind coincidence, the owners of the storage unit recognized their own stuff being sold! It took the cops a long time to find out where I was because Sally and I had moved a few times.
I go to jail, make bail, go home. When trial came up, I pled guilty to a lesser charge. Sally and I broke up soon afterward.
After I got past that one, they told me I couldn't own a gun until my maximum, but suspended sentence expired. Back then, you got restored after that date. Okay, fine. When it did, I bought a couple of guns for hunting....
Then....Washington state changes the law and now says you have to APPLY in person at the courthouse to get gun rights restored. They even made it retroactive, and no one told me. No letter, nothing. I never even got in trouble for filling out the Federal forms to buy.
Ten years later...in 2008....a Forest ranger came on me target shooting, legally, up in Snoqualmie Nat'l Forest. He ran everyone's name who was there and told me I was on the no-no list. I didn't actually go to jail, but I still had to plead guilty to illegal possession of a firearm.
So...after THAT was over...I re-applied for gun rights and got them restored. I haven't been in trouble since.
Oh, yeah...I had to go a youth camp for a year when I was a kid for running away from home. If that matters. Any more questions?
Sincerely, Robert