Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.
Just 30 years old, his resume is already impressive: state champion high school debator, graduate of Flathead High School, honors graduate of Gonzaga University, law degree from Washington and Lee University in Virginia, legal practice in Pennsylvania. Then, a return to his boyhood home, the Flathead Valley. Today he serves on various nonprofit boards, once served on Kalispell’s school board, coaches legislative debate at Flathead High, and practices law in Whitefish. Among his legal services: gun trusts. More on that later.
His name: John Michael Myers. His political persuasion: Republican. His ambition: representing Whitefish’s House District 5 (map) in the 2015 Montana legislature.
That requires overcoming two obstacles. In the Republican primary, the obstacle’s named Doug Adams, a hard sided, hard right, Whitefish businessman twice Myers’ age. If he gets past Adams, and I think he will, Myers’ final obstacle is Democrat Ed Lieser, a seasoned and much more formidable politician representing a district that’s elected only one Republican, Derek Skees, in the last ten years.
I spoke with Myers the day he filed, partly to confirm some information, partly to get a sense of the man and his politics. “I’m not a tea partier,” he told me. His model legislator is John Cobb, a family friend and attorney/rancher from Augusta who served 24 years in the legislature before retiring in 2009, a victim of term limits.
“Why are you a Republican?” I asked. I don’t think he was ready for the question, for his reply, in essence, was that he believes in conservative fiscal policies, a belief consistent with traditional Republican values but not inconsistent with traditional American values, and thus not sufficient in and of itself to distinguish him from a Democrat. He’ll do better the next time he’s asked that question.
The question he’s most likely to be asked, however, is why he’s setting up gun trusts given their unsavory reputation.
Gun trusts set up under the National Firearms Act are perfectly legal — and in my opinion, not something that perfectly savory people need. As described by the New York Times, they’re a legal loophole that allows gun lovers to:
…acquire machine guns, silencers or other items whose sale is restricted by federal law — a mechanism that bypasses the need to obtain law enforcement approval or even undergo criminal background checks.
Myers is not quite as explicit:
Under the National Firearms Act, certain guns and sound suppressors (“Title 2” weapons) are required to be registered with the ATF. An alternative to individual registration under the act is an NFA gun trust, which legally bypasses many ATF requirements such as fingerprinting, photographs, and the signature of a Chief Law Enforcement Officer. It also greatly speeds up the registration processing time, and therefore is becoming a popular tool for Title 2 weapons purchases.
Not all gun trusters use their trusts for nefarious purposes. But, reports the Times, some do:
Lawyers who handle the trusts and gun owners who have used them say that a majority of customers who buy restricted firearms through trusts do not do so to avoid such requirements. And most gun dealers continue to require background checks for the representative of the trust who picks up the firearm. But not all do.
Christopher J. Dorner, the former Los Angeles police officer who embarked on a weeklong assault on law enforcement officers this month that ended with his death on Feb. 12, said in a rambling 11,000-word manifesto that he had used a gun trust to buy silencers and a short-barreled rifle from a gun store in Nevada without a background check.
To repeat, what Myers is doing is perfectly legal. Whether it should be legal is another question, so I asked him whether Congress should close the loophole. That, he replied, summoning his debating skills, was a question for members of Congress, not a country boy running for the state legislature. But it's a question others will ask between now and 3 June 2014, and the GOP’s gunpowder caucus might not approve if he dodges the question instead of answering “Loophole? What loophole? The law is too restrictive as it is.”
Keep an eye on John Michael Myers. He’s no Derek Skees. He has political promise, and he could be trouble for Ed Lieser and the Democrats.
