Guitars and Guns -- Are your stocks and grips legal?

I don't like it either, but that seems to be how it is, IMO.

Maybe I'm just dense and don't understand. But, don't we have something called the Fourth Amendment which protects us from unwarranted search and seizure? If no U.S. Law has been broken, then how did they get a darn warrant? Or did they even have a warrant? The story didn't seem to mention that.
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Yes, we have the 4th Amendment. If it was violated, that would have been all over the story, but it wasn't and so wasn't an issue to be made in the story. Possession of various protected CITES species without permit is a violation of US law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CITES

This story covers your concerns.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c993759c-d01f-11e0-81e2-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1WQlGHPJ9

There were warrants issued. It is against US law to traffic or possess said endangered species without proper permits. Gibson claims to know the law and claims to have purchased everything through proper channels and with proper paperwork. Ideally, they will have their day and court and be proven correct.
 
To be clear, a violation of the Lacey Act occurs when plant or animal material is taken in violation of a country's law. That is, if some species of wood is protected in, say, India and it's harvested there illegally and ends up in the US, it's here in violation of the Lacey Act. If that same wood is harvested where it's not protected, say, in Canada, then it's OK to import to the US.

There are plenty of other ways to violate the Lacey Act as well, of course, but that seems to be what the government is alleging in this case - that Gibson obtained wood that was illegally harvested in India.

It does seem to me to be awfully heavy-handed the way they went about investigating it, though. It seems to me like this is the sort of thing that could be handled with a subpoena and an audit. But what do I know?
 
Maybe I'm just dense and don't understand. But, don't we have something called the Fourth Amendment which protects us from unwarranted search and seizure?
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Sorry buddy. The 4th is mostly moribund. It fell victim to the anti-communists, the drug war, and the war on terror. It was one of the bits of freedom we traded for a little safety.

The amount of exotic woods used in firearms is minuscule. Demand for musical instruments are orders of magnitude larger and furniture is many times larger still.

If you're worried about the rosewood on your SAA, you're just wasting a good worry.
If your considering some new wood work for a gun, there are scores of beautiful choices, grown sustainability, right here in the USA.

Exotic woods are disappearing like teeth at a crystal meth convention. Many species of trees are commercially extinct. There are several types of lumber trees that are extinct.
 
Alot of my guns were built in union shops, and several even in Illinois, not worried about the hardwoods issue at all.
 
Guitars and guns

As I have many guns and also played guitar professionally, I'd like to add my two cents. Rosewood and ebony are for fingerboards, most better grade guitar bodies are made with mahogany, maple and alder while accoustic guitars are made with cypress and spruce. Cheap guitars are made with various unknown hardwoods as we see on economy grade rifles.

The Gibson raid, hopefully with full body armor, MP5s, etc as we all know that guitar makers can really be dangerous, is a prime example of over-regulation that's strangling the U.S. economy. Walnut, the favored wood for gunstocks, is generally not used in guitar making although I'm sure it's been tried. I don't know if walnut is an endangered species but the better grades are not found in vacant lots. They are scarce.

When you see what you believe to be regulatory abuse by agencies seeking to justify their existence, send a polite letter to your congressional reps and let them know how you feel.
 
This is nuts and applies to anything you bring into the country made of wood. It all comes down to how you fill out the form (do you report you have wood?) and how much a **** the government employee you are dealing with plans on being. As you haven't "entered" the country until you are fully through customs and immigration you have fewer rights than normal.

I hadn't thought of gun grips when I saw this but I can see the issue. How about the stock on the rifle you are taking to Canada or Africa?

I had thought of pool cues. I have my father's which was made in 1964/65. How can I prove what all the wood in it is and if it is legal, likewise mine from 88?

As far as the Gibson donations line... I wouldn't look too deep there. As a former supplier to Gibson and with family in the musical instrument accessory market I know Gibson and its owner have horrible reputations when it comes to honoring contracts, payments and the like. I would rather see him rot for something else though.
 
The Gibson raid, hopefully with full body armor, MP5s, etc as we all know that guitar makers can really be dangerous,....
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I don't know if it is sarcasm or ignorance about the body armor, but I assume the latter as pictures from several of the articles show nothing akin to the storm trooper image you are trying to convey.

Now I realize that Henry Juskiewicz has made a big deal about "amred" law enforcement coming into his factories with guns (paraphrasing is weird way of saying things), but generally speaking, if you are being raided by law enforcement, by default they will be armed with guns.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K8IDGUTrQk
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2011/09/gibson-ceo-embraces-his-nra-moment/41996/

With that said, there have been various law enforcement folks killed over the years in these sorts of milk run administrative raids bcause there were indeed some very bad people covering their operations with seemingly legitimate businesses.
 
Gibson was raided because they are non union and known contributor to conservatives. Martin uses the exact same materials but is a union shop and democrat contributor. I don't know if Gibson was targeted as retribution or if Martin was taken off the target list as a political payback, but it is an act of cronyism of the sort that is very old and has become much more common as the government has become more powerful and activist.

We should all expect the same sort of thing to happen to firearms manufacturers that don't acquiesce to demands from the feds that would be unconstitutional to legislate. Imagine that The feds tell a manufacturer or wholesaler that they should stop marketing and selling guns directly to the public through transfers OR ELSE.

A raid doesn't have to be constitutional or legally allowable to be effective. Look at what happened to Cav arms a few years back. They had written permission to do what they were doing and they still got raided, shut down, and bankrupted.
 
Let's tone down the wild conspiracies unless you have convincing proof of such.

No black heliocopters coming for your ebony and rosewood, if you please - or fantasy gun confiscation.

Thanks.
 
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