'Guns2Thugs' Website Owner Jailed

(Nottingham, England) A 21-year-old man, Andrew Phillips, was sentenced to three years in jail for selling replica firearms over the Internet on his website, Guns2Thugs.

Yesterday Judge Dudley Bennett told Phillips: "You deliberately supplied very real-looking replica firearms to people you knew or believed wanted to convert them to fire live ammunition even though they could not.

"And what did you call this website? Guns2Thugs."

"No amount of eloquence on the part of your barrister will persuade me that is not a name that will not attract criminal attention."

Phillips was selling replicas that were designed to fire CS capsules or flares, which is illegal in the UK. As a result, he is going to jail. Of course, he didn't help his case by naming his website as he did. Phillips' lawyer probably said it best, "Guns2Thugs was a name of monumental stupidity."

All is not lost though, an Online Petition group has called for his release. When I checked, the group had collected 15 signatures. Feel free to sign up.

His mother, Pauline Phillips, also weighs in on another website with an appeal for his release based on the fact that he had no sinister intentions and he didn't realize it was illegal to sell blank firing replica guns. In fact, collecting replica guns was his hobby. Phillips only started selling them when he saw how cheaply he could buy them in France.

In summary, a young guy gets caught up in a set of circumstances that are crosswise with the letter of the law and the British judiciary decides he deserves three years in prison. My take? At most, Phillips should get a hand slap and probation. He never had a real gun. Yet he gets a hefty jail term, more for being stupid than committing a major crime. If the Brits are locking people up for being stupid, why is George Galloway still walking around?

Companion post at Conservative Thinking.