RichC, thanks for the reply and information. If scrivener is an attorney his people skills should be better if for anything to attract paying clients. Personally I don't care for his style with free advice...hopefully he is more professional with paying clients. He hasn't gotten me down but I am disheartened that he treats other fellow gun owners with such attitude, espically when he doesn't know me and I shudder to think if he would be the same face to face and just not a keyboard commando.
He already got banned here once. Maybe he's working on the second time?
As an example of how little understanding of MA laws LEO's have here in MA - here are a couple of examples:
A fellow NES member I bought a Glock from told me this story. He had an FN2000 bullpup rifle - which was fully MA compliant in that it had no flash hider, no adjustable stock, no bayonet lug, etc. He was at the range - and a fellow wandered over to where he was shooting and made a comment that ran something like " you can't own that gun here in MA, it's a machine gun". The FN2000 owner responded that NO - it wasn't a 'machine gun', it was a semi auto rifle, was fully in compliance with MA laws - and had been legally purchased at a MA gun dealer. The beginnings of an argument ensued - and Mr. Alleged LEO got on his cell phone to call his chief. After some talking back and forth about what was going on it was finally determined that the rifle was in fact MA legal and Mr. FN2000 owner was doing nothing wrong.
This obviously could have gone a different way if Mr. Alleged LEO had just decided to arrest Mr. FN2000 owner, or if he was really feeling SWAT'y that day had decided to call in the Rabid Response Team because there was "some guy with a machine gun down at my range".
The end result was that Mr. FN2000 owner got rid of the rifle rather than risk any more adventures with law enforcement.
The second example happened directly to me. I bought a Glock 21. I was looking for more magazines for it - and found a place selling 10 round Glock 21 mags on Gunbroker. So I bought a few. 10 round mags are actually sort of hard to come by, most people don't want them because they live in free states. The auction specifically listed 10 round magazines. A week or so later a package arrives - I open up the package and find 4
13 round Glock 21 mags in the box. So I called the guy and asked him why he sent me four felony convictions in a box.
The auction specifically called out 10 round mags for sale, I specifically asked the guy if they were 10 rounders BEFORE I paid him. They obviously sent me the wrong ones. BUT - the thing is that when I talked to them on the phone they insisted that the mags were legal in MA. They insisted they had been told by numerous MA State Police troopers that the mags were legal - they insisted they sold them at gun shows , and troopers had seen them for sale and had no problem. I had to (with help from NES) dig out the relevant MA laws and print out and send them to the guy to try and educate him on what the law REALLY was - not what the Troopers were telling him.
Moral of the story: The police don't know the law. Don't rely on them to know or enforce the law properly - in either direction. They may let you get away with things that are illegal because of their ignorance - or they may arrest you for perfectly legal stuff because of their ignorance.
It's even worse here in MA because the firearms laws are insane. Actually fully understanding MA firearms law takes a lot of reading. The only reason there are people here on NES who fully understand it is because they have the incentive to not get arrested. Cops don't have that incentive - they can arrest you wrongfully and get away with it most of the time. Hence - no REAL incentive to really learn the details of the laws.
If it was me I wouldn't display guns anyway - it only invites criminals to learn what you have. If you are displaying guns it's for one of two reasons - because it makes you happy to see them - or because you are showing them off to others. Showing them off to others may at some point invite others to tell their friends. Said friends will then tell other friends - and then you may get a visit to your home while you are away on vacation.