If you read the story regarding the testimony in the Benjamin Wassell case, it’s easy to let your prejudices get the better of you. Citizen control cultists will want him crucified, figuratively, if not literally. Second Amendment supporters feel he’s being persecuted for violating a blatantly unconstitutional law.

The twice combat-wounded and partially-disabled Marine who suffered a traumatic brain injury as the result of an IED blast was arrested after he allegedly sold AR-15s made illegal by the NY SAFE Act to an undercover officer.

The jury is in their second day deliberating whether or not Wassell is guilty of two counts of third-degree criminal sale of a firearm and one count of third-degree criminal possession of a firearm.

The case is interesting in several respects. Wassell is the first person charged for selling a gun made illegal by the NY Safe Act. It’s also interesting that the arrest was conducted by state and federal law enforcement, without local police involvement.

The lead juror in the case seems to think that the jury can come up with a unanimous verdict in the case. It may happen today.

It’s a shame that a man who bought a rifle legally in one state can be charged with the possession of that same rifle just feet away across a state line because of a handful of arbitrary cosmetic features that do not affect the accuracy, range, or rate of fire of that firearm.

This is an utterly “vanilla” AR-15. The is the most common rifle sold in the United States, in it’s standard, most generic configuration. It is, in every respect, what the Second Amendment should protect as a rifle of contemporary military utility fit for the sort of militia service the Founders intended.

He may spend the next six years of his life in prison because anti-gun New York Democrats who know nothing about firearms arbitrarily decided that pistol grips, a bayonet lug, and an adjustable stock make a rifle more deadly.

If that doesn’t define “absurd,” I don’t know what does.

Update: Wassell was found guilty, and faces up to seven years in prison.