Sharruma - 12 November 2009 07:23 PM
If it’s in his garden isn’t it still in his possesson?
That’s what I was thinking. I suppose that the legal thing to do would have been to quietly throw it into the middle of the nearest public way and then not ever mention it.
I think that this is one of those cases where the people who wrote the law made it without really thinking through all the possibilities. Perhaps this case will make whatever legislative or judicial body is involved re-evaluate and amend the law. Because the law as it is really is incredibly stupid and leaves a lot of room for hazards. What if somebody finds a fully loaded machine-gun in the middle of a playground full of kids, with a round chambered and the safety off and everything, and there isn’t any policeman or telephone or other adult around? Is he to just leave it sitting there amongst all those kids while he walks to the nearest police station to report it? Then he’d probably be charged with negligence at the very least, and possibly with a lot more if the kids got a hold of it and started blasting each other away. When the law creates situations where an innocent passerby cannot possibly escape guilt through absolutely no fault of their own, you have a major problem with the laws. Clearly, this is a case where the spirit of the law doesn’t match up with the letter of the law.
