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It's clear from the few sentences about private collectors that this dude was active or otherwise known among the vintage military junk collecting community. You kind of need to be very active in those circles a a prerequisite for owning a tank. These kind of people aren't really doing anything wrong unless you think collecting and preserving junk is wrong. This dude had some sort of established collection, the .gov swooped in and took is and the rest of the collectors are trying to buy it off the .gov so they don't trash it.
They didn't say they found any art. We both know they'd announcing that one loud and clear if they did.
I'm not sure how he got on their radar for nazi art but this whole thing reeks of "we came up empty handed but when we lose we make sure you lose too" behavior on behalf of the government.
Learn to read between the lines.
WW2-era or not, a Panther is a lethal piece of hardware, and apparently he's been seen driving it around at some point. And if one person does it then someone else can too. And the next one might not be a harmless old man content with merely collecting military hardware.
He also had an anti-aircraft gun, multiple machine guns, pistols, and lots of ammunition. The same logic applies there; old or not, it could be very dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands and that's why we have gun control laws.
I suspect selling the collection could easily pay the fines, so it's not like he's being punished that hard.
What's the statement here? The statement I see is that intent does not matter, which kind of flies in the face of most of the history of European criminal law.
The law was written to prosecute people who are up to no good. Why the relevant parties here did not realize that some elderly collector is in fact not up to no good and prosecute and sentence accordingly I can only speculate.
>WW2-era or not, a Panther is a lethal piece of hardware, and apparently he's been seen driving it around at some point. And if one person does it then someone else can too. And the next one might not be a harmless old man content with merely collecting military hardware.
If you want to drive around and destroy things there are more cost effective options, there have been recent examples of such shenanigans in Europe. Some elderly collector is not really a threat to public health and more than a small fleet of construction equipment or heavy trucks is.
>I suspect selling the collection could easily pay the fines, so it's not like he's being punished that hard.
I think it's just as likely that the fine was sized so that between being forced to liquidate everything and paying the fines he will die penniless.
It’s because there is a certain school of thought that people should be punished and imprisoned for ‘immoral acts’ even it if hurts no one, they have no ill intent, and keep to themselves. See gun laws, drug laws, laws against homosexuality, obscenity laws, and speech laws.
Turns out regardless of where you are on the mainstream political spectrum, forcing people to live a live a certain way in the privacy of their own home never goes out of style, except for well, a certain disfavored minority political group.
That gun control laws are still being enforced, no matter who breaks them? That you can't get away with breaking the law just because you commit a crime that most people don't think is that bad?
> The law was written to prosecute people who are up to no good.
We're talking about someone who confessed to the crime he was sentenced for, and last time I checked, the law is supposed to be equally applied, no matter who you are. Intent does indeed matter, and if this had been some moron with intent to use the tank, we wouldn't be talking about a suspended 14-day prison sentence and a fine.
> If you want to drive around and destroy things there are more cost effective options
Definitely. I'd argue that the relative scarcity of tanks, however, is clearly correlated to the fact that military hardware ownership is pretty much limited to the military. I could -- in theory -- kill someone with a hammer I bought for 1€ at a flea market. That does not mean we should abolish gun control laws because "there's cheaper ways of doing it anyway". Nor should we allow private tank ownership, because I could clearly cause damage more cost-efficiently with a bulldozer.
That being said, I agree that this particular individual doesn't seem to have been a threat at all. Someone potentially stealing the stuff from the old man, however, wouldn't even have to think about things like costs.
> I think it's just as likely that the fine was sized so that between being forced to liquidate everything and paying the fines he will die penniless.
Well, he's been given two years to sell or donate the tank and the AA gun to a collector. There are definitely people who are interested. The final price depends on supply/demand and I'm not an expert when it comes to collecting military hardware.
Whether he'll die penniless or not, well, he was able to afford a tank and an AA gun, as well as a number of other weapons, and ammunition. Apart from that, he also had room for it all. That indicates he does have some money available (assuming he didn't spend it all on the hardware and resorted to living of instant noodles).
I’m not in favor of private collectors of fully operational tanks, but the last sentence doesn’t hold any water for me.
Besides the fact that the law doesn't stop applying to you when you're old enough, maybe the more convincing argument would be that it's easier to steal it from an elderly man than from the army or museum
I dont see why owning a tank should be any different than owning any other large and heavy vehicle.
The LA guy is as relevant to an elderly collector as a dude on meth stabbing a cop is to a high school pot head.
A big front end loader would probably be better for a rampage than a tank since you can actually manipulate stuff with the loader portion of it.
I mean, this is almost a counter argument. If someone can just steal a tank from the govt what’s the harm in letting them buy one? It’s not like access is an issue.
>Authorities discovered the illegal military arsenal during a 2015 raid of the collector’s storage facility in northern Germany in an investigation into black market Nazi-era art that turned up two bronze horse statues which once stood in front of Adolf Hitler’s chancellery. Those items were in another man’s possession.
The more interesting thing to me is that it took the government 6 years to figure out that his collection was a problem. And this is the German government which is supposed to be efficient.
Not that I think that an 84 or even 78 year old man is going to be committing an acts of terror.
No but it could be stolen by others to commit such crimes or other ones like a bank robbery.
Also this particular tank, while they talk about it being used to remove snow at some point also seemed to be fairly hard to move.
>It took about 20 soldiers almost nine hours to extract the Panther tank - which was without its tracks - from the property.
Unless they were taking very special care not to damage other property, it does not seem like it would have been easily stolen.
But good point about the tracks yeah.
Stealing a tank is so conspicuous that no self respecting criminal would ever try it. It doesn't blend in and you'd never even get close to your target. It also doubles the number of crimes you need to pull off because first you need to steal the tank and the cops will be on your tail starting then vs starting when you commit the real crime you set out for.
Want to run over crowds? Rent a truck
Want to break buildings or infrastructure? Rent construction equipment.
In Holland it's now commonplace to steal money from ATMs by blowing up half the block (they call it a 'plofkraak'). https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=plofkraak&iax=images&ia=ima...
In Amsterdam passengers of a tram had to drop to the floor because some assassins wanted to kill someone and took the whole area under machine gun fire, didn't care about collateral damage.
In Belgium there was the "bende van Nijvel" that would rob supermarkets with machine guns and kill civilians on the motorways just to slow down pursuers. (This is a couple of decades ago though)
I wouldn't be surprised if someone steals a tank just to gain access to a nearby bank by ramming the walls or something, and then of course use another vehicle for escaping.