Prezzy gone wrong
On a visit to New Zealand, FBI Director Kash Patel gave the country’s police and spy bosses gifts of inoperable pistols that were illegal to possess under local gun laws and had to be destroyed, New Zealand law enforcement agencies told The Associated Press.
Such a thoughtful present. How about an electric chair next time?
Inoperable weapons are treated as though they’re operable in New Zealand if modifications could make them workable again. The pistols were judged by gun regulators to be potentially operable and were destroyed, New Zealand’s Police Commissioner Richard Chambers told AP in a statement Tuesday.
Weird: people who don’t love guns. How can anyone not love guns?!

I know that people tend to select gifts based on their own preferences, rather than on the preferences of the recipient, but this is ridiculous. Useless, in fact, in this case. It’s worse than no gift at all, because of the costs of making the assessment, and destroying the “gift.”
Unless the person is known to be a collector, there’s no reason ever to give a gun as a “gift.” “Here, let’s pick something that has no purpose other than to kill people, and which symbolizes American gun violence.” Narcissistic dingbat.
Talking of “selecting gifts based on their own preferences”, I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that Trump ousted the director of the Eisenhower Library for refusing to hand over a sword that the Dutch royal family gave Eisenhower for liberating the Netherlands from the Nazis, so that Trump could give it as a gift to King Charles. Obviously it’s nothing compared to casually murdering Venezuelan fishermen, but the President of the USA trying to swipe a sword from the national archives in order to present it to the King of England is very special. Especially considering the email that was sent:
Good god.
I suspect Choss would be pretty disgusted by that plan anyway. The Dutch royal fam had good reason to be grateful to Eisenhower and I’m pretty sure Choss knows all about that, given that his own parents were up close and personal with WW2 in many ways. (His ma didn’t actually participate though, despite the myth. She attended some training but was not allowed to do more than that, including even mixing with the peasants.)
Geez, everybody knows that if you’re gonna regift, it’s traditionally fruitcake.
This was a headline story here a few days back which reflected poorly on Patel and rather well on the recipients and the institutions involved. One part of the article that I noted at the time and glossed over was the reference to the guns being part of a challenge coin display. Given the publication today of pictures of Patel’s “Punisher “ coin I’m just hoping that sick thing didn’t make it here.
This is what I’m talking about by the way.
https://bsky.app/profile/samd.bsky.social/post/3m2cdijifek2h