Vice President Joe Biden’s gun-handling advice apparently doesn’t carry much weight in Washington state courtrooms.

A man was convicted in the state’s Clark County on Tuesday for following Biden’s advice, offered after the Newtown massacre, to fire shotgun blasts in the air — in this case, to ward off carjackers.

Biden made the comments after the December 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School that left 28 dead, when he and other Democrats called for the federal ban on semiautomatic weapons to be reinstated.

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Jeffrey Barton, a 53-year-old from Clark County, Washington, did exactly that when he caught intruders in his vehicle at 3 a.m. in July of last year. He walked over, punched one of them in the face and fired three shots in the air to scare them.

Later, Barton told reporters, “I did what Joe Biden told me to do. I went outside and fired my shotgun in the air.”

Barton was originally charged with a misdemeanor for illegally discharging a firearm, but in August prosecutors dismissed that charge and instead leveled one of obstructing a police officer.