Jersey City’s little experiment that their supporters describe as an effort to force all police and military firearms purchases to be based on “the social responsibility of the manufacturer” instead of how well the firearm functions to defend their lives has had the expected impact: significantly higher costs to taxpayers, few companies willing to do any kind of business with them, and no real answers to their gun control questionnaire.
Shocker.
I like how they end the story: “If we got everything we wanted [gun control], we wouldn’t resolve the issue.”
But you’re going to try anyway? …because OMG GUNS!
My favorite part of the article is when they refer to a government initiative as “grassroots”. That word has quite a flexible definition with antis, doesn’t it?
Also, it just sounds ridiculous to keep calling call gun control “gun safety.” I think its too transparent and no one is buying it. It just makes them sound silly.
And the claim that “Forty percent of the guns in this country are purchased by police and the military” is absurd. I’d like to know if he even has even a biased source for that, or if he just made it up himself.
There are 780,000 police officers in the US and 1.3mm active duty members of the armed forces. The FBI performed 21mm NICS checks in 2013. And in many states CCWers don’t go through NICS, and states like PA don’t participate at all, so the number of gun sales is much higher. Police department would have to buy all new guns every couple of days to compare to the civilian market. These people are delusional.
http://www.bls.gov/ooh/protective-service/police-and-detectives.htm
https://www.dmdc.osd.mil/appj/dwp/reports.do?category=reports&subCat=milActDutReg
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/nics/reports/1998_2013_state_monthly_totals-123113.pdf
The 40 Percent thing really jumped out at me too.
Since the two companies involved sell only to Law Enforcement anyway, there is not much we can do about it other than put pressure on their suppliers to quit supplying them with product.
If you read the article, they note that the answers to the questions “with a minimal number of words that seemed more geared to legal niceties than a deeper discussion about gun safety.” Unless you’ve seen something damning that shows the need to organize some form of “boycott,” then I think they successfully made the questionnaire completely worthless.
And of course this is precisely the kind of response they should have expected from the companies they do business with. They’re companies. They want to make money, not have “deep discussions about gun safety”
Hopefully all of the answers were along the lines of “We comply with all local, State and Federal laws with regard to firearms and ammunition sales.”. Pretty much covers it.
Giving them any answers at all is the first step in breaking them down.
First you ask easy questions that don’t seem to matter, then at some point comes the big ones.
THERE ARE FOUR LIGHTS!
That might be the case, but don’t you think the companies ought to actually commit to something terrible before you try to string them up and ruin them?
My question is – Do we have anybody in New Jersey who is willing to step up with FOIA Request? It would be enlightening to see the actual answers to the questionaire. And i cant for the life of me see any reason to hold those questionaire responses from public view
That’s wrong at a much more fundamental level. What’s the difference between asking an ammo distributor about their views on civilian sales and asking a health care company about their views on abortion. Sounds like the government is saying they will only accept bids from companies that back them politically. Standby for lawsuits.