Category: Anti-Gun Folks

Dave Hardy gives us some interesting history on the matter.

Every time I use the term “illegal gun” now, I feel like I’m playing into Bloomberg’s hands. Bloomberg’s real innovation in the gun control movement was figuring out what to call it. Originally we had “gun control,” but that ended up with negative connotations being associated with it. Then you had Andrew McKelvey‘s group Americans for Gun Safety, adopt the “gun safety” model, with a newly renamed Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence (formerly Handgun Control Inc.) buying into this model for a while as well. Perhaps because most people of reasonable intelligence know guns are dangerous, and are meant to be dangerous, the “gun safety” mantra didn’t fare too well, so the gun control movement tried to do a false flag model with AHSA, which also failed, and was forced to turn to a shill for the Democratic Party in order to survive.

Bloomberg’s real genius, or I should say the real genius of the people he has working for him, is that they understood there’s one thing pretty much everyone agrees we ought to do something about, and that’s illegal guns, which most people take to mean guns in the hands of criminals. By reframing the current gun control agenda into a righteous struggle to battle illegal guns, Bloomberg can steal more legitimacy, and get people to listen, who might not otherwise care about “gun control” and its closely related and equally discredited cousin “gun safety.” So when I use the term “illegal guns” I feel like I’m playing right into Bloomberg’s hands in trying to recast the whole Brady agenda in a positive light.

This is disappointing, because we ought to be able to have a real dialog about illegal guns (criminals with guns) in this country without having to worry about the bait and switch tactics of a group like MAIG confounding the issue by pushing for more gun control on the law abiding under the ruse of something we’re all legitimately concerned about.

According to Bloomberg the shooting in Times Square, which apparently involved a machine pistol:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg was asked about the shooting while appearing at a Manhattan charity event, and he used the question to discuss one of his signature issues — illegal firearms and gun violence in New York and other big cities.

“We’ve got to stop this,” Bloomberg said. “This is one of the great public health threats. And our police officers are clearly in danger.”

The restrictions on machine pistols are among the strictest I think one can imagine, without making them pretty much blanket illegal, except for military use. It is extraordinarily difficult and expensive for an ordinary citizen to acquire a machine pistol. Most gun owners don’t even really understand what the law is on machine guns and as a general rule don’t bother. If you have the money and the patience, it’s possible to get one, assuming they are legal in your state, which they are not in New York.

Now, I hold out the possibility that this was not a machine pistol at all, but an ordinary semi-automatic pistol that was decked out to look like a machine pistol, since the report says it fired twice and jammed, which is a distinct possibility even with a full-auto MAC-10. They aren’t famed for their reliability.

But one wonders what regulations Bloomberg thinks is going to prevent guns from being stolen from gun owners, short of forbidding them from having them. Bloomberg’s ruse about illegal guns is just that — a ruse. His real purpose is to keep gun owners on the defensive so he will be on better ground when we start dismantling New York City’s gun laws through the courts.

I fully believe now that I will one day walk in Times Square legally carrying a firearm, and there won’t be a damned thing Michael Bloomberg will be able to do about it. That’s what he’s really afraid of.

UPDATE: Beatbox notices in the comments that despite MAIG’s hysterics about Tiahrt, it didn’t seem to interfere with the NYPD’s ability to find out the origins of the gun, and that it was stolen.

Paul Helmke a few months ago:

Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said he “doesn’t have problems with people transporting guns on trains so long as steps are taken to make sure they’re secured and properly stowed.”

Paul Helmke yesterday:

“It is dangerous for Congress to dictate to Amtrak how to handle guns on passenger trains. Trying to micromanage Amtrak security is inappropriate at best, reckless at worst.  But now that Congress has decided to allow passengers to be able to transport firearms in checked luggage on trains operated by Amtrak, at least their negotiators have responded to some of the safety concerns raised by gun violence prevention advocates.”

So which is it? Or did Bloomberg call up Brady and say he didn’t appreciate them taking an alternative position to MAIG? Might be, considering we were using Brady’s position to smear other gun control groups as extremists. Either way, they aren’t being consistent.

The Brady Campaign is reporting that Bob Ricker is dead. The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence has more on who Bob Ricker was. He was famous around these parts for the oft-used quote “self-defense whacks” which appeared on Bitter’s blog before she changed her blogging topic. She also had a bit to say about his views on women. More history here.

Please keep the comments tasteful. Gun control advocates have families too.

Protest Easy Guns is an interesting group that’s cropped up since the Virginia Tech tragedy. The group is lead by Abby Spangler. These are the people who do the highly appropriately named “lie-ins” where they all lie down on the ground and pretend to be dead. It’s always seemed rather macabre to me, but hey, it’s a free country, and you can protest however you want. Protest Easy Guns has quite a Twitter presence though, and I’m rather surprised they respond to pro-gun critics at all, let alone seeming rather annoyed by them. Typical of an exchange with them, they started out announcing a protest on Times Square. I retorted back that protesting guns in New York City was like protesting for gay rights in San Francisco. Not exactly a brave statement in either city. That must have gotten under Ms. Spengler’s skin, because the response was pretty angry:

@SebastianSH Sebastian, you know we are not protesting guns! PLEASE STOP SAYING THAT! We are protesting felons having easy access to guns!

My response was highly appropriate, I think, but we know it’s false, and we know that Protest Easy Guns is lying. We can see on their issues page here they propose all the same thing the Brady Campaign does, including banning so called “assault weapons”. Not just banning them for felons, but banning them for non-felon citizens too. They also are fighting against allowing non-felon citizens who are 21 years and older, are license and trained, from being able to carry a concealed firearm on college and university campuses. Those people are non-felons by definition. And what exactly does the Tiahrt amendment have to do with felons accessing guns? Law enforcement can access the trace system for criminal investigations. Why else would you want the trace data?

So no, Ms. Spangler, Protest Easy Guns is not just about keeping felons from having easy access to guns, because some of the methods you choose to do that essentially mean I can’t have them either. Next time they have a lie-in, think for a moment about how appropriate that name is. Lie-in is right.

Police officials in the UK have started a new public awareness campaign.

Parents are being warned by police not to buy their children realistic looking toy guns this Christmas as it could lead to them being shot by armed marksmen.

And Happy Holidays to you, too! I’m so glad to hear that the warmth of the Christmas season is prefaced with a threat from the police that if you buy your child a toy firearm, you may be condemning him or her to a death sentence. Even better, the gun control supporter quoted in the article agrees!

First, the police:

“People are increasingly aware of the potential for firearms in our midst and, quite rightly, call us whenever they see something resembling a gun. Whether this gun is an air weapon, BB gun or genuine firearm, our response is the same.

“While they are legal to own, parents must ask themselves whether it’s really appropriate for children to have these guns. If they do, they must learn to use them responsibly. We cannot have situations where innocent members of the public are injured by missiles they or we fire.”

I almost don’t know where to begin. So armed response units are the first response to a report of a 6-year-old with a toy? Second, why do their BB guns fire missiles? Third, why are the cops there so under-trained with their guns that their spokesman simply assumes they will miss a target and kill innocent bystanders?

And then let us go back to the comment that it is right to call the police anytime you see someone with anything that resembles a gun as opposed to someone simply with a gun. If that’s the case, I guess I should have called the cops when my nephew used to eat his bread into the shape of a gun. Or how about when he took his finger & thumb to pretend to shoot at things around him? That “handgun” (get it?) was awfully dangerous with its shape fitting that of some pocket pistols.

How far do we take this insanity? I ask that not because I’m reading this wrong and the police are only warning against people who paint their obviously toy guns to look like real ones. The police are asking parent not to buy any gun-shaped toy – whether it’s a clear purple water gun or an orange BB gun. They already have laws against realistic-looking guns, but police are now asking citizens to go further. It just shows that fears of a slippery slope are not unfounded.

While a civil liberties group rightly calls this a phantom problem, Mothers Against Murder & Aggression say there is no other way to deal with this manufactured issue.

“If a child is waving a toy gun around in the street police have no choice but to turn up with an armed response unit.”

Really? No other way at all? You mean to say that a child carrying this menacing Super Soaker justifies the use of a SWAT team? Although I suppose that the mad Mothers may find the particular model to be particularly threatening since it minimizes the need for going home to refill & you are only limited in your shots by how many bottles you can carry.