Bill Cosby Blames Guns in Martin Shooting

Numerous media outlets are reporting that comedian Bill Cosby is blaming guns in the death of Trayvon Martin. Well we understand Cosby’s frustration with the death of the youth in Florida in February, to blame the gun is akin to blaming a car for a drunk driving death.

Shooter George Zimmerman was only charged in shooting death of Martin last week and the case still is pending. The Boston Globe noted:

He says there is a need to get guns off the streets, and that people should be taught to use every possible alternative before shooting someone.

The problem with Cosby’s argument – the need to get guns off the street – is an idealistic view of the problem of crime and punishment in America. Furthermore, most law-abiding citizens to use every possible alternative for using a gun.

Capital New York Quotes Anti-Gun Bloomberg

So how does New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg really see guns? We know he hates them, and last week he was quoted in Capital New York. Here is a sampling:

“There are too many loopholes in federal laws that let people buy guns when federal laws say they shouldn’t. Federal law says you cannot buy a gun if you have a criminal record, psychiatric problems, or a minor. Unfortunately, the gun background-check system that we have has some flaws in it. Too many people sell guns privately, and while they’re not supposed to sell to those who couldn’t pass a background check, they’re not required to do a background check. And it would be very easy to have reputable gun dealers do that background check for them.”

The question we would like to ask the Mayor is what is his point? Is this really a problem of “guns” or of the flawed medical system? Most gun sales do require a background check, and the background checks do keep guns out of the hands of those who shouldn’t buy them. Further restrictions will only make it harder for the law-abiding – as the citizens of Chicago and Washington can attest. Those cities had even stricter laws than New York City and yet STILL had a gun violence problem.

Bloomberg later stated:

“I don’t think the founding fathers meant to have people to walk around with assault rifles in their hands. I don’t think the founding fathers meant to have people who are on the no fly list be able to go and buy guns.”

This is a common tactic used by anti-gun types. Did the founding fathers intend for reality TV? Did the founding fathers mean for people to have access to pornography on the Internet? It is certainly impossible for the founding fathers to have any opinion on no fly lists when the cutting edge technology in flight of the era of the 1780s was a hot air balloon!

Likewise, as we often state, the guns of the era were far deadlier given the medical treatment today. In the 1780s any musket wound was very likely to be fatal. So this nonsense that the guns are deadlier today is just that – nonsense.

And finally for good measure Bloomberg compares America to the Third World:

“There are more guns than there are people in America. And it’s only America that has this problem. A couple of third-world countries. But you go around the world and they look at us and say, ‘What are you people thinking?’”

No this isn’t true. There are mass shootings even in countries where there are far stricter gun laws. And yes, there are more guns than people in America. So what is the problem? This argument suggests that Bloomberg isn’t anti-illegal guns as he often tries to suggest, but truly ANTI-GUN in all respects. He is mad that people have guns because he doesn’t like guns.

But this is easy for a billionaire to say, one who has private security – who are likely armed. So are the guns really a danger? No, the danger is men like Bloomberg who will spend their vast fortunes to rewrite the laws as they see fit. Maybe he should at least change the name of his group from Mayors Against Illegal Guns to MAYORS AGAINST GUNS and stop the pretext and lying.

Another Gun in NYC – How Will This Play Out

Two tourists to New York City, both of whom had permits to carry their guns in their respective home states, could face time in jail for bringing their totally legal guns to New York City – albeit illegally by NYC law. However, this week The New York Daily News noted that rapper “Cory Gunz,” whose real last name isn’t actually “Gunz” for the record, was arrested for possession of a loaded firearm.

“Rapper Cory Gunz – born Peter Pankey Jr. – was arrested in the Bronx Saturday when cops found he was carrying an unregistered Taurus .9mm handgun, police said.

He was arraigned in Bronx Criminal Court Sunday night on charges of criminal possession of a loaded firearm.

His father, rapper Peter Gunz, posted the $30,000 bail.

Here is the part where we are sort of confused… see the quote from Cory:

“This was a big mistake on my part,” Gunz told The Daily News early Monday morning after getting out of jail. “I didn’t have any intentions of harming anyone or committing a criminal activity. So many young people look up to me and I need to fight though this.”

So was the gun part of a fashion or style statement – gun for Gunz? The law isn’t about intentions in this case. The crime was also committed already for mere possession, and Gunz should have known this fact. But it gets more bizarre reports the paper:

Cory Gunz and his dad recently started a campaign called “Gunz Against Guns” where they speak at schools across the Bronx to steer kids away from the deadly weapons, Peter Gunz said.

Now the real question is whether Cory – being semi-rich and famous – will get the same treatment as the two tourists to New York City? Personally we do see a difference in these cases. The tourists in question legally possessed their respective guns but broke the law by bringing them to New York City – believing they could legally carry their firearms.

Cory Gunz however has not only spoke out against guns, but must have known that he was in possession of an illegal firearm in the first place.

Martin Luther King, Guns and Constitutional Carry

Martin Luther King, Jr. kept guns at home for personal protection.

He applied for but was denied a permit to carry a concealed firearm. He was concerned for his personal safety, as are a lot of Americans.

With constitutional carry, a law-abiding American citizen could carry a concealed firearm without government authorization.

GunRightsPolicies.org
John M. Snyder
Manager
Telum Associates, LLC
Arlington, VA
202-239-8005

About John Snyder:
Named the Gun Dean by Human Events, “the senior rights activist in Washington” by Shotgun News, a “champion of the right to self-defense” by The Washington Times, and “dean of gun lobbyists” by The Washington Post and The New York Times, John M. Snyder has spent 45 years as a proponent of the individual Second Amendment civil right to keep and bear arms as a National Rifle Association editor, public affairs director of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, treasurer of the Second Amendment Foundation, and founder of www.GunRightsPolicies.org.

A former Jesuit seminarian, Snyder is founder/manager of Telum Associates, LL.C., founder/chairman of the St. Gabriel Possenti Society, Inc., a director of Council for America, and serves on the boards of the National Association of Chiefs of Police and the American Federation of Police & Concerned Citizens. He is also the author of the book Gun Saint. Visit: www.GunRightsPolicies.org

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Post and Courier Notes “Fast and Furious confusion”

This week The Post and Courier had a story titled, “Fast and Furious confusion,” which notes some significant differences between the gun running operations that occurred under President Bush and those that happened under President Obama. The piece had this to say:

…it is hard to believe that any office of the Holder Justice Department would undertake a sensitive operation involving the nation of Mexico without first seeking Mexican cooperation. If contrary to policy such an operation was contemplated, it is hard to believe that any senior official in the department would have allowed it to proceed.

And yet Fast and Furious had a two-year run while Mexican officials were allegedly kept in the dark.

Where were Mr. Holder and his top aides during this time?

And yet it seems like Eric Holder will continue to dodge the issue and the media might likely continue to blame Bush.

John Lott: “Blame Bush – Is That Holder’s Strategy to Get Out of ‘Fast and Furious’ Mess?”

Our friend John Lott asked, the question this week, namely “Blame Bush – Is That Holder’s Strategy to Get Out of ‘Fast and Furious’ Mess?” We have to answer, it appears to be so. Lott, writing for FoxNews.com, suggested:

Blame Bush. It has been almost three years since President Obama took office, yet he still blames Bush for the bad economy. Now the Obama administration is following the same strategy to get out of the “Fast and Furious” mess.

Lott also noted that this “Blame Bush” strategy is very much in the works:

The Obama administration has also tried to show the practice originated in the Bush administration during 2006 and 2007 under operation “Wide Receiver.” After all, it is what Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer argued just last week. When Breuer testified last week, he confessed that he had learned about “gun walking” tactics as far back as April 2010, but it wasn’t the Obama administration’s “gun walking” that he confessed to learning about, it was a program run briefly during the Bush administration.

So how did this happen and why? Lott is not alone in his thinking. First he noted:

What is really missed by all this is the utter failure of gun tracing programs. The problem isn’t really that the Obama administration simply screwed up the tracing plan. Few guns move from the U.S. to Mexico and just as drug cartels bring in drugs from other countries, they can bring in the weapons that they need to protect those drugs. Mexican drug cartels aren’t getting their machine guns, grenades, and rocket launchers from the United States.

This is contrary to much of what has been made in the media that 70, 80 or even as much as 90 percent of guns used in Mexico come from the United States. Of course as we’ve also noted, it is hard to figure out where those machine guns, grenades and rocket launchers were coming from. It certainly wasn’t gun shops in Texas. We can see this, our friend John Lott and many others can see this. So why did outlets such as The Washington Post and Christian Science Monitor stick with those 70, 80 or 90 percent figures for so long?

And Lott asked another good question:

Why would the Obama administration not trace the guns? Why would they not inform Mexican officials about the program? One hopes that it was sheer incompetence combined with a desire to stonewall any investigation, but the fact that people knew that the guns weren’t being traced raises questions even about this plan.

Finally, Lott noted something we have long considered too. It is one that bears repeating, even if it sounds a bit crazy:

The only other possibility — deliberately increasing the number of guns sold to increase the share of crime guns in Mexico from the United States and thus generate support for more gun control — is conceivable if only because “Fast and Furious” started at the same time that Obama began his campaign falsely claiming that most Mexican crime guns came from the United States.

This does sound “out there,” but again consider that President Obama – before he was POTUS – has been very anti-gun. He voted for gun control when he was in government in Illinois and was a pro-gun control U.S. Senator. But to get to the White House he had to cool it a bit. However, he has since said to Sarah Brady that he was working on gun control but “under the radar.” Is Fast and Furious part of that “under the radar.” And is he only being quiet on gun control in the run up to next year’s election? Time will tell, but voters should know these facts.

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NSSF: Show Support For Pro-Shooting Legislation

National Shooting Sports Foundation:

This summer Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) introduced S. 1249, the Target Practice and Marksmanship Training Support Act.

This bi-partisan legislation would give states greater flexibility in using their Pittman-Robertson funds to establish safe recreational shooting areas.

More specifically, the legislation would help facilitate the construction and expansion of public target ranges, including ranges on federal land managed by the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management.

A companion bill, H.R. 3065, was introduced in the House last week and may soon be heard in the Environment and Public Works Committee. NSSF supports this legislation and encourages its members to contact their legislators and urge them to back this pro-shooting measure.

About NSSF
The National Shooting Sports Foundation is the trade association for the firearms industry. Its mission is to promote, protect and preserve hunting and the shooting sports. Formed in 1961, NSSF has a membership of more than 6,000 manufacturers, distributors, firearms retailers, shooting ranges, sportsmen’s organizations and publishers. For more information, log on to www.nssf.org.

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