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Must Be The Guns
Early Monday morning, Carey Gabay, an aide to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, was shot in the head, apparently by a stray bullet; he is not expected to survive. As member kelsurprise notes on the Member Feed, both Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio are already calling for additional gun control measures, despite New York already having some of the least gun-friendly laws in the country:
Seeing as Cuomo’s previous foray into more stringent gun laws bordered on delusional, I’m curious to know what additional measures he thinks will manage to address the criminal element responsible for the majority of gun violence here, while still “protecting the Second Amendment and legitimate gun owners.”
As Jacob Sullum notes at Reason, statistics do not paint the tidy fewer-guns-less-crime picture that gun-grabbers want (if you exclude suicides from the statistics, the numbers are even less useful to them). Moreover , barring the extremely unlikely prospect that the fatal shot was fired by either a NYPD officer or one of the handful of people with the resources and connections to obtain a carry permit in the Big Apple, the killer had already committed multiple crimes before he even drew the weapon.
Which is hardly surprising, as both evidence and common sense show that criminals are little perturbed by local gun laws. In a nation that rightly considers the right to bear arms as a central expression of (and safeguard to) liberty, there is simply no effective way to completey stop the illegal distribution of weapons without violating the Second Amendment.
If Cuomo and De Blasio have even a passing acquaintance with reality — doubtful, I realize — they know this. They likely also know that it’s only a matter of time before New York is forced to rewrite its gun laws to put them in accord with Heller and MacDonald (a new case is wending its way through the system as we speak). They — and, more importantly, the residents of New York — would be better served by putting their energy into bringing Gabay’s killer to justice than in pursuing policies that don’t work, can’t work, and, even if they did work, would be unconstitutional and inimical to liberty.
Published in General, Guns
Never let a tragedy go to waste, as they say.
It is interesting to note, however, that the above mantra is almost exclusively (though not 100%) a leftist one. Were we to similarly exploit these sorts of things, it seems obvious that the more logical (and likely) connection here is the current mayor’s scaling back of the policies that kept New York safe under Giuliani. It is perfectly plausible to say that this death has far more to do with the implementation of liberal policies, rather than a lack thereof.
Really makes sense that when someone is shot in an area with draconian gun laws the problem is insufficient gun laws.
While we’re enacting stricter gun control to keep firearms out of the hands of law-abiding citizens, then by all means let’s also throw money at failing schools to benefit teachers and administrators, and subsidize alternative energies at the expense of proven, beneficial energy sources. Because those things always turn out so well.
Seems reasonable to me.
Oh, right. It doesn’t.
Charles Cooke on this topic.
Fantastic.
I heard de Blasio’s statement on the news this morning as I was driving to work and had to laugh. It was such a blatent politically worded statement that it was evident that it was meant to please his base.
Given the increasing discussion of the mental health aspect of gun misuse, we can expect that anyone who has ever been prescribed any psychotropic medication will lose Second Amendment rights. Under NY’s “SAFE” act, this has already occurred, although I do not know if the effort is systematic.
The proposed Toomey/Manchin bill was instructive. It denied gun rights to anyone who is “seriously mentally ill.” The bill did not define “seriously mentally ill.” When a law lacks definitions, the secretary of of the responsible administrative agency gets to define the terms of a law; in this case, the Dep’t of Justice, then under Eric Holder. He, then, would have been able to define the term as broadly as he wished. Court deference to such matters is near absolute. I think that is where we are headed, particularly since the T/M bill also exempted medical records from HIPAA insofar as the NICS (National Instant Criminal Background Check System) is concerned. So, your pharmacy records would also go the the NICS database!
This is low-hanging fruit for gun banners and likely affects more than half the population over a lifetime. Anecdotally, a police officer friend tells me the majority of his fellow cops are on meds at any one time. Will they be disarmed as well? Watch the back door, especially before Obama’s term expires.
Mayor Cuomo, there’s only one course you can possibly take! Go out there and find that gun! Give it a trial before a jury of its peers. When it is found guilty, hang it by the neck until dead!
Or, come to think of it, maybe this all works better if we go after the criminals instead . . .
Why not try “criminal control” first?
1. Lock violent offenders up for a long time with no possibility of parole,
2. When convicted felons have served their time, they have to wear a GPS device permanently attached to their bodies, and
3. Start backing up police officers who do their job. Body cameras are actually a good idea. They will show the general public the kind of crap the police have to put up with every day, and maybe – just maybe – citizens will put the heat on politicians who try to shift the blame for urban violence to the police and their presence in high crime neighborhoods (typically created by liberal social welfare and “soft on crime” policies).
My fear too. Any mood pill ever is a DQ to the grabbers.
The real answer, stop and frisk.
Absolutely! De Blasio ended stop and frisk and he has only himself to blame. These were street gangs. There couldn’t have been a legally bought gun in the bunch. More laws would do nothing. I’m sick of the left bringing this nonsense up every time there is a shooting.
My, my… so much opportunity for the courts. Stalin is envious. Guilty any time it is needed.
Tom thanks for a timely essay. I’ll take the liberty to add three links that you and those that have read this essay might help to shed a little more light on the nonsense from the gun control crowd. I always assumed as a police officer that anyone I talked to might be armed. I have no problem with a private citizen that has a clean criminal record or a stable mental health history purchasing a handgun. You have a right to defend yourself.
1. Powerlink on a study of how Chicago criminals obtain handguns.
2. The lack of gun crime prosecution in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles.
3. The proactive investigation and prosecution of gun crimes by my former agency, the Portland Police Bureau.
On the other hand, fewer politicians would be shot if there were fewer politicians. Some stringent limits there might be in order.
But how do you square that with the 4th Amendment? If I am to be protected from unreasonable search and seizure, how can a police officer lawfully search me when his only probable cause is that I look like the kind of person who might be a criminal, in his judgement?