Anti-Gun Laws Don’t Prevent Gun Crime
The headline this morning was that in New York City, two Auxiliary Police Volunteers were shot and killed along with two others by a criminal with several handguns and lots of ammunition.
A quote from New York Mayor Bloomberg indicates either naivety or an intentional willingness to overlook reality. Mayor Bloomberg mentioned several different criminal attacks with guns and then said:
“While the specifics of the cases differ … the culprit, ultimately, is the same: a man with an illegal handgun,” the mayor said Wednesday night at a news conference in Greenwich Village, where he was joined by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, a neighborhood resident.
Bloomberg has been a vocal advocate for wider tracking of illegal guns, and he has joined with mayors of dozens of U.S. cities to lobby Washington legislators on the issue. His administration has sued more than a dozen out-of-state gun dealers, arguing that they are responsible for many of the illegal weapons that end up in the city.”
Mayor Bloomberg is a registered Republican but has long been a strong advocate for gun control. In Bloomberg’s quote above there are several obvious logical flaws to his argument that gun control would curtail gun crimes. When Bloomberg says that the culprit is “a man with an illegal handgun”, what does that tell any logical person? If a criminal has an illegal handgun, it is evident that laws don’t stop handguns from being used in crimes and that criminals, by definition, don’t obey laws anyway.
Law enforcement agencies at all levels have no mandate or legal responsibility to protect individuals from harm or death. If they were responsible for individual wellbeing, every time there was an assault or murder, the local police department or sheriff’s office would be sued in a court of law. As a test, go and ask a local police chief or sheriff if they must protect individuals. Generally, law enforcement agencies have three primary mandates at the local level: 1. Deter crime 2. Investigate crimes after they occur 3. Quell riots.
Since law enforcement is not responsible for you or your family’s safety, who’s responsibility do you think it is? That’s right, yours. Shouldn’t every law abiding citizen be able to carry and use guns to protect themselves and their families if they so choose? Not according to proponents of the “nanny-state”.