Gun Politics New York

The antis look to be trying to create a new meme where calling oneself  pro-gun is the same as calling for violently overthrowing the government.  It’s mostly CSGV doing it, but the Brady’s have joined in on the act.

While it is true that one of the primary purposes of the 2nd Amendment is to ensure The People can defend themselves from an out of control government, nobody is now seriously calling for overthrowing our government, especially as gun rights have been on a roll for the past several years.

The antis have to keep reinventing new boogymen every so often to keep the issue fresh like “cop-killer” bullets in the 80s-90s and “assault weapons” in the 90s-00s.  Now in the aftermath of Heller and McDonald they seem to be giving up on any semblance of being concerned with public safety and just going for batshit nuts instead.  That isn’t going to help their cause with the average citizen.

“Americans have the right and advantage of being armed – unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.” (James Madison, The Federalist Papers #46)

NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly must be hoping antigun rhetoric is an effective deterrent against terrorism.  According to the NY Post, “Kelly: NYPD can blow planes out of sky“:

“… Kelly — answering questions about the department’s state-of-the-art anti-terrorism system on CBS’s “60 Minutes’’ — admitted that the city is packing an arsenal on par with some militaries. “Do you mean to say that the NYPD has the means to take down an aircraft?” interviewer Scott Pelley pressed Kelly. “Yes. I prefer not to get into details, but obviously, this would be in a very extreme situation,” Kelly replied. Police sources told The Post that the weapon that Kelly was referring to involves a Barrett .50 caliber rifle, which can be mounted on almost any police chopper …”

First off, the only appropriate response coming out of Kelly’s mouth as to what sort of anti-terrorism contingency plans the NYPD has prepared should have been “No comment.”  Why on earth did Kelly go on television to talk about this subject?

Second, Kelly must think that terrorists are stupid enough to actually believe the outright lies coming out of the Violence Policy Center on .50s because they are not capable of “[blowing] a rogue aircraft out of the sky.”  All one has to do to disprove that theory is watch any of the old WWII programs on the History Channel with planes soaking up .50 hits like a sponge and not going down.  I remember several incidents where commercial airliners have had doors and/or large chunks of fuselage come off in mid-flight and that still didn’t take the plane down.