More guns equal less crime. Time and time again, we see it. It sounds counter-intuitive until you recognize that when people are counting guns, they’re only counting guns owned by law-abiding people, not the criminals. Those guns won’t just be ignored in counts, but they also won’t be confiscated anytime soon either.
Unfortunately, a lot of people have never grasped that concept. One such person is the commissioner of the NYPD.
Police Commissioner James O’Neill said it would be “insanity” for the feds to force one state to recognize another’s lax gun laws.
A bill making its way through Congress would make gun possession akin to a driver’s license — so one state’s looser regulations against concealed weapons would be protected in tougher anti-gun states, like New York.
“I think it’s insanity,” O’Neill told CBS’s “60 Minutes” in an interview aired Sunday night.
O’Neill said accidents and suicides — in addition to crime — could skyrocket with more out-of-state guns around town.
“Right now, we have a good idea of who’s carrying guns. If this law passes, all bets are off,” he said. “Anybody can come into New York City from any state and carry a weapon.”
O’Neill is deluding himself.
He doesn’t have a good idea who is carrying anything. He knows who is legally carrying, at most.
However, violence happens in NYC all the time, and I promise you that almost all of those crimes committed by someone carrying a gun are cases when the NYPD is clueless about the criminal having a firearm. That’s just how it works, and only an absolute fool would argue that they have a handle on who is carrying and who isn’t.
Criminals have never registered their guns. They don’t apply for permits, as a general rule either.
Instead, they buy illegal guns, carry them anywhere they can get away with it–which is pretty much everywhere–and use them with impunity because they know their victims are unarmed. They know they exist in what amounts to a free fire zone for them. They’re lions that have been dropped into the gazelle cage at the zoo.
And the NYPD is clueless as to where they are.
O’Neill can make whatever case he wants for gun control, but if he thinks he’s got a handle on where the guns are, that’s all the evidence we need that he’s not someone who can be taken seriously on the topic.
To be fair, though, we have to remember one thing about not just O’Neill, but about most police honchos out there. While many police officers support the Second Amendment, police chiefs and commissioners tend to be people who are going to mirror the politicians’ thoughts on many topics. They’re political animals in a police uniform.
For them, particularly those from more urban communities, they don’t have a lot of choice but to parrot what their bosses in city hall are saying. It’s either that or unemployment.
But that doesn’t negate the point that if they believe the nonsense O’Neill spouted on “60 Minutes” then they’ve deluded themselves to the point where I have to wonder if they think they ride unicorns to work.
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