While I can’t say that we never pay attention to mayoral candidates, it’s usually a city like New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles that attracts our attention more than anything else, and then only if the issue of guns comes up.

Craig Greenberg isn’t running for office in any of those cities.

However, Greenberg has appeared in several posts here at Bearing Arms. Why? Because a fellow Democrat allegedly tried to kill him.

In all of those posts, Greenberg is treated as the victim because, well, he was. Now, though, he wants to play the villain.

A candidate for Louisville mayor who was shot at by an assailant in his campaign office is pledging to crack down on confiscated firearms that police send to auction.

Democrat Craig Greenberg said Wednesday that part of his plan to reduce violent crime would include directing Louisville police to render seized firearms inoperable before they go to auction. State law requires that confiscated guns be sent to Kentucky State Police for auction, and that the sale proceeds be used to buy equipment, like body armor, for police officers.

But Greenberg said many of the guns that go to auction end up on the streets and back in the hands of criminals. He called the practice “absurd and dangerous.” He said he believes the city can comply with the state law and still make the guns unusable, though he did not elaborate on how the guns would be altered to make them inoperable.

“We’re spending millions of taxpayer dollars to take illegal guns off the streets, to remove guns from the hands of criminals, or people seeking to do harm, and then there is a process in place where these guns end up back on the streets in different people’s hands,” Greenberg said in an interview Wednesday.

Many, unfortunately, do.

However, what that linked report doesn’t do is give anyone a full picture. Sometimes, guns confiscated at auction do end up in criminal hands, but at what ratio? How often does it actually happen and what percentage of guns sold at auction end up there?

After all, these guns aren’t just sold willy-nilly. The auctions generally involve licensed gun dealers who then conduct background checks on all potential buyers.

Now, I get Greenberg being a little skittish around guns since, you know, someone tried to kill him. However, he should remember that it was an anti-gun activist who tried to shoot him and that he’s basically backing policies his potential murderer supported.

Further, it doesn’t appear that the alleged attacker got his gun via an auction.

So why this? Why pick this particular hill during a campaign?

Because he’s a Democrat running for office in a large city where people are going to expect a certain degree of anti-gun sentiment from a perspective mayoral candidate.

This is a safe one, too, because even if Greenberg is elected, he can’t do anything.

You see, these guns aren’t auctioned by local departments. State law requires they be turned over to the Kentucky State Police for auction. In other words, Greenberg has no more say than any other voter in the state, though his voice might be a bit louder than most if he wins the election.

How he thinks he can comply with state law by doing anything but turning them over for auction is beyond me.