New 'Gun Violence' Unit in Massachusetts Just Politics

AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts hasn’t been friendly to gun ownership since, I don’t know…Lexington and Concord?

Seriously, they’ve been pretty anti-gun up that way for quite some time. It’s a shame, too, because there are a lot of good people that live there.

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But the problem is that a lot of folks there have been convinced that gun control works. They’ve been sold a bill of goods and now they push for such policies under the misguided and mistaken belief that it’ll do some good.

Undoubtedly, some of those are going to be thrilled about a recent announcement out of Massachusetts.

Attorney General Andrea Campbell formally launched her office’s new Gun Violence Prevention Unit on Thursday morning and tabbed a Massachusetts native who has worked on gun safety litigation across the country to lead it.

The new unit, which Campbell said in February that she would create, will officially be charged with “enforcing the Commonwealth’s gun and consumer protection laws, working to ensure that Massachusetts has the strongest, most comprehensive commonsense firearm laws in the country, supporting the defense of commonsense gun laws from legal challenge and supporting law enforcement and community-based gun violence prevention work to help reduce gun deaths and shootings across the Commonwealth,” the AG’s office said.

So this isn’t really about addressing “gun violence” or anything else in Massachusetts. It’s about advancing the anti-gun agenda and trying to punish the firearm industry for having the audacity to exist.

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For example, those “consumer protection laws” are laws that basically try to blame gun companies for what third parties do with the firearms they sold.

However, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, only about 10 percent buy their guns from a retail establishment. Just 4.6 percent get them through straw purchases, which technically come from retail stores but are still illegal.

The rest are obtained outside of the retail establishments, meaning gun manufacturers have absolutely no ability to control those sales.

And yet, taxpayer dollars are, in part, going to fund attacks on an entire industry that has no control over what happened.

Then we have who’s been tapped to run this nonsense.

Christine Doktor is Campbell’s pick to work as inaugural director of the GVPU, hiring her away from a role as managing attorney for Everytown Law, which says it is “dedicated to advancing gun safety in the courts and through the civil and criminal justice systems.” The Bay State native graduated from Columbia Law School and previously worked as a civil litigator for the firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges. She will be based out of Campbell’s Springfield regional office.

So they get a dedicated anti-gunner to run the “Gun Violence Prevention Unit.”

Look, when I first read the headline, I’d hoped this unit would crack down on violent criminals and illegal gun dealers in Massachusetts. It’s not an unreasonable expectation considering it’s called the Gun Violence Prevention Unit.

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But they’re nothing of the sort. They’re not so much a shield to protect the people of the commonwealth but a sword to go after a disfavored industry. Oh, there’s talk about gun violence prevention programs, but they picked a gun control hack to run it. There’s zero reason to have any faith that anything but lip service will be paid to those programs.

Instead, expect an assault on the gun industry.

To gun companies remaining in Massachusetts, I advise you to find friendlier states to reside in. No good will come of staying in a state that’s basically just declared a jihad against you, and that’s precisely what they’ve done.

People there deserve better. They’re just not going to get it until they realize this nonsense doesn’t make them safer.

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