The shooting in a Manhattan office building has been dominating the gun news cycle, which I guess is to be expected. Also to be expected is that a lot of the commentary is dumb enough to ride the short bus to school.
I get that a lot of people are unfamiliar with the subject, really. They only know what they've been told by the media and activists.
And that's part of the problem.
The media itself turns to anti-gun groups for information, rarely getting the other side from gun rights organizations, and what we get is a discussion that looks something like this, where Nevada is blamed for the failure of New York gun laws.
While New York bans assault rifles and has strict requirements for concealed carry permits, Nevada does not, according to gun control organization Everytown. Gun control advocates have long pointed out that large discrepancies between state laws minimize the benefits of local regulations.
Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) said in a statement that the shooting was a “horrific act of violence” that demonstrates the need for a nationwide ban on assault rifles.
“New York has some of the strongest gun laws in the nation,” Hochul wrote. “But our laws only go so far when an AR-15 can be obtained in a state with weak gun laws and brought into New York to commit mass murder.”
Such sales are legal in Nevada, which does not regulate gun sales or confiscate weapons from violent offenders, according to the Giffords Law Center, a gun control group.
Despite [killer's] “documented mental health history,” he was able to obtain a firearm legally in June because he possessed a concealed carry license, [Police Commissioner Jessica] Tisch said.
Oh, man, there is so much wrong with this here.
First, they bury the fact that Nevada has a red flag law, then, when they later mention it, they try to still put the blame on the state by claiming that police officers there are less likely to seek out such an order. Apparently, respecting people's gun rights is a problem.
Anywho, let's look at this for a moment.
First, looking to Everytown for an unbiased look at carry permit requirements is asinine. New York has "strict requirements" for carry permits, which means they do everything they can to bar people from exercising their right to bear arms. None of it does anything to make anyone safer. Nevada has more respect for that right.
They don't talk about how, historically, people with carry permits are many times less likely to commit a crime than any other group of people, including police officers, judges, and New York politicians.
As for the killer's "documented mental health history," let's talk about that a bit, because they make it look like there's some profound failure in Nevada or federal law that let an obviously demented individual buy a firearm.
Except, this isn't someone who seems to have had some profound and troubling break with reality, but someone with relatively mild mental health issues. There's no evidence that was disqualified from having a firearm in any way because of it under even New York law.
Further, the carry permit played no factor in his obtaining a rifle. He could have easily passed a background check--he had to be able to in order to get a concealed carry permit--and as it was. Further, he purchased it from a co-worker, which is likely to be another issue, I'm sure, but also shows that Tisch doesn't know what the hell she's talking about here.
As for Giffords saying guns aren't confiscated from violent offenders, I haven't seen anything to suggest the killer was before earlier this week. He may have started off with a big one, granted, but we don't punish people over what they might do, but what they've done before. The killer here didn't have a criminal record that we're aware of, so this is nonsense.
But, then again, when you get all of your information from anti-gun sources, what do you expect to get? Facts?
Oh, that's funny.
