Rights advocates across the country are critical of new gun control proposals that they believe come from billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s “wish list.” (YouTube, PBS)
Across the landscape this winter, lawmakers from Sarasota to San Francisco and Seattle are pressing for more gun control laws that opponents are uniformly labelling as extreme if not unconstitutional, and the proponents of these laws—uniformly Democrats—are getting a pass from the press when they offer the explanation that these new measures will reduce crime by keeping guns out of the wrong hands.
It is a reason used so often as to be wearing thin at the edges. Criminals are still getting guns and committing violent crimes. Rights activists argue that the only people who are affected by gun control laws are honest citizens who wouldn’t dream of committing a crime. Still, they are on the ultimate receiving end, enduring background checks, waiting periods and other restrictions, and having firearms they have owned for years, including .22-caliber rimfire target and hunting rifles, arbitrarily reclassified as so-called “semiautomatic assault rifles.”
Sometimes, as in the case of California Assemblyman Jesse Gabriel (D-Los Angeles), they argue that “Washington, D.C. has failed us.”
Others, like New Mexico State Rep. Debra Sarinana (D-Albuquerque) claim it’s “Because we have a big gun violence problem,” as quoted by KRQE News.
But a check of the FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2017, the most recent year for which data is available, creates a somewhat different impression. That year, New Mexico experienced 113 total homicides, of which 71 involved firearms. Twenty of those were handguns, two were rifles and 49 fell into the “firearms unknown” category, perhaps because a gun was not recovered or simply not listed by an investigating agency.
The murder total for the entire state of New Mexico was roughly 16.5 percent of the number of homicides in Chicago that year, which logged 650 slayings. The problem appears to be in Chicago.
The disparity may be one of the reasons that New Mexico transplant Barbara Rumpel, a Raton resident, wrote Tuesday in the Santa Fe New Mexican that she is “sick and tired” of gun control measures pushed by “big money lobbyists” apparently trying to fulfill a “wish list” of gun control measures advocated by billionaire anti-gunner Michael Bloomberg, the former New York mayor who may not find much hospitality in most parts of New Mexico.
As Rumpel observed, “Nothing in any of these bills would make New Mexicans any safer.”
That must be the standard, say rights activists, for any gun control measure. Not because it appeals to a majority of left-leaning voters who didn’t learn in high school that constitutionally-enumerated rights cannot be subject to a popular vote.
Over in California, Democrat lawmakers heard from former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords Monday, as another round of gun control measures was launched with hopes that anti-gun Gov. Gavin Newsom would be more likely to sign them than former Gov. Jerry Brown.
New York is another hotbed of gun prohibition activity, and as has been reported recently by Liberty Park Press, Washington State’s gun control crusade has gotten so far in the weeds that sheriffs in at least 15 counties are refusing to enforce provisions of anti-rights Initiative 1639, passed by voters in November, because they believe it is largely unconstitutional. The state’s four largest law enforcement organizations, including the State Troopers Association and Washington Council of Police and Sheriffs, opposed the measure, a fact that many believe was deliberately downplayed by the establishment media in the Puget Sound area.
So, the question remains. Why are Democrat gun control proponents pushing laws that penalize law-abiding citizens rather than going after criminals? Are they simply trying to create more criminals? Or are they “playing the rubes” by making it appear they are doing something, when they are actually accomplishing nothing beyond laying the groundwork for the next round of corrosive gun control that eats away more against the state and federal constitutional protections of the right to keep and bear arms?
Gun owners are waiting for an answer not covered with platitudes about “gun safety” or “gun reform.”
