USA –-(Ammoland.com)- “We are not immune to the national problem of gun violence,” New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg admitted in a press conference following a shooting incident outside the Empire State Building in late August, where police killed an armed man who had shot a former co-worker.
“An additional nine individuals were either wounded or grazed during the exchange,” Police Commissioner Ray Kelly advised the assembled media.
What would soon come out: It was gunfire from NYPD that the nine bystanders were caught up in. Neither of the responding officers had ever fired their guns in the line of duty before. That’s not to say Monday morning quarterbacking their response is fair, but then, neither is the typical response from the anti-gunners, which puts the blame squarely on the “gun lobby.”
It wasn’t long before comparisons were being made to the shootings in Aurora, Colorado, or to the Sikh Temple shootings in Wisconsin. The usual media suspects were calling for “a national conversation to prevent gun deaths,” meaning for more citizen disarmament, and blaming everything from private sales to expiration of the federal “assault weapons” ban, even though the gun used by the murderer was a .45 caliber handgun.
That, of course, suited the Violence Policy Center just fine, which issued a statement condemning the “45 caliber handgun…offering yet another example of how the ready availability of semiautomatic handguns that can be equipped with high-capacity ammunition magazines destroy lives and make everyone less safe. “
Continue reading this exclusive “Rights Watch” column from GUNS Magazine at http://www.gunsmagazine.com/exclusive-a-new-york-state-of-mind/.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is a long-time gun rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He is a field editor for GUNS Magazine, and a blogger at The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance. Read more at www.DavidCodrea.com.
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