USA –-(Ammoland.com)- โWe are not immune to the national problem of gun violence,โ 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.
โAn additional nine individuals were either wounded or grazed during the exchange,โ 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. Thatโs 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 โgun lobby.โ
It wasnโt 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 โa national conversation to prevent gun deaths,โ meaning for more citizen disarmament, and blaming everything from private sales to expiration of the federal โassault weaponsโ 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 โ45 caliber handgunโฆoffering 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. โ
Quick to take those talking points and run with them,ย The New York Timesย couldnโt wait to tell its readers the โGun Used by Shooter Is Known for Its Deadly Power,โ and that it โwas the standard sidearm for the American armed forces for much of the 20th century,โ all the while bemoaning โthe firearm, powerful as it may be, is not the subject of much of the debate about gun control.โ In an unrelated but ironic development, theย Timesโย executive editor publicly disputed an accusation of liberal bias made by a retiring subordinate editor.
Perhaps the most hysterical, but not unexpected, handwringing came fromย The Boston Globeโsย warning that โThe best-trained police officers can be in error when actually facing an enraged gunman. If even these professionals end up shooting and injuring bystanders outside the Empire State Building, how can private citizens be expected to discern an attacker from innocent people inside a darkened theater?โ
This, of course, makes assumptions that arenโt borne out. A 2008 study commissioned with the Rand Corporation concluded, among other findings, that NYPD training standards are inadequate, that requalification standards are minimal, and that โRecruits should be required to pass proficiency standards in real life and scenario-based tests of complex decision making before they graduate from the police academy [and] seasoned officers should be required to demonstrate their continued proficiency on the most demanding real-life scenarios.โ
In short, police arenโt the only ones competent to keep and bear arms, no matter how much those who would prefer a Bloomberg-style monopoly of violence try to put us all in 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.
