Is He Really Off Base?

Ammo and Gun

In an interview with Talking Points Memo, a top-tier NYC mayoral candidate says that his vision for gun possession policy is this: “We want to see gun use eliminated.”

We may want to chuckle and assume that’s just silly in light of Heller and McDonald, but is it so absurd?

Think about the fact that he only has to wait out any single one of only 5 justices on the Supreme Court, and it’s really not so absurd. The fact that candidates for mayor are still campaigning on the concept that they can eliminate all firearms use is proof that we still have quite a ways to go on even the fundamentals recognizing a right to gun ownership by law-abiding people.

12 thoughts on “Is He Really Off Base?”

  1. Ah but he doesn’t want “gun use eliminated.”

    If he did he’d slam Bloomberg for continuing NYC style carry.

    Recall that Bloomberg, who never saw a part of the US that he didn’t want to lobby in, is a-okay with NYC-style carry.

    And for that they don’t even *need* to wait out any justices.

    What this also shows is that it is *never* enough for these gun grabbers. NYC’s laws are still too lax for them. Well the laws for the commoners. They’re still perfectly fine about allowing carry if you’ve got the right friends.

  2. Also he’s a-okay with stop-and-frisk just as long as it’s “reformed” so that police can voilate the 4th (and 2nd) amendment of people of all races.

  3. “Think about the fact that he only has to wait out any single one of only 5 justices on the Supreme Court. . .”

    When you think about it, that fact will probably be the fatal flaw in our system of alleged “checks and balances.” On its face it gives the lie to our theory and myth of an “independent judiciary.”

    For awhile I have been preaching that the government of the United States is not what is defined in the constitution, but, the political parties, who define and control the three branches of government. This is not unlike what existed in the Soviet Union, that had a variety of sophisticated artifices that all answered to the single Communist Party. We could plainly see (because we were encouraged to) that their oligarchy controlled everything; while refusing to see that our own oligarchy controls everything, too, and that the sophisticated mechanisms of our constitution are also now nothing but artifices. The Soviet Communist Party did indeed have ongoing factional and ideological battles, just as exist between our two parties. They used their artifices as tools in their factional battles, in largely the same way our oligarchy uses ours. But apparently we are still years away from recognizing our own charades. Our “independent judiciary” is as independent as, which faction gets to appoint the next generation of judges; or perhaps, just the next judge.

    1. Why wait?

      The courts are currently saying that where Chicago and DC style handgun bans are bad, NYC style bans are perfectly in line with Heller and MacDonald.

      And really, these guys prefer NYC style issue over full on bans. NYC Issue means they can have their cake and eat it too. They can preach about “eliminating gun use” while also letting their buddies carry.

      There’s a reason Bloomberg didn’t go after NYC carry.

  4. Our legal system would be much more efficient if it was “loser pays”. We need to get there.

    1. As I’ve mentioned above, my attorney friends seem to think it would be a horrible idea, for the reason I stated — you’d never beat a corporation, and they’d keep it going for so long they’d break you — but I have an open mind, and I entertain the idea that they are arguing in their profession’s self-interest.

      In a slightly analogous situation, I have had more than one business associate who had patents stolen by major corporations, and were bankrupted trying to fight them. I’ve even sat in a meeting where a corporate representative said in astonishing honesty, “We have no need to partner with you guys, because anything you’d come up with we could just steal, anyway!”

    2. Much like the rest of government, do you really want “efficiency” in it? The US government was designed to be inefficient for a reason.

  5. Hey, at least name the person so search engines will be of more practical use. The candidate whose interview is featured was Bill Thompson.

    The way it works for the NYC mayoral run-off, it seems unlikely Bill Thompson would make it into that top two anyway. The recent polling shows the top two are projected to be Bill De Blasio and Christine Quinn. Probably not Bill Thompson.

    1. I figured that an explanation of who he is was more relevant to this blog audience than his name. I don’t think we’ve seen any kind of influx of search hits from NYC residents trying to find out who is the worst on guns.

  6. Sorry, you’re completely right. Most readers don’t need or care to know the difference between Bill Thompson and Bill De Blasio. They’re both horrendous on gun rights anyway.

    NYC is a unique place due to crowding on the streets. You can feel not just see someone printing.

  7. I generally won’t believe that politicians *really* want to ban guns. They only want to make sure that “citizen” serfs won’t have guns, so that soldiers and police can have free reign.

    I’ll believe a politician is serious about guns being banned, when he advocates that soldiers and police be banned from guns as well. If they are so dangerous, after all–and are only good for murder and mayhem–then no one needs a gun at all, right?

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