From the people who brought you the infamous Goldfish and a Gun video (see my previous post), there is also this equally inane piece of propaganda:
No, the best way to prevent accidental shootings is to teach gun safety. And not just to adult gun owners (who are required in much of New York State to take a gun safety course as a precondition to obtaining a pistol permit), but to children as well. Every child should know the rudimentary rules of gun safety, whether his/her parents have guns or not.
And yes, the NRA, the very organization demonized ad nauseum by the gun grabbing propagandists who claim to be anti gun violence but are actually anti-civil rights, is a good place to start educating young people about the dangers of firearms. Here's what the Eddie Eagle program teaches kids:
If the real concern was actually safety, rather than terrifyng the sheeple into giving up even more of their rights in the name of security, this would be taught in every school in America.
But clearly, throwing temper tantrums in the Rose Garden and elevating partisan politics above any real chance of improving public safety was the priority for their side. Emotion and othering are their stock in trade, though they love to mystically invoke the common sense and reason that their approach utterly lacks.
The video below is an exercise in utter dishonesty. We already have background checks, and our government does not prosecute those who lie in connection with them. I have never been fingerprinted or investigated by the FBI and NYS police to buy a goldfish, but I had to be to get a pistol permit. It is even harder to legally buy a fully automatic weapon like an M16.
If they have to LIE to this extent to make their point, it just highlights the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of their failed policies. And BTW, where is the orange tip on that presumably toy gun? Oh, wait, this was filmed in NYC, where that isn't even good enough-- toy guns are supposed to be brightly colored plastic and not resemble real guns. Did they break the law in the making of this propaganda piece? Or did they actually obtain the proper film permits required to possess a prop gun, and follow all the regulations regarding use of same? If not, shame on them!
There are so many things wrong with this video, it's hard to even know where to begin.
First, if you walk into a gun shop in New York and try to buy a pistol, you are not going to get anywhere unless you present a valid NYS pistol permit. To buy that pistol, or a long arm, you will be required to fill out a federal Form 4473, in which you will need to assert that you are buying the firearm for yourself as the end user (i.e., you are not a straw purchaser), that you have not been arrested and/or convicted of a felony or misdemeanor, and that you have not been involuntarily committed to a mental hospital or adjudicated incompetent as a danger to yourself or others. Lying on that form is a felony. (But our government does not have time to prosecute "paperwork violations" -- see how much expanded background checks are likely to be worth if existing laws are not even enforced?)
After you fill out the form, the gun shop will run a NICS check on you. If it comes up clean, you will be able to purchase a firearm. If it comes up further investigation required, or denied, you will be shown the door.
Fully automatic firearms such as the M16 mentioned in the video are subject to even more regulation under the National Firearms Act of 1934. A prospective purchaser must jump further federal hoops and obtain a tax stamp ($200 fee), and be wiling to pay the usually thousands of dollars such a firearm will cost. If the purchaser lives in a state that permits civilians to own fully automatic weapons, that is. New York State does not!
This video is complete fiction.
Here's an idea:
Stop attempting to further your agenda by indoctrinating children and misrepresenting the facts. Do some research. Educate yourselves and your pupils on the actual state of the gun laws nationally and in New York. Educate yourselves on the actual causes of violence in our society. Think hard about what might actually make a difference. Then advocate for your (hopefully reconsidered) position from a place of knowledge and strength, rather than blatant misinformation and stupidity. An honest and principled disagreement (based on actual common sense and reasonableness, rather than the mere invocation of same) I could respect, but this fear mongering and puppeteering based on raw emotion and prevarication is simply despicable.
Last weekend, 25 people were shot in New York, many in gang or crime related incidents, with nary a peep from Bloomberg's MAIG or Moms Demand Action.
Today they are braying about the the victims in Santa Monica. They are startlingly silent on the 47 people killed by the guy who set fire to a bus in China, or the soldier beheaded with a meat cleaver on the streets of London, because it is not really about the problem of violence in our society, or sympathy for those killed in a horrific manner. Rather it is all about civilian disarmament and the use of tragedy for political gain.
It seems they only care about mass shootings, because they are the boogey man that they can use to scare the sheeple into thinking that disarming every law abiding citizen (which will have zero effect on the criminals, who will still have whatever weaponry they desire, and free choice among defenseless victims) is a desirable goal.
Only when it's dramatic and furthers their political agenda does the bloody shirt get waved. The rest of the time, when the victims are brown, urban, and/or poor, they don't even cause a blip on these affluent elitist gun grabbers' radar screens.
It's no coincidence that they launched their assault on the Second Amendment only after a bunch of cute little white kids from affluent suburbia were killed. This is nothing more than typical Not In My Backyard-ism. It was fine when it was someone else's neighborhood, but now the well-to-do liberals have their knickers in a twist, and they will sacrifice the rights of their countrymen so that they can fall back into comfortable denial and the delusion that "it can't happen here." Only it can, and it will, until the underlying causes of violence, rather than the tools a misguided few use to perpetrate it, become the thing that requires a national conversation.
Gun control is racist, classist, ableist and anti-feminist, and let us not forget, HYPOCRITICAL!
