By Alan Gottlieb and Dave Workman
New York’s liberal Mayor Michael Bloomberg, what many consider a “RINO” (Republican In Name Only), and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly recently began promoting a national campaign to push New York’s gun control laws in every state in the country.
Bloomberg evidently sees this campaign as a way to elevate his political status, and earn national name recognition. Kelly seems to be along for more than just a ride, remarking that, “We have the toughest gun laws in the country right here in New York City, and I think they’re eminently reasonable.”
Here’s a little advice for Bloomberg, who plans to take his message to “every capital of every state that permits guns to flow freely across its borders” and Kelly, who wants to spread his “reasonable” gun laws across the map: Better stay east of the Mississippi River, perhaps east of the Appalachian Mountains and definitely north of the Mason-Dixon line.
It would be bad form for Kelly to start spouting off within sight of the Rockies, as he did within sight of the Empire State Building recently, that people have a “right to have a handgun” if they have a “premises permit.” An even worse blunder would be to try convincing any of the millions of law-abiding, legally-armed private citizens outside of his gulag jurisdiction that they “have a right to carry a handgun if you can show a need for it. Yes, you have to show a fairly high threshold of need.” Typically, wealthy celebrities meet that threshold, but average New Yorkers do not. What Kelly has described is not a civil right, but a privilege, and he evidently does not know the difference.
This will come as a shock to Bloomberg and Kelly, but there is no “Bill of Needs” in the U.S. Constitution or in the state constitutions where keeping and bearing arms is discussed. We’re talking about constitutionally-protected civil Rights. Kelly may be stunned to learn that 38 states have Right-to-Carry laws, meaning that people like him can’t tell people like us that our safety is subject to their whimsical discretion.
Trot your philosophy out for the good citizens of Cheyenne, Helena, Boise, Bismarck, Salt Lake City, Oklahoma City or Austin, for example, and you might find yourselves being laughed out of town. Try spreading your wisdom through the hunting camps and gun ranges of Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Oregon or Alaska, and you could become guests of honor at a tar and feather party, and only then because someone can’t find a rope.
Across the vast expanse of “Middle America,” from the Texas hill country to the Dakota Badlands, from the Piedmont to the prairies and on to the shining mountains; from West Virginia to Eastern Washington, Mayor Bloomberg’s one-track mind, three-piece suit and two-bit attitude about gun ownership will be less welcome than an outbreak of bubonic plague.
You have a problem with illegal guns in New York City? Solve it by eliminating the Draconian laws that fostered and perpetuate the black market in firearms. If you’re worried about violent criminals preying on defenseless citizens for whom you work, scrap the Sullivan Law, stop disarming those people and allow them the means to fight back. Nothing dissuades a thug faster than the sight of a legally-armed citizen, backed by the force of a strong self-defense statute, who is willing to protect his life and property.
It may pain Bloomberg, Kelly and other Nanny State disciples to acknowledge this, but given the opportunity, and liberty from government interference, most Americans can take care of themselves. The overwhelming majority of American citizens can be trusted with the firearms they own, because they know how to use them. They don’t need millionaire politicians or Big Apple police administrators meddling with their civil rights while stripping away their personal safety.
Perhaps it’s not their fault. Bloomberg and Kelly are, after all, products of their environment. That being the case, they should be encouraged to stick to their own ground, and leave the rest of us the hell alone.