Bloomberg's Self-Defense Catch-22 is
an Old Trick in "Gun Control" Playbook
By Kurt Hofmann, July 16th, 2014
JPFO writer contributor, © 2014.
Former New York City mayor, and perpetual nanny-state gun ban fanatic Michael Bloomberg has drawn a great deal of understandably outraged attention with his smug dismissal of the Colorado legislative districts where his lavishly funded anti-gun agenda was overwhelmingly rejected by voters, as "roadless, rural backwaters." JPFO contributor David Codrea notes, though, that the worst might come later in the same Rolling Stone interview, when Bloomberg exposes his willingness to add fatal injury to his insults.
As pointed out to David by the Oregon Firearms Federation's Kevin Starrett, Bloomberg disparages armed self-defense, by virtue of the fact that it is made more difficult by the very policies Bloomberg is pushing:
No, I mean, guns are dangerous. The statistics are overwhelming. You're something like 22 times more likely to get killed in your home if you have a gun than if you don't. [Gestures at a staffer.] Let's say Amanda's trying to break in. "Excuse me, Amanda, I've gotta go get my gun to shoot you. Now, where did I put that combination to that lock? And the bullets were where? I don't know what the [heck]…how do you turn the safety off?" Are you kidding me? The last thing you want to do when somebody breaks in and puts a gun toward you is try to go for a gun. That's really stupid. I don't know if you're going to get shot one way, but I guarantee you're going to get killed the other way.
Bloomberg has basically explained why "safe storage" of firearms (locked up, unloaded, with ammunition locked up somewhere else) provides safety only for one's assailant. On the other hand, though, Bloomberg's "Everytown For Gun Safety" group advocates laws that mandate "safe storage", and pressures candidates for political office to support such laws.
In other words, Bloomberg is advocating laws that he knows dramatically reduce people's ability to successfully defend themselves from violent crime, and what's more, is comfortable enough with that position to openly acknowledge it in the mass media. Of course his armed personal protection detail would be exempt from any such restrictions!
And this is only the latest of Catch-22's the anti-gun zealots would impose on gun owners. There is, for example, a slowly but steadily growing movement to restrict the use of lead ammunition, up to and including outright bans, in some areas.
On the other hand, federal law prohibits the use of many of the best alternatives to lead for "handgun bullets" (and since handguns have been chambered in nearly every caliber used in rifles, there are very few bullets that cannot be described as "handgun bullets"). This is because bullets constructed of many other materials are superior to lead for penetrating armor (such as police body armor). At the same time, the gun ban zealots also hope to expand the list of banned "cop killer" bullets.
Similarly, sporting goods retailer Gander Mountain is being sued for failing to block a "straw purchase" of firearms that they should supposedly have spotted, in part by virtue of the fact that the purchaser paid with cash. At the same time, the federal government's "Operation Choke Point" is steadily eroding gun and ammunition dealers' access to banking and credit--are gun dealers to be reduced to bartering, now?
Still another example would be the relentless efforts to ban so-called "assault weapons," as "weapons of war that don't belong on our streets," and then dismiss the idea of the Second Amendment being the last bulwark against tyranny, because "you'll never beat the world's greatest superpower with revolvers and hunting shotguns and rifles."
Not a bad strategy, really--push laws to try to make guns as useless as possible, then justify further infringements by arguing that guns are already so useless that the new restrictions don't really affect us much. Just one more reason we must fight them at every step.
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A former paratrooper, Kurt Hofmann was paralyzed in a car accident in 2002. The helplessness inherent to confinement to a wheelchair prompted him to explore armed self-defense, only to discover that Illinois denies that right, inspiring him to become active in gun rights advocacy. He also writes the St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner column. Kurt Hofmann Archive.
