It seems that Mayor Bloomberg’s really stepped in it this time. It’s one thing when he’s mandating what size soft drinks his subjects can buy or throwing millions into anti-gun ads, but now he’s meddling in the finances of the Democratic party and they aren’t happy. He’s asking donors to stop giving money to Congressional candidates who don’t support gun control: “Polls consistently show that 90 (percent) of Americans — including 82 (percent) of gun owners and 74 (percent) of NRA members — support requiring background checks for all gun sales. … [Until] they show they will stop bowing to pressure from the gun lobby, you should not support them.” . . .
Party leaders were “outraged” by his actions. Majority Leader Harry Reid, worried about his job as majority leader, told Mayor Megalomaniac that his targeting of Dems could result in their losing seats. Making Mitch McConnell majority leader would only further set back the cause of gun control. We can only hope. After all, “there should be consequences for being a weenie.”
And Hizzonner is totally bummed out by the DOJ’s threats to use a federal monitor to “oversee changes” at the NYPD should the federal courts find his unconstitutional stop-and-frisk policy unconstitutional. He stated that the po-po need a clear-cut line of authority: “No military organization or paramilitary runs where you have confusion in the command structure.” Yep, that’s right folks — he called his police department a “military organization.” So now you know. He really does think NYC is a military dictatorship and he’s the commanding general.
Apparently the downturn in violent crime in Chicago that caught the New York Times‘ attention last week is over. Over the Father’s Day weekend, seven people were killed and 41 others were wounded by gunfire in the Bloody Windy City (aka Chiraq). A few more weekends like this and Chiraq‘s numbers will be back on par with previous years.
Elsewhere in Illinois, more counties are allowing concealed carry for legal weapon owners. The State’s Attorney in Tazewell County stated “A citizen who wishes to exercise their Second Amendment right to carry a firearm outside of the home for self-defense should not be placed in the situation where they fear prosecution if they exercise a constitutional right,” and the State’s Attorney in Peoria County agrees. Woodford County is expected to follow suit. In Madison and Randolph Counties, prosecutors have already issued similar statements.
Arlington Heights, Illinois resident Arthur Lovi was speaking to a VA psychiatrist and mentioned his bitterness about a doctor who misdiagnosed his wife, who subsequently died. The shrink contacted the police and said Lovi had made a threat against the doctor, although he added he was really no threat to anyone. The police showed up and confiscated his antique firearms. He’s subsequently been given a clean bill of (mental) health but he had to sue to get his guns back. With broadening definitions of what the psychiatric community considers a “mental disorder” you can be sure it’s going to get even uglier if they succeed in adding mental health records to NICS across the board.
In Wichita, Kansas, elementary school teacher Daniel Nagel was arrested for carrying a concealed handgun on school premises. He has a concealed-carry permit, but his school has the ever-popular “gun-free zone” signs so it’s illegal for him to pack on the job. Interestingly, the Kansas Legislator passed a law this year allowing school districts to designate employees to carry guns, but the Wichita district hasn’t acted on the issue. Maybe they’ll reconsider before a Sandy Hook-style incident occurs there.
WRDW-TV News 12 in Augusta, Georgia is all excited over the Report It system a local resident used to help locate a handgun that was stolen two years previously. You list your valuables in the on-line system, Then if anything is stolen you can release the information to law enforcement officials who “add your information to the the criminal database, making it harder for thieves to get away with your stuff.” Oh, and the “only way law enforcement can access your list of items is if you report something stolen, and even then, they’ll only have access to the items you’ve reported.” That is until the DHS finds out people are putting information on firearms in the system and they have the NSA get them a copy of it for their own records.
Hard to take him seriously when he made all his money from royalties on Outback Steakhouses “Blooming Onion.” Unless the info I got from hedgehog head trump is wrong. Gawd, don’t they make a great pair?
I am happy to say I love onions, but never ate one of his atrocities.
They always undo themselves, drunk on power, in the end. Enjoy that thought; it’s coming. We can have a Jubilee.
” [Until] they show they will stop bowing to pressure from the gun lobby” …Until they start bowing to us!
I thought kapo bloomberg was an Idependent? Does he have any business messing in the dems business or is he such a psycho he actually believes he’s king of the world?
What an absurd notion. An “independent”! He’s a REPUBLICAN!
Actually, he was a reigistered Democrat most his life. Switched to the GOP when he ran for mayor, and left the GOP in 2007. He has claimed to be an “Independent” for quite some time. Regardless of party labels, he is a statist and the most terrifying politician in America.
Just a guess but Independent must mean he makes decisions without asking anybody else what they think.
… should the Federal Courts find his unconstitutional stop-and-frisk policy unconstitutional.
Yeah… But there is reasoned disagreement* among libertarians regarding the constitutionality of stop and frisk. NYC is notably safer than other Dem strongholds like Chicago or even Boston.
Don’t get me wrong – NYC would be even MORE safe with a “shall issue” CCW law. But since that’s not gonna happen, and NY tends to coddle lawbreakers until they’re dumb enough to pick up a gat, stop and frisk is a useful tool.
* For varying ‘Stop and Frisk’ views, see Jacob Sullum at Reason.com, Heather McDonald at The Manhattan Institute, and Richard Epstein at The Hoover Institution.
In other words, New York City’s violations of the 2nd Amendment require violations of the 4th Amendment in order to keep the peace. How convenient for a petty dictator like Bloomberg.
Right you be, Natty!
“Yeah… But there is reasoned disagreement* among libertarians regarding the constitutionality of stop and frisk.”
No there isn’t. Yes, I read your footnote.
And this is why I love TTAG. The comments can get snippy, but the commentators read each other’s footnotes. And there are sometimes footnotes. Probably the most thoughtful commentary page on the inner tubes. I am done sucking up now. RF, quit objectifying women. Leghorn, quit pimping for FN. (Actually, I have no problem with either of those two things.)
RF DOES objectify women, no question. Hirsute, Israeli ones. But I love him like a brother just the same. As I do most TTAGers…
Ihatetrees, the relevant question when any US court is involved is not whether a given police procedure is useful, but whether it is constitutional.
This is so.
I always thought that, yet Kennedy, the deciding vote on the Supreme Court in the recent Maryland v. King, 4th Amendment decision, basically said that while DNA swabs are a search, it is such a minor thing and provides so much assistance in closing old cases… Read Scalia’s dissent – very illuminating.
They should be deciding based upon constitionality, but that ain’t necessarily so.
In case law, what constitutes a ‘reasonable search’ is all over the place. Logic, reason and (especially) consistency are in short supply.
Also, stop and frisk has been NYPD policy for 15+ years and NOW it’s unconstitutional?!? Why? Because we have a magic black left wing president with a Justice Department that loathes the NYPD (and any social policy that effects one race more than another)?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m no fan of stop and frisk, but I think it’s effective in controlling NYC’s thug-class. (BTW, the stats regarding firearms discovered are smoke – stop and frisk is effective in applying handcuffs to those with parole violations, warrants, or grams of crack on their persons. Even if such charges are later tossed.)
But I’m not a resident of NYC, so my interest is mostly academic. Heck, from a train-wreck perspective, the resulting entertainment if stop and frisk dies may be high quality (another example of a failed Democratic stronghold).
Treating “stop and frisk” as a useful tool, is acceding to their will.
They’ve already failed to keep the citizens safe. Quote: “NY tends
to coddle lawbreakers until they’re dumb enough to pick up a gat”
Stop and frisk is the only answer available, for their not solving the
problem of crime in the first place. Condoning “stop and frisk” is
something we want to avoid. By accepting this intrusion into your
privacy, you’re telling them you’ll be willing to tolerate even more.
And since the 1% aren’t really part of the backpack crowd, take a
wild guess at who’s going to be stopped and frisked, and who isn’t?
And it’s these backpacking, 18 to 30-somethings who voted for the
people that came up with the stop and frisk to cover their failures.
Rewarding bad behavior rarely leads to a pleasant outcome.
Just the raw numbers are telling. Something over 2.6 million stop and frisks and less than 800 illegal weapons found. Pretty low success rate. It isn’t about actually finding weapons or it would be considered a miserable failure based upon low results alone. It’s about putting the scare into an entire class of citizen that the government is watching, that they can search you anytime they want, that you better toe the line or you are off to jail. Big Brother isn’t in a book – he is real and present on the streets of New York. As a fear tactic, it is probably pretty effective. Wrong, but effective. At least until they start frisking Wall Street and downtown types, or matrons on Fifth Avenue… then there will be hell to pay.
New York City is relatively safer than other large cities not because of Bloomberg. It is safer because Bloomberg chose to continue most of Rudi Giuliani’s law enforcement policies. Crime in the city is up since Rudi left office but how much we do not know because, according to the Village Voice, the NYPD has been fudging the numbers in part to keep the tourists coming. When Bloomberg leaves and some Democratic Party Kleptocrat and/or pervert assumes the position NYC will slide back to where it was under Mayor Dinkins, i.e., another Chicago.
If you want to reduce crime ban Democrats, not guns.
+1. The Village Voice piece was a wake up call to many in the city who felt that things were declining.
And you’re correct that NY is on a downward slide given the next mayor. If another financial downturn happens, even slight, the slide to Chicago will accelerate.
Imho “New York City is relatively safer than other large cities” because it has a higher (if not one of the highest) ratios of LEO’s to civilians…
NYC has 34,500 (Uniformed) officers for a population of 8,336,697 [wikipedia for both) which I think comes out to approximately 4.1 LEOs / 1000 civilians.
(FWIW, a quick look at LA and Houston shows 2.6 LEO’s /1000 civilians, and Houston is 2.5 LEO’s /1000 civilians).
Also, while the square milage coverage may be similar between those cities, NYC is much more densely packed thus possibly easier to patrol.
It’s certainly NOT because:
so many law-abiding NYC civilians are armed;
we have such a high level of public edumacation (sic)
liberals / democrats commit fewer crimes.
That is true. The police to population ratio in urbanized Northern Virginia is half of NYC. The murder rate, the Progressive gold standard of crime stats, is 1/6 of New York City’s. Demographics are a key factor in the difference but Virginians, even Northern Virginians are tooled up and aren’t easy victims. That is a significant contributor to the overall difference in all crime rates. I can walk through Arlington’s Bluemont Park in the dark of winter and be safer than Central Park when it is empty. Of course it helps to have two big dogs and 9mm for backup.
Actually, I’ve seen multiple reports (based on surveys of retiring police officers) that the reason for NYC’s drop in crime is due to lying on police reports in order to make the numbers look better. It’s been a few months since I read them, so I don’t have a link off the top of my head.
Three men beating and robbing a man at Bergen St. on the F train was reported as “property lost on train.” The victim found out when he asked NYPD for a copy of the report for an insurance claim. That ain’t fudge that’s Conspiracy. It is system wide.
Anything “Hoover” in the context of “libertarian” has to be a joke.
That’s a well reasoned response…
Enlighten me, though. What sites or persons are not jokes in the context of libertarianism?
It appears that this GOD complex is infecting quite a few of our elected officials.
82% of gun owners!? Hitler had it right with his”Big Lie” theory.
… pressure from the gun lobby? We are the fv@king gun lobby. Does Bloomberg think the NRA is just inherently rich without us!?
No, but progressives like him always needs someone or something to blame because they are not mentally capable of blaming themselves.
Hmmm. I think they know BETTER than to blame themselves, but the point is still taken,
One of their most cherished big lies is that the NRA is mostly funded by firearms manufacturers, when in reality something like 80% of NRA funding comes from individuals. It would be much closer to the truth to call the NRA a grass roots organization (though yes, industry surely does influence the NRA). I’ve tried to correct this notion four or five times on lefty blogs, but my posts either get deleted or never make it past the mods in the first place. Strange how pro-2A posts with ad-hominem rants always seem to make it through moderation, whereas calm, factual posts with references often don’t.
74% of NRA members support additional gun regulations in the form of universal background checks? I call bullsh!t on that “fact.” I don’t know any NRA members, myself included, who support universal background checks. I’d be tempted with such a bill if it offered universal concealed carry reciprocity, but I’ve seen zero compromise on the part of the antis. In fact, their whole conversation is one sided, their figures are suspect, and their alleged tactical advice is dim at best and criminal at worst.
I think they took the level of support for the general idea of background checks and and treated it like their universal the-government-must-give-you-permission scheme was the same thing.
“No military organization or paramilitary runs where you have confusion in the command structure.”
Like…I….I just…I can’t…
People with pulses actually cast votes (and, presumably, would do so again) to place that tiny dictator in office. I cannot begin to understand the mindset of a voter who would do such a thing.
You don’t understand NYC, then.
It’s insular, and incomprehensible to those outside it. As long as the subways run, and garbage gets collecteted, and crime doesn’t personally impact them, they figure they have a sìmpatico deal. Most have never lived anywhere else, poor things.
The Hive (pisses the Hive dwellers off no end to have such pointed out to them).
Funny how the elites only want everyone to honor “polls” accurate or not when the numbers are claimed to support their agenda. Bloomberg would have made a ruthless manager for Hitler.
Napoleon, but I get your drift.
Nonsense, he would have pushed aside that low life Bohemian Corporal in a couple of months.
I thought Napoleon was Corsican. Either way, Bloomie would have done well in that tiny terror’s shoes.
Or maybe not…Napoleon was more interested in conquest than in telling the masses what to do. Plus he actually was one of the most brilliant military leaders in history.
Bloomberg is a lot closer to Robespierre, I think.
Per the Chicago Tribune, at least 8 more shot in Chicago this afternoon.
FUN CITY. Whenever I’ve been forced to go through there: dread like none other. Even the Failed State of Detroit.
I’ve felt more at ease in DC.
46 shot on Father’s Day weekend. God only know how many will be shot on the 4th of July.
Didn’t he claim, at one point, to having the worlds third largest army?? I think they should consider a regime change before he tries to start his own nuclear program.
He did; thanks for giving me the hiccups!
82% of gun owners support gun control? Is he just rolling percentile dice or did one of his dumbass aides make that number up?
I thought 100% of
gun ownersactors in the ads he sponsors support gun controlI’m pretty sure they just co-opted numbers that represent the general public’s opinion of background checks in general. Polls show 82% of Americans support the idea of background checks…we want MORE background checks…therefore 82% of Americans want more background checks. So they’re not lying about the numbers, they’re just
lyingmaking a perfectly reasonable assumption about what those numbers mean.Gun control is just a screen to confuse people about how they’re being controlled by the government. I believe the roots of crime are largely socio-economic and NYC doesn’t have the same socio-economic problems that Chicago has. NYC does have enough criminals committing crimes with firearms to prove that gun control as a crime prevention tool is a complete farce.
??? “Policywise, the mayor is on the side of the angels. He’s furious with the plague of gun violence and the National Rifle Association’s stranglehold over an awful status quo.” – NY Daily News ???
People already avoid psychiatric help because of the stigma of mental illness. Adding to that the stigma of the police showing up to confiscate your firearms won’t help. Having to sue and run up huge legal fees to get your firearms back won’t help either. Sure if someone is an imminent threat to harm themselves or others it’s a doctor’s duty to report such a person to the authorities, but a psychiatrist who breaks his doctor client privilege to report someone who he claims is not a threat to anyone does a disservice to his entire profession and those they suppose to help.
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