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“The news, for the past month, like so many others, has been filled with guns,” Arkadi Gerney writes over at newyorker.com. “There was the gun that the Tsarnaev brothers used in Cambridge, where they killed a cop—perhaps in an effort to get his gun. There were guns used elsewhere, too. In Akron, Ohio, four people were murdered, execution-style, in a basement of an apartment complex. The next weekend—” Yada, yada, yada. Take it from a gun blogger: there’s always gun news. To say that a particular time period is “filled with guns” is both true, misleading and revealing. After all . . .

Tens of millions of American gun owners spent the last month doing a whole bunch of non-gun stuff—working, playing, raising kids, paying the bills, going to church, doing the horizontal mambo, etc.—without shooting themselves or anyone else. But Gerney, the ex-head of the Mayors Against Illegal Guns (2006 – 2011), lives in a different world than you and me.

According to his blog post, Arkadi Gerney‘s journey into the heart of disarmament darkness began when he was eight, after his father died of colon cancer. Two years later, Gerney’s mother suffered a cataclysmic accident.

During this time, my mother got to know many doctors, among them an orthopedist named Peter Rizzo. He and my mother started dating in September, 1986. Peter was a father of three college-aged children. His first marriage ended in an annulment. He was a devout Catholic and, like my mother, he enjoyed enjoying—food, drink, and conversation. He was a kind, generous man with a great breadth and depth of friendships. And I hated him.

I hated him for the obvious reasons. I’d lost my father. I’d almost lost my mother. I wanted all my mother’s love and I feared that too much of it might be diverted to this man. I can clearly remember moments at night, trying to fall asleep under a big poster of Don Mattingly, when I wished Peter dead.

A few times that fall, I pleaded with my mother: Promise not to marry him, at least not for a year. But they were in love. By February, they had plans to marry—and then came the gun.

Notice that Gerney foreshadows the tragedy to follow by ascribing it to a physical object. He is, literally, objectifying what happens next.

Peter was the chairman of the medical board of the New York City Fire Department’s pension fund. He and two other doctors were responsible for assessing disability claims. On February 5, 1987, he was at a pension-board meeting when Peter McNamee, a retired firefighter with a deferred claim, came to the meeting with a gun.

Peter McNamee shot Peter in the head with a sawed-off .22-calibre rifle. Peter was rushed to St. Vincent’s Hospital, where he died the next day. There was a funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, with the full F.D.N.Y. treatment. Hundreds of firefighters. Bagpipes. Fire trucks. If you remember all those funerals after 9/11, you know what it looked like.

In the days and weeks that followed his death, my mother told me many times that she loved me and that it wasn’t my fault. My mother was fifty when Peter was murdered. She never remarried. She never even dated again.

Why would Gerney’s mother tell her son that her fiance’s murder wasn’t his fault? Of course it wasn’t his fault. As the father of a [nearly] ten-year-old, having parented three other children through that age, I’m thinking Gerney isn’t being honest.

The “I blamed myself” interpretation is most likely something Gerney picked-up in therapy. Given the intro to the story and the MAIG man’s line of work, I reckon Gerney doesn’t blame himself for the shooting. He blames the gun.

And how. Gerney’s anti-gun jihad is based entirely on the idea that fewer guns equals less crime. Less tragedy. Less heartbreak and sorrow. Which means no guns equals no tragedy. No heartbreak. No sorrow.

The idea that more guns equals less crime is beyond Gerney’s ken. It would force him to consider the possibility that his aspiring step-father—whom his mother worshipped—bore responsibility for his own defense, or lack thereof.

I believe people are genetically wired to see the world in a particular way. Gerney is one of those “black and white” kinda people. Just as his not-step-father was a “pure” victim, anyone who supports the right to keep and bear arms is a bad guy.

When you see the world in binary terms, you don’t mind getting your hands dirty. Why not? Greater good and all that.

In 2009, I led a gun-show investigation of illegal sales at gun shows, which involved so-called private sellers—people who maintain that they only occasionally sell guns. Under current federal law, these unlicensed private sellers can sell guns with no questions asked. Our 2009 investigation found that nineteen of thirty private sellers would sell guns even to buyers who said they “probably couldn’t pass a background check”—which would indicate to the seller that buyer was likely a felon or other prohibited buyer. (Closing this “private sale” loophole was the subject of the bill the Senate rejected in April.)

See what he did there? “Probably couldn’t pass a check.” Entrapment much? Not to mention the fact that Gerney’s infamous “investigation” was illegal (Gerney was an out-of-state buyer).

There’s both zealotry and irony here. By his own admission, Gerney didn’t tell the truth about his background when applying for his position with the Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

I never told anyone I worked with in Mayor Bloomberg’s office about the 1987 shooting of Peter Rizzo. It wasn’t a secret, exactly. People who’ve known me well for a long time know about it (though perhaps not the part about me wishing him dead).

I could have told the man who would become my boss, John Feinblatt, when I interviewed for the job. John is Mayor Bloomberg’s chief policy adviser and the original architect of the gun initiative. But bringing up the shooting when I interviewed didn’t seem right. I thought it would be cheap—exploitive, even.

And, honestly, I was interested in the job because it was an opportunity to play the lead role in helping to build a new national initiative, almost regardless of what that issue was. What happened to Peter Rizzo didn’t play a big role in my choice to do the job (or if it did, I didn’t quite realize it at the time).

That’s some screwed-up logic: the shooting that triggered my desire to promote civilian disarmament wasn’t important when I started working for America’s wealthiest gun grabber, and if it was I didn’t think so at the time. But it is now. I think.

I think it’s safe to say that Gerney’s inner life is a maelstrom of unexamined conflict and repressed emotions. But that’s what you get whenever you scratch the surface of a person who wants to deny someone else their natural, human, civil and Constitutional right to armed self-defense.

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52 COMMENTS

  1. Well… just look at the guy! There’s a (secret) storm going on, partially because he doesn’t know how to – or refuses to – assign to things their proper value in life. Little things are blown out of proportion. Huge crises are moved into a dark corner somewhere, with the cobwebs of confusion and the spiders of fear.

    Arkady? HE A MESS!!!

    • “cobwebs of confusion and the spiders of fear” Nice phrase….or a killer Rock & Roll show with bands that have cool names.

  2. I also found the comment, “my mother told me many times that she loved me and that it wasn’t my fault” rather curious and dubious. Why would she say THAT?

    • Well, I guess–weirdly–because his wish that the guy would die ultimately came true. Again, as if wishing someone dead makes them so.

      Quick! Ban wishes!

      • Don’t ban wishes, just register, background check them. If you’ve committed a felonious wish, you are barred from having wishes anymore.

  3. This mental midget used to be the CEO of MAIG. Frankly, I don’t give a rat’s hat why he’s hoplophobic. Did he feel guilty? Was he improperly toilet trained? Does he have an unresolved Oedipus complex? Maybe, or maybe he’s just a moron.

  4. two take aways for me:

    1) he walked in on mom and peter hitting it from the back while holding a scotch on ice and a marlboro in his mouth so there are some pyscho-sexual issues there

    2) Firemen are evil because they use guns to kill.

  5. I hate that he attributed the 9/11 funerals to a single death.

    It’s slimy and underhanded. Talk about begging an emotional response.

    • Yeah, I noticed that too. Overall, flawed logic is replaced with forced emotions. “It’s my emotion, so it must be right and you HAVE to feel the same way too.”

  7. they killed a cop—perhaps in an effort to get his gun.

    So should disarm cops and put Bobbies on the street?

  8. “By February, they had plans to marry—and then came the gun.”

    Shouldn’t that be “and then came some murdering bastard named Peter”.

    Why doesn’t he hate the guy who actually committed the crime? It’s like, in his mind, the gun just walked in and shot someone. All by itself!

    I’ll admit, if guns could do that, I’d…. who am I kidding, that’d be awesome. We could cut the ***** out of the military budget! No need for soldiers! I just balanced the budget! WOOHOOO!

    • Yep, Little Arkady has severe issues with being able to accurately assign blame for the events in his life. If there’s a crime involving a gun, go out and punish the people who DIDN’T do it! His mother messed him up good. What do you THINK saying, “don’t worry, it wasn’t your fault” sounds like to an emotionally conflicted young boy? It sounds like this: “I’m saying it wasn’t your fault, but feel free to ruin your life by assuming the guilt!”

      I can feel immense compassion for this state of affairs, AS LONG AS YOU DON’T TRY AND ABROGATE MY RIGHTS.

  9. NATIONAL CAMPAIGN, EVERYONE HAS TO TAKE A NON GUN OWNING LIBERAL TO THE RANGE, BEFORE YOU KNOW IT THEY WILL BE AT THE GUN SHOP BUYING A NEW GUN, IN HOPES THEY GET BIT BY THE CONTAGIOUS GUN BUG.

  10. I wish we could build a hierarchy of all these gun control organizations to show the chain of command, flow of money, etc. All of them. MAIG, Brady, etc. I’m talking from Bloomberg to this Feinblatt fellow, who was the architect for MAIG, to this Arkadi creep.

    The more we know about these organizations, who they employ, where they get money, the easier it will be to defeat them. Time to do some counter-intelligence on their asses.

  11. This dude has deep seated issues that he needs to address before he fulfills his paranoid fear of going out and committing a murder

    • maybe we should report him so his mental state is duly noted in the NICS system? It is for the children(TM).

  14. Under other circumstances I would dismiss this kind of thing as the ramblings of a sociopath. However, under the current political climate it really scares me how many people read this kind of crapola and put stock in it, since there is never any opposing viewpoint in the msm.

    • Washington post. “Emily gets her gun” and related.

      We have friends in neoliberal places. Not many, but a few.

      • Washington Times, not Washington Post. WP is liberal, WT not so much. The very idea that WP would run “Emily gets her gun” …

        But then again, there is Stephen Hunter, author of (among many other things) “Point of Impact”, who has been published by the WP. Why they would tolerate them, I have no idea.

  15. He must feel, in a new agey way that he by some sort of cosmic connection, recruted the fireman to kill his fathers place taker. (Big assumption but) If he believes in that stuff, then by his own measure he is guilty and it is his fault.
    Arkadi, reality is so much easier, give up your lifes work of redemption because none is needed.

  16. What I got at the end was, he didn’t really care what the job was, he just wanted to be a player.

  17. ” I was interested in the job because it was an opportunity to play the lead role in helping to build a new national initiative, almost regardless of what that issue was.” Read, I found a chance to make a name for myself and aquire personal gain playing off my mother’s personal tragedy that I was secretly happy about. This is nothing more than a chance at money, power and fame, the issue doesn’t matter, who gets hurt or whether its right or wrong is secondary to his personal advancement agenda. He’s a good politician that’s for sure!

  18. All roads lead to gun grabbing for zombie gerney. His choice is fine for him & I wholehearted think he should let criminals kill him. Hopefully we can get this on PPV./// Gottleib just sent me a census & it clearly states that the root of all this is the trayvon shooting & I sure agree. Randy

  19. The news is filled with guns because gun-grabbers fill the news with guns. If news agencies reported only stair-related deaths, guess what the news would be filled with.

    How do sub-human morons like this function?

  20. I think someone should do a mental health check on him.

    Whatever you do – don’t go to the theater with him.

  21. New Yorker Magazine? A publication of Conde Nast, division of Advance Publishing Company. Owned by the rabidly anti-gun billionaire Newhouse brothers. They also own the Stat Ledger (NJ) newspaper and others, all of which have been pushing for the new draconian NJ anti-gun laws.

    They also own the Discovery and other cable channels. Funny, because some of their shows portray firearms in a positive way. Hypocrites!

  22. My God, words straight out of the mouth of a momma’s boy! He can’t bring himself to own his anger at his Mother for “deserting” him so he takes it out on guns. What a mealy mouthed little sissy!

  23. One of my aunts had a son, who, out shooting bullfrogs and whatever got in his way, took a Ruger .22 six gun, and not shooting for the moment, tucked it into his waist band, and shot himself through his bladder, bleeding out in about a minute, and dying before anyone could even go for help. I didn’t particularly like him, so it was no big deal to me. His mother was always at my house, ragging on men in general, and how life had dealt her such a terrible blow. She tearfully warned me to stay away from guns, as one had killed her boy. Since I was only twelve, I just listened, and went on about my business. Went out an bought a gun as soon as I could. I just make sure to never put it in my belt, ala old western movie style. Every time I hear the wail of these hoplophobes, I just remember my dear old shaky aunt, warning me not to try and live life, but to hide from it.

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