How Did the NYPD Killer Get His Hands on a Gun From Georgia? Because Our Laws Are Insane. That’s the headline hovering above the newrepublic.com article on the gun Ismaaiyl Brinsley used to shoot his girlfriend and two New York City cops before saving taxpayers the cost of trial and incarceration. Writer Rebecca Leber asserts that “weak federal laws and disparate state laws enable a black market where felons and domestic abusers can get their hands on guns,” and argues for federal universal background checks. I’ve got two words for that . . .
drug laws. How’s that working out for you? In fact, who cares where bad guys get their guns – other than gun control advocates? Here’s one Florida cop who doesn’t [via tampabay.com]:
The gun investigators say was used to kill Officer Charles Kondek in Tarpon Springs early Sunday was stolen four months earlier from an unlocked Honda Accord on the outskirts of Jacksonville.
That detail is not surprising to those in law enforcement.
“Rarely if ever do you see people who have bought a gun responsibly killing a cop,” Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said. “That never happens.”
So the question is: does post-crime gun tracing really matter or is it waste of time that simply fuels the antis’ ire?
Waste of time. But it allows the antis to have something to do
Letting the antis gather this information is much like giving a person who is digging their own grave a backhoe. They will think about how quick it is going, how deep they made it, and how much better they are making things……then they realize that all that work is not to their benefit.
General public waking up:”So your data shows that most guns are stolen? So we should have universal background checks, why?”
Antigunners: “………………..for the children?”
You are missing why they harp on this and how it fits into their endgame. If no one was allowed to legally own a firearm, there would be no firearms for criminals to steal, obtain through straw purchase, or buy in a private sale. Then there would be no more crime, everyone would love one another and unicorns would once again roam free.
What they want to do is show how the gun “became illegal” so they can use that to further infringe on the law abiding’s ability to obtain firearms and ammuniton. They think that if no law abiding person can get a gun, then criminals can’t get them. Even if it stops a minority of the firearms getting into criminal’s hands they want to do it because it’s something that they can control through legislation as the law abiding follow the law. It’s tied in tightly with the “if it saves one life” ridiculous argument.
You are missing why they harp on this and how it fits into their endgame. If no one was allowed to legally own a firearm, there would be no firearms for criminals to steal, obtain through straw purchase, or buy in a private sale.
But they’re forgetting the police and military, who are their “warrior class” allowed to have guns. Millions of guns. That will inevitably be stolen.
They skip over the “stolen” step in the tracing chain anyway, so why bother?
“But they’re forgetting the police and military, who are their “warrior class” allowed to have guns. Millions of guns. That will inevitably be stolen.”
Dude…Really?! I guess that explains why every time I drive to my home on Fort Knox I have to remove my pistol from on my person in spite of having a Kentucky CCW and drive directly to my home and lock it up. Can’t carry to the PX. Can’t carry anywhere IN SPITE of the fact I have spent legally years carrying 24-7 everything from a fully automatic Machine Gun to an M9 Pistol and on occasion a freaking Javelin Missile with zero incidents. Fact is unless we are toting an M9 or an M16 somewhere in Crapistan or wherever we are among the most disarmed group of folks around. Take the Hassan incident. Does anyone think for a second that if he had attacked a random group of a few thousand locals standing around Waco somewhere he would have gotten off that many shots before someone legally carrying put an end to it? A military post is a great place to pull someting off like that, just like a school or college campus you can almost be sure that unless you are a member of an invading Army that has totally lost the element of surprise no one will have a gun until the MP’s show up. And I can promise you if someone steals your M16 or you “misplace” it…you are done.
Damon, that’s why I live off-post out here in Radcliff. It took an act of Congress (literally) and a formal IG inquiry to get my Personally Owned Weapons un-registered from the federal system on-post. I am now retired and only go on post when I absolutely have to.
He’s technically right, but in a totally bizarro world way. New York’s insane gun (and cigarette tax) laws have created a black market that makes crime easy and profitable in the gun prohibition zones. They take a look at themselves and think its the rest of the country’s fault they have all this crime and poverty.
CORRECT!
Last time I looked murder was also illegal but that does not stop people from committing murder. Yup all the gun laws work because anything concerning gun laws are never ever broken. Why can not the antis understand this simple fact. Take away the guns from the law abiding citizen then only criminals will have them.
Gun tracing is placebo. 99.5 times out of 100 the result is “this gun was reported stolen __ years ago” in a legit home break-in or vehicle theft, etc. It’s never, ever, “oh this gun was purchased by Bob X and holy cow he’s the murderer thanks gun trace for leading us to him!”
I’ve been in online arguments with anti gunners on this. They don’t care that it has no effect, they just say it will still help. They can’t say how or why, it will just help. This isn’t from just one person either. I’ve had the same conversation with a handful of people.
“I’ve been in online arguments with anti gunners”
You can’t find something more enjoyable to do, like extract your own teeth?
you win the internet
I had a molar extracted yesterday. I didn’t do it myself, I had a professional do it instead. But I would say it was actually a more pleasant experience than arguing with an anti.
Arguing with an anti always reminds me of a Monty Python sketch, specifically the Argument Clinic, where a guy shows up looking for an argument, i.e. a series of logical statements put forth to support a conclusion, and wanders into the abuse clinic instead.
Keep up the good work. You probably won’t convince the antis, but you should have a good effect on the observers who don’t have a strong opinion.
As anyone trying to influcence culture knows, one usually doesn’t make an immediate, overwhelming, change in society. One works at the margins, and produces a slow shift over time.
Nah, those without strong opinions aren’t there. They are watching cat videos.
Here’s a factiod to help in your arguments. Maryland has maintained a “library” of cases fired each pistol sold in the state. It’s been there for many years, perhaps more than a decade. To date it has been responsible for solving exactly ZERO crimes.
Perhaps other criminals care so they can learn which fences might be under increased scrutiny in the near future?
A gun registry with universal background checks would really work! You just take the stolen gun and…oh, wait. Nevermind. The gun was stolen. It would just trace back to the last lawful owner of the gun who didn’t commit the crime.
But on the day owning a gun at all became a crime, they could trace the vast majority of guns to their owners.
Oh wait…nobody wants to ban guns or take our guns away, so that’s not an issue.
I once bought a used car in Arizona that was shipped from a trade-in dealer in Florida. And I sold it in Washington a few years later.
I can’t believe we have such crazy loopholes in our federal and state laws that would allow such a thing to happen!
We need a universal Federal gun control law. Let’s call it Constitutional Carry and Purchase.
Leber’s assertion that “weak federal laws and disparate state laws enable a black market where felons and domestic abusers can get their hands on guns,” is pure propaganda in that she wants us to believe that simply changing laws will somehow prevent criminals from obtaining guns. While this neatly dovetails with gun-control ideology, as a practical approach to keeping guns out of the hands of criminals it patently absurd. Guns, like all commodities, tend to appear wherever there is a market demand and markets are notoriously independent of state efforts to control them. Simply put, when people want guns, guns will appear regardless of what kinds of laws are passed to limit access to them. The restrictive gun-control laws established by cities like New York and Chicago have created a smuggler’s paradise underground economy in which legal and illegally obtained guns are as easy to buy as narcotics. In economies dominated by criminals, laws don’t count for much at all.
This is one of the best comments I’ve read on any gun blog in some time.
Right on.
I have come to understand that “weak federal laws” is code speak for “Why haven’t we confiscated these damn things yet.”
And here I am preparing to file an ATF 5320.20 form to transport my SBR, a hunk of metal no more concealable than a handgun and no more lethal than a rifle, for a training course in another state in the middle of the next year. More like obtrusive, misdirected federal laws if you ask me but yet, as a good citizen, I follow them because IT’S THE LAW.
RF, Shaneka Nicole Thompson is not dead as far as I know. Yes, she was shot in the stomach by Brinsley, but it appears that she is recovering and cooperating with the authorities.
D’oh! Text amended. Thanks!
Robert,
How did a PT-22 turn into a PT-92?
Is that a trick question?
I remember seeing pics of a pt-22 being the gun used to murder the NYPD officers. The pic above looks like it’s big brother….
Nevermind.
I just looked at the original post.
“…the gun Ismaaiyl Brinsley used to kill his girlfriend…”
As far as I know, she survived the shooting. And I think she was his ex-girlfriend at the time of the attack.
Isn’t this really obvious by now? These people openly wish they could sue the gun MAKERS. Obviously, the registry is for identifying the subhuman filth who have the nerve to buy a gun despite being told it will inevitably be used in a crime. They do not care if the gun was stolen or not, hell they are pushing laws to make having your gun stolen a federal crime! Do you really think that just because you report your gun stolen this army of halfwits won’t still blame you for any crimes the thief commits with it? For Christs sake, the fact that guns even EXIST causes them to weep for gaia, you and your seemingly responsible behavior won’t even factor into it, you’ll just be “the stupid teabagger who bought the gun that made (ridiculous name here) into a murderer!”. And you’ll have “BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS!!!”
It helps the antis keep the “it’s the gun’s fault” narrative alive and well in the media. That’s all. We know it doesn’t matter, they know it doesn’t matter, but it places blame on the gun in the minds of those who hear this crap. That is what the Nazis want.
Why don’t wingnuts care about how the criminals obtained their guns when it’s discovered that they were walked by the ATF?
If wingnuts were honest, they’d be outraged that their beloved Federal aristocracy was arming the cartels — enabling the murder of hundreds of Mexicans (who wingnuts seem to love so much that they can’t wait to make them citizens) and the killing of Federal agents.
Pardon me, Ms. Leber you twit (sorry about the misspelling), but your hypocrisy is showing.
I have to object to you using the term ‘wingnuts.’
That is offensive to actual wingnuts, which are useful items overall and provide real value to the world. For example, I couldn’t install my hurricane panels without a big box of wingnuts.
The people (and I use that term loosely) you are referring too are not nearly so beneficial to the world.
Liberal states like Maryland or Illinois always point the finger at their freer neighbors, like Indiana or Virginia as the source of the guns used in crimes there. But if that were true, wouldn’t the freer states have the higher crime rate?
Absolutely.
But we’re not supposed to notice that.
Ignore the man behind the curtain, just ignore him!
Should have put “liberal” in quotes, we apologize for the inconvenience.
LOL!!!
Canada had a national pistol registry for over twenty years and billions in expense and it didn’t solve one murder by hand gun. They finally discontinued it.
I know, a government program stopped because it didn’t work, in Canada. I know, Crazy! Sanity actually prevailed.
Will any gun grabber learn from this experience?
Ummm. I would bet a million dollarsssss no.
Unfortunately we still have the pistol registry. We did scrap the Long Gun registry in 2012, and we’re working on a new law to simplify rules around handguns and other restricted firearms. Apart from costing too much and being a giant hassle for gun owners, the LGR had absolutely no effect on anything,
Also, unfortunately, the antigunners learned nothing. They even started a lawsuit against the government claiming that scrapping the LGR was making women unsafe. This got thrown out earlier in the year.
There are reports, however, that although ordered to destroy it, the RCMP kept its list of long gun owners.
Look, this new pushed for background checks based on the murder of the two NYPD officers is nothing more than a diversion from the reality that the radical anti-police rhetoric from the race hustlers and gang apologists was responsible for the murders. Just remember if the cops shot Brimsley in the act of committing a crime they would be demonstrating against “police violence.” Rather than engage in this diversionary debate we should keep the focus on the race hustlers like Al Shaprton, Eric Holder, Rand Paul and Barak Obama.
A quick run-down on the ‘Cast of Players’ here will put things in context.:
Rebecca Leber – Author of the article -Let’s look at her articles –
.How Did the NYPD Killer Get His Hands on a Gun From Georgia? Because Our Laws Are Insane.
Obama Made Environmentalists Very Happy This Year. Here’s What He Needs to Do to Keep It That Way in 2015.
This Is What Our Hellish World Will Look Like After We Hit the Global Warming Tipping Point
Etc, etc, etc.
Now, who she writes for, The New Republic.has written an absolutly
Considered one of the, if not most respectable Leftist magazine.
Meagan McArdle has written an absolutely FASCINATING article on the new owner of this magazine. It is well worth the read.
The nutshell – Facebook founder’s roommate is a billionaire with a new toy and ZERO clue.
Check it out –
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-12-05/tech-moguls-and-the-tnr-meltdown
Chris Hughes, an Obamabot, wingnut and TNR’s new owner, tried to by his husband a seat in Congress as a present. It didn’t work — Sean Eldridge lost by 30 points. Now Hughes is bringing the same level of skill to the ownership of TNR, turning it into a socialist rag.
Good news — circulation is down about 50% from its peak in 2000. Yay!
“Good news — circulation is down about 50% from its peak in 2000. Yay!”
Yeah, they thought a billionaire leftist was their salvation. Not!
That’s why I remain cautiously optimistic that the NYT will be bought by an equally clueless fvckwit and be ground into the dirt.
BTW, did you catch my reply to your “worshiping Annie Oakley” comment yesterday?
(I thought it was one of my better ones… 🙂
Considered one of the, if not most respectable Leftist magazine. You mean Leftist magazines are respectable?
Tom, I usually ‘clean up’ my posts after I write them using the 4-min editor.
I hit send, and the doorbell rang.
When I got back, the edit time expired.
IE, yeah, I know it looks like sh!t.
Considered respectable in the same way the NYT is considered respectable.
Tom, read Megan McArdle’s article on TNR. It’s worth the read.
We went from tracing being a tool for solving crimes to pretending it can prevent them. What other investigative tool purports to actually prevent crime?
Tracing and background checks probably reduced crime for a very brief period while criminals adjusted their means of getting guns. Now, they merely shift the probability of one kind of crime, i.e. felons buying firearms, to a different kind of crime, i.e. felons stealing firearms.
In other words, after a brief window of usefulness, the result is a reduction in non-violent crime and a corresponding increase in violent crime. Thus the problem they allege stronger laws like these should solve, or at least reduce, is one that the laws themselves caused.
The tracing issue is being pushed, knowing full well that most crime guns are stolen, to justify the imposition of UK style ‘safe storage’ laws.
I would have no problem with safe storage laws so long as they were restricted to firearms not in use, and “in use” included being kept in an accessible place for home or business defense. So my firearms that are parked in strategic locations at the house would be “in use”, and thus exempt, leaving only the weapons I take out for specific use (hunting, encouraging crystallized objects to return to their native more granular state, teaching coyotes that it is not a good idea to bother dogs and small children…) subject to safe storage rules.
Though that’s just common sense anyway: it’s foolish and irresponsible to leave one’s firearms lying about in such a fashion that someone else might decide to appropriate them for misuse. I hold to this if for no other reason than that when I purchase something substantially expensive as a firearm, I purchase it for myself, not for anyone else.
Might sound good to some but this country is drowning in laws and especially when it comes to firearms. We should be trying to remove unconstitutional laws not adding to them. Secured gun storage for firearms that don’t need to be accessed quickly is a good idea. Training is also a good idea and something a lot of people think is common sense to require. Just like training who determines how much is enough before you are allowed to freely enjoy a confirmed and documented natural right without the threat of some kind of penalty?
How much will it add to the cost and how well off are we going to require someone to be to choose to own a few firearms or possibly even one? If it is required to be more secure than the average home or apartment it is an automatic substantial cost requirement to have a single gun that falls outside of “in use” if that is even allowed at all. If it isn’t required to be more secure then it isn’t very useful.
Besides being unconstitutional, laws that add requirements to gun ownership usually contain at least something that makes absolutely no sense even within the gun-control-bizarro-world context or worse only penalize legal gun owners.
“…I would have no problem with safe storage laws so long as they were restricted to firearms not in use”
And by virtue of calling it a law you would be inviting someone to monitor compliance with that law. And non-compliance would require enforcement. And the only way to enforce that law would be to allow inspections in your home to make sure that you have whatever the law says.
No. We already have a law that says you can’t kill other people, why should we invent a second law that says killing people with a gun is illegal? Having two laws doesn’t make the killing illegaler.
You pose a question that I have been asking for a long time. The police want to trace “crime guns.” Why? What are they going to learn? That it was stolen 5, 10 15 years ago? That the last registered owner sold it at a gun show a decade ago in a transaction that he can’t even remember? What? It makes no difference in terms f the prosecution against the person who used the gun to commit a crime. The only potentially relevant information at least in theory is that the police might be able to establish that the gun was used previously to commit a different crime–but despite millions of dollars devoted to bullet registries, no crimes have been solved–because the original purchaser is almost never the perpetrator.
Just last week, NBC News jumped on the “ghost gun” bandwagon, interviewing an ATF agent about unserialized home-built firearms, and the alleged increase in the use of sch firearms by gangs, but the lack of any ability to trace such firearms–which again begs the question. Who cares?
Would universal registration change things? Would closing the “gun show loophole (which is the apparent political purpose) reduce crime? As others have commented, there will always be a black market for stolen firearms, and the time to crime statistics show that these arms flow through the market for years before used to shoot someone. Perhaps someone with a LE background can help us out here, because for the life of me I can see no reason for the expenditure of resources on a wild goose chase.
Would closing the “gun show loophole (which is the apparent political purpose) reduce crime? About all the sellers at gun shows have FFLs, so yes, background checks are performed at gun shows.
There are good fish, and bad fish. Nets are supposed to catch bad fish. If we make the holes in the nets ever smaller (pass more laws, and make them unclear and broad in interpretation) we will eventually make all fish bad by decree and we can punish all fish at our whim. Police departments, courts, jails, prisons, etc. all run on crime. The more crime, the more tax money, the more employees, the more toys like guns, MRAPs, etc. So, we need to create new classes of criminal to keep feeding the insatiable maw of the injustice system. We all should be painfully aware by now that the current system does not reduce crime. Oh sure, the people in prison don’t commit much crime, except drug related and violence against each other, but it’s a musical chairs game, we can’t afford to house all the bad people, and what would our police do if we did? It would be far cheaper to send checks to thieves and give housing and free drugs to addicts than what it cost to keep them behind bars, and crime would go down significantly. But then, we could reduce the funds for police, prisons, courts, etc…. can’t do that. Gun tracing is exactly that, they want ways to ciminalize otherwise decent people that had a gun stolen, or sold it in good faith, etc. Just casting a wider net with smaller holes.
I’m sick of these idiots. How do criminals get guns? The same way they get drugs: illegally. We already have laws banning drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine in every state yet they are more easily available than firearms are! I’m so tired of the ignorance and idiocy coming from these scared writers.
They are scared and want the one fix one answer solution.
Their own children are rude. The sense of entitlement is huge in affluent neighborhoods. Your job doesn’t suck, you do. You don’t put effort into it like it’s yours. You want poor folk to get it together to work at the job you hate?
Antis. Want to fix something? Make sure with Bloomberg’s money that every poor, middle & rich child has clean water, nutritious food and small class sizes and your crime will drop.
Stop asking that the poor adopt values that you don’t live by. They should lust after things and be jealous of their neighbors or should every child be taught to value themselves and help all their neighbors? Do a good days work and slow down to care for others.
Please keep your guns on you and not in your car as much as possible… other than visiting the post office, of course…
Not hard to do in Missouri.
Somewhat more difficult in Illinois.
The Rebecca Leber article is full of out right lies. The links in the article to the actual Georgia laws show the licensing requirements necessary to sell or transfer a weapon and that the FFLs use NCIS. How is that “no background check?”
Wow, just Wow!
“weak federal laws and disparate state laws enable a black market where felons and domestic abusers can get their hands on guns,”
I like how she had to throw “domestic abusers” into her sentence to try to push more buttons among her misandrist readers. Nice touch.
It’s perfectly reasonable to trace back a gun used in a murder or other serious crime. Might lead to more criminals. But the more important question is why are cons with multiple felony convictions out walking the street to begin with?
didnt I see an earlier article saying the gun used was legally purchased ?
Actually, where this particular criminal got his weapon does matter, at least in one sense: to rule out criminal conspiracy. How do we know that someone didn’t convince this wacko to off a couple of cops, hand him the gun and send him on his way to the afterlife via Brooklyn?
The rest of the article is sheer anti-gun hysteria. Georgia does not require licensed concealed carriers to disarm prior to entering a church, etc., doesn’t duplicate federal straw purchase statutes, allows “felons” to invoke SYG (whatever that reference meant), allows carry into TSA checkpoints (?) and other assorted freedoms that have absolutely nothing to do with trafficking guns to New York. But somehow the reporter found these points relevant.
I also recoiled at the reporter’s use of the word responsible, as in “the gun store responsible for the weapon that killed two NYPD officers.” (Paraphrased)
The New York Times home page earlier this week described that pawn shop as “the place where the Taurus 9mm that killed two NYPD officers began its journey.” The gun went on a journey and killed two cops?
Good grief. What has happened to journalism, once an honorable profession dedicated to fairness?
New Republic is going to ban me, so here’s my comment. Again, guys, we gotta take the fight to them.
(ahem!)
So it seems like @rebleber Rebecca Leber wishes to have a strong, statist intrusion into our lives. So, selling items between friends needs to be under the purview of the State? Rebecca, how about I demand licensing of your reproductive system, since you could potentially birth a murderer, despite your best efforts to raise him or her to not be one?
New York has the strictest gun control laws in the US, and people still manage to find guns when they want to use them. Because criminals don’t obey laws. The way gun laws are in this nation is a great example of how things should be. The original intent of the United States was to be a confederation. Unfortunately, the Civil War turned that into a dirty word. The Civil War wasn’t about slavery, it was about doing away with the idea of a confederation (where states determined their own laws, for the most part) and establishing a strong central government. Slavery would have been abolished in due time, without war, anyways. Lincoln and his ilk sought to lay the framework for a strong central government and little to no intervening state or local level government. Lincoln was no bastion of tolerance and neither were most northerners.
FYI, I am categorically not endorsing slavery. Hence “for the most part”. There does need to be a baseline of inalienable laws to work from. That’s called the Bill of Rights by the way. Every state should adhere to that (Including the Second Amendment) and as far as anything else is concerned, they can do what they want. High taxes, intrusive government, mass surveillance – if New York wants all that, let them have that. The simple answer to people who complain about it is to not go there. I go for family occasions, but the rest of the time, good sense prevails and I stay in Florida where I enjoy a relatively free lifestyle with warm weather and low taxes. FYI, Florida is one of the top states in the US to do business in these days. http://taxfoundation.org/article/2015-state-business-tax-climate-index
Notice that New York, with all it’s wonderful taxes, laws, and infringements on personal liberty, is number 49! Yes, the Empire State is anything but. A swirling vortex of laws, corruption, intrusions, taxes, and so much more. Enough to make any sane person sick.
And your vaunted District of Corruption, Rebecca, is not much better. I’m sure you enjoy the constant groupthink, surveillance, and borderline mind-reading courtesy of the government there. But hey, there’s a Sex and the City rerun on TV right now. I guess the antics of a bunch of geriatric scamps are a little more important than the basic human rights of free speech, the freedom of self-defense, and the freedom of having control over our own bodies.
Rebecca, our freedoms aren’t a cafeteria – you can’t pick and choose. You gotta either take the whole meal or go to another restaurant.
Have fun in the Northeast with all of your statist friends. You guys and gals hardly even deserve being Americans. I’m disgusted and repulsed.
And so should everyone else who supported her vile tripe.
Beware of quoting Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri. He’s not that pro-gun and was against amendment two for medical marijuana in the last election cycle, but he did fire four bad officers who were costing the taxpayers some serious cash.
So, we had a felon, in posession of a hand gun. He likely knew it was stolen, since he was already removed from the legal acquisition chain. He shot his (ex?) girlfriend, He then travelled to NYC expressly to murder cops. He then murders the cops…So how *exactly* is just one more gun control law going to prevent ANY of that from happening?
I am getting really tired of the godforsaken democrat/progressive/communists screwing around with my civil rights. Lock the criminals up. Keep them locked up. Stop expecting me to give up the right and ability to protect my self and my loved ones from the criminals you coddle.
Ok……..let me think this through……..
1. Criminal STOLE a gun from a car (burglary of a motor vehicle)
2. Used the gun to shoot a police officer (Capital Murder)
The intervening causation is…………………….CRIMINALITY?
It doesnt matter where crooks get these guns because the judicial system refuses to lock these criminals up for good.
Lets call it for what it is; catch & release
Failure to responsibly store firearms is an appreciable part of unlawful violence using guns.
By that logic, failure to “responsibly” dress and avoid bars, parties and alcohol is an appreciable part of rape — i.e., blaming the victim.
But setting logic aside, what, specifically, do you suggest as a solution?
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