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“When there’s a profit incentive, people will drive through the night on I-95 to bring these guns into our city. Our problem is really the states down South, or in other parts of the country that have weak gun laws. We have strong gun laws, but we’re being overwhelmed with all the guns from these weaker states.” – Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson in How the Iron Pipeline funnels guns into cities with tough gun laws [at cnn.com]

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108 COMMENTS

  1. Is it the weaker drug laws in these other states that are fueling the drug trade in your city, too? Or is it that criminals are going to break the law? Hmm?

    • I bet it is the VA and NC *criminals*, bringing the illegal guns, that are the entire problem of the freedom-loving kingdom of NYC, what ya think? THAT is why VA and NC do not have the same crime problem as NYC, because all their criminals, seeking a better life away from the backward inhabitants of their native states, leave for the enlightenment available in NY, and carry great masses of firearms with them, making both firearms and criminals really scarce in VA and NC, but overloading the Great White Way or whatever. That must be it. How stupid can a person be?

      • Saw a re-run of CSI New York last night where the perp improvised a shotgun from a steering wheel lock in order to murder his obnoxious boss. I’ll bet he drove to Virginia to buy the lock, but they didn’t mention that on the show.

      • There is also a trade-off. Quite a few criminals here in NC were originally criminals in NY, NJ, CT etc. They come down for a fresh start, i.e. fresh victims. These “enlightened” states don’t mind transferring their criminals’ paroles/probations to NC so that they can be rid of them. So apparently we send them tools, which do what they’re designed to do, and they send us criminals, which are responsible for 100% of crimes.

    • This is the asshole responsible for airline pilots, mechanics and all airline employees having to be screened every day they go to work. He knows damn well that New York unconstitutional laws created the gun running into that shithole bit he wants to scare the public into thinking he is somehow keeping air travelers safe.
      So a mechanic can’t bring in a steak knife to cut his lunch meat but once at work he has access to any number of tools that could be used to sabotage an airplane.
      Democrats piss me off!

      • When doing remodeling at the Seattle FBI office, you can’t bring in a pocket knife. It could be used as a weapon. However, the 10″ fixed blade knife I have on my toolbelt is a-ok. No problem with my drywall ax or my keyhole saw either. Heaven forbid the carnage I could do, if I sneaked in my small pocket knife.

  5. In the television show Supernatural, a type of monster invented a coffee creamer that would kill intelligent people. The goal was to keep people stupid and fat in order to rule over them.

    Also, the goal of that season was tons of jokes on the bad guy’s name, but that’s not topical.

    • This is why I say reality is stranger than fiction. We don’t need secret ingredients in coffee creamer, we got public schools. Over time, we got the same result in reality as the fiction was going to get.

      • “We don’t need secret ingredients in coffee creamer, we got public schools. “

        +1000

        Homeschool, people. Homeschool.

        • Of course they are.

          Any decentralization of “control” or people taking responsibility for their own lives (and that of their families) has GOT to be defined as criminal. Can’t have people doing their own thing, right?

          Guns. Schools. Food. Anything in one’s lifestyle. Doesn’t matter; the issue is all cut from the same material: centralized control vs individual liberty.

    • Exactly. By his “logic,” the South should have even worse “gun violence,” cuz the guns are here. The only difference is culture and an armed citizenry. But that can’t possibly be it. Nah.

  7. “When there’s a profit incentive”. So close, yet so far away. Does he ask why there is a profit incentive? Of course not. The answer to that question means having to face unpleasant realities. We absolutely can’t have that now. Social justice forbids it.

    But allow me. Maybe your state’s zealotry against private firearm ownership has increased the profit incentive for the criminals bringing in guns. It’s the same as alcohol during the Prohibition Era. It’s the same with drugs today. He’d never say, the US drug problem is due to Mexico’s weak drug laws. Funny thing about black (that’s racist) markets, they always seem to be where certain items are banned. Like it or not, the gun genie is out of the bottle. Want to make gangs more wealthy, give them a new revenue stream because the gangs are not giving up their guns. It’s simple power dynamics. The gun is the banger’s mode of lording power over unarmed victims.

    But it’s easier to blame others for your inaction so let’s go that route in New York.

    • The gun is also the bangers’ legal system. They can’t bring competition to court so violence is the dispute resolution and hostile takeovers of the criminal world. Much like the many shot dogs, the injured bystanders are a byproduct of criminals just wanting to get home safe at night.

    • I’m always amazed at how a 2A supporter can insist on Liberty for Guns out of one side of his mouth then blame “weak drug laws” out of the other side. If you want to end the drug profit and illegal gun running in gangs, end drug prohibition AND restore constitutional carry. Making THINGS illegal only creates criminals and justifies the embiggening of the GOV(and the militarization…)
      Don’t bother with the catastrophizing about how “school children will be injecting heroin into their eyeballs!” because that’s like what the left says every time we talk about restoring constitutional carry(“blood will run in the streets!”). The situation, as it is, is that anyone who wants drugs can get them; illegally or otherwise. It’s the same with guns. The issue is that in a free society, THINGS can not be banned. Behaviors, certain behaviors, should be illegal, (assault, theft, etc.) but protecting oneself and getting high are things the GOV should have no, and I repeat, NO say in.

  9. Funny, they don’t seem to have these high crime rates from the places these guns are supposedly coming from…

    • Liberal Logic – Well, NYC is also importing the criminals from these areas. Criminals look for laws to break, and when they find no laws to break they move on to areas that have much more laws. That is why the crime rate is so low, the criminals in those areas cannot find a law to break.

    • rc,

      You are exactly right.

      And we can divine New York City’s “problem” from District Attorney Thompson’s statement …

      When there’s a profit incentive, people … bring these guns into our city.

      It really is as simple as that. Measures to stop the inflow of firearms will never work as long as there is a profit incentive. If someone manages to stop one “distribution channel”, entrepreneurs will simply open another “distribution channel”.

      • When somebody gets around to telling NYC that they can TAX gun sales, if they were legal, and have more money to steal, er, give away free stuff with, if they actually open a free market to serve that profit motive, it’ll be over in a flash.

  11. typical liberal view it’s not my fault it’s yours! another racist remark coming from an oppressed individual that is afraid of his own shadow and wants me to be also! the Feds will push because Obama want’s to declare martial law so he can be King , all his policies, from Immigration too National budget nightmare are designed to push the unwashed into civilian rebellion’ weaken our values too the point of non recovery so him and his Maniacal Democrats can rule with no opposition, Semper FI, Semper Paratus, Molon Labe

    • Nah, there won’t be a King O the first. The people who, actually, pull the strings, even on Obama, won’t allow it. The current system has to stay in place, so there’s the illusion of a choice.

      Whilst we “debate” over guns, gay marriage, party lines, our economy is being tanked and our children’s futures are being borrowed against.

      Obama didn’t start it and he isn’t going to end it, either. Nor is the next guy, or gal.

      Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.

      • Listen to ROHC, people. This guy gets it.

        Obama isn’t going to declare himself King For Life any more than Bush did (and every idiot liberal I spoke to in 2007 was 100% certain he was going to).

  12. Never mind the fact that a lot of thes purchases are illegal and involve lying on a 4473, and regardless involve transfer in a handgun across state lines. That’s not relevant, no not at all, we needs more laws!

  13. I’ve got an idea. There is overwhelming evidence that shall-issue permits and less-restricted ownership leads to lower crime and violence. Rather than continue to swim upstream against the Constitutional rights of New Yorkers (and Californians, and Chicagoans, and Baltimoreans…), why not try an experiment to see if it is a true outcome. Let’s say Cuomo and his associates start allowing folks to keep and bear arms more freely.

    One of two things will happen. Either crime will drop like a rock and we can get on with our lives, or crime will go unchanged or increase — thus strengthening the argument for additional gun control. Sounds like a win-win for the government.

    …Unless your objectives are not as stated.

    • That experiment is being done in both Detroit and Chicago.

      We may not be seeing a ‘net effect’ yet, but we sure as hades are seeing INDIVIDUAL victimization decreasing.

      The proggies will never admit it, though. It’s not in their DNA (and, as a subscriber to the r/K Selection hypothesis, I mean not in their DNA literally).

    • Hey, hey, we will have NO LOGIC here. Just stop that. Your last statement is correct. Their objective is no guns for thee, only for me.

  14. Schools apparently gloss over the Prohibition era the way all these morons step up to the mic and gleefully repeat the same mistakes over and over.
    Or maybe these students are just learning the wrong lesson believing it failed miserably and resulted in a crime ripple we still feel today because government wasn’t big enough or mean enough to put all these problem citizens down.

    • They don’t usually get that far, about the middle of May, after spending March and April going over how Lincoln was the second coming of Jesus and those confederates were all fighting to keep their slaves, the class will gloss over the twenties with “All this excess was caused by laissez faire government and Hoover did nothing when the Great Depression started.” Then the teacher will go into the New Deal and how government saved us all from everything until it saved the planet from the right wing Nazis. And then it’s the end of the year.

      • I’m 70 years old, and I remember being bored and annoyed in grammar school because each year started with the “pilgrim fathers” in great detail, then hit just the high spots of “history” briefly the rest of the time. Classes in sociology and so many other things were filled with similar lies and made up “facts.”

        After seeing what my grandsons are being taught in “school” now, I don’t recognize much of it… mostly rewritten with very little honest, factual content. I studied real history independently all the way through college, and know the difference well. I only wish my son would take the boys out of “public school” and find a way to teach them the truth, but as a single parent he has few options. I would be glad to help, but they live 1,500 miles away.

      • If anyone is interested, Murray Rothbard’s “America’s great depression” goes into great detail on this very topic. You may not agree with Rothbard in general but there is enough detail there to make the case well despite that.

        He goes into the actual monetary policy in the 20’s, which was not actually laissez faire, but involved a sort of proto Keynesianism to help bolster the English pound, a sympathetic inflation sort of deal. He also talks about the brief recovery after the stock market crash before the Smoot Hawley tariff helped kick off the bulk of what we think of as the Great Depression.

  15. “Our problem is really the states down South, or in other parts of the country that have weak cigarette taxes. We have strong cigarette taxes, but we’re being overwhelmed with all the cigarettes from these weaker states.”

    See counselor? There’s how your logic really sounds. Regulating a legal product like you do is creating your profit center.

    • Last time i was in NYC a pack of “good” smokes was 11.50….. if ya think that’s high buy em in ILL.

      • Illinois will hit you with smuggling charges if you have more than two cartons of out of state cigs in your vehicle.

        • “I don’t know what it looks like to you, officer, but this is not distribution. This is consumption.”

        • There’s a regular “contraband” po-leece detail at the state line at 106th next to Whiting,IN. And right off the tollway. Hell back in the 90’s I was stopped and rousted by Scheraville,IN cops asking if I had any “contraband”. Nope-just an antique dealer with a van full of junk. It’s LUCRATIVE to smuggle when cigs are 4-6 bucks more/pack in the big city…and yeah anything more than a couple cartons is considered “smuggling”.

  16. Supply and demand, sir. Stop creating a market in your neighborhoods. No thugs, no demand. As long as Billy Badass wants a gun, someone will get him one. Fix your cities and leave my state alone.

  17. Hey Butthead, Puerto Rico is an Island, with extremely strict gun laws. Only politicians, wealthy businessmen and those with family connections to law enforcement can get a permit. Yet the murder rate in PR is 6 times the main land.
    How exactly would loose gun laws impact this island?
    Besides, criminals have never cared about gun laws. There is a ready supply on the black market as there is in Australia and the UK where guns are illegal, even for many of the police.

  18. Let’s build a wall around NY city with no gates, put up guard towers, and for their safety, prohibit liberals from leaving. It is what they want. It is the only way to prevent guns from getting into their safe space. Jeez.

    • There was a movie about that. It was called Escape from New York.

      It wouldn’t work anyway. Demand would be fulfilled out of basement machine shops. As with drugs now and Prohibition 90 years ago, where there is a market, someone will supply it, legally or not.

    • I agree, though you didn’t finish. After that, you need to take off and nuke them from orbit. It’s the *only* way to be sure!

      • After that, you need to take off and nuke them from orbit. It’s the *only* way to be sure!

        I’m OK with just blowing up the bridges. If things go really sideways and we need to got in for some reason… Kurt Russell’s still alive, right?

  19. Here’s an idea:

    Loosen up the gun laws in cities like New York. Make it cheaper and easier to legally purchase a gun there than in surrounding states. That should reverse the iron pipeline – create a strong flow in the other direction. If it’s economically viable people will drive from long distances to take guns out of NYC. That will quickly make the crime rate go down as the crime follows the guns south.

  20. “The ends justifies the means”. Lies, cheat, steal, commit mass murder, (especially of the most helpless, the unborn,) all for the purpose of complete and total control by the state over the people.

    History will look back upon the blood soaked madness of communism, and all of it’s spawn; marxism, socialism and progressivism and know it for what it is. Societal and cultural enslavement, by a people taught to hate and loath themselves and their culture for their incredible accomplishments in technology, science and the humanities, based on freedom of thought and individual accomplishment.

    But that is the point. The elites can’t control a free person that is well educated, self-confident, well armed and unwilling to bend their knee to the commands of their “betters”. The elites are mad with the need for power and control, it does not mean they are stupid. Which explains the present condition of our schools. They are meant to indoctrinate and brainwash for obedience; not for independent thought based on use of history, logic, fact and experience.
    .

  21. And yet, us “southern states” just don’t seem to have your violence problem. Washington DC shares it’s borders with both Virginia and Maryland. DC is a defacto gun free zone. Maryland is only slightly better. Virginia is pretty much Constitutionalist. And yet, Virginia has the lowest murder rate of the 3. But of course facts just don’t matter to these folks.

    • Atlanta’s violent crime rate makes New York City look pretty safe by comparison. Most of the states in the old south have violent crime rates that are nothing to brag about. America’s most dangerous cities aren’t confined to the liberal enclaves of the northeast, midwest or California. They include Kansas City, Memphis, Nashville, and Miami.

      Violent crime happens wherever people are piled on top of one another like cordwood. That has been the reality throughout the history of mankind. It’s wrong to assume that armed citizens caused it, and it’s wrong to assume that armed citizens will solve it.

  22. Translation: NYC’s outlaw street crime problem, combined with de Blasio’s PC termination of stop & frisk and the BLM-inspired spike in black crime makes NYC gun laws look ineffective; therefore: blame someone else.

    • Stop and frisk was clearly unconstitutional from day one, the fact that it worked did not change that. NYC should have realized that and worked on developing a backup plan while prolonging the agony in court. Calling that doofus’s action “PC” when he was forced to do it by SCOTUS is a bit disingenuous, though I like it.

      • If the Fourth and Fifth Amendments are “PC”, then I’m proud to be politically correct.

        It’s as if people seem to have forgotten that civil rights apply even to people they don’t like.

        And no, “Stop and Frisk” didn’t work. The arrest rate from those stops was abysmally low (i.e., they were warrantlessly suspicionlessly detaining and searching people due to their gender and skin color and not due to any particular contraband).

  23. Another day, another liberal blaming anything but themselves. Your chances of being shot against your own will are higher in blue states. You’d think they wouldn’t care about white men in free states shooting themselves, but then you’d be assuming they cared about anyone else in the first place.

  24. So, the problem is the gun, not the sociopaths walking around the streets of New York who are willing to commit acts of violence at the drop of a hat? Got it.

  25. These people can’t see the big picture even if the entire country enacted these draconian pieces of legislature there is and always will be a demand for guns and because of that there’ll always be a supply and if you take away the current legal supply you open the door for a blackmarket which will cause actual machine guns among other more dangerous and illicit weapons to fall into criminal hands and these people always use a scapegoat for the laws inability to do what they promise they gloss over the fact that you have to be a resident of the state you’re buying a gun in meaning someone residing in New York can’t buy a gun in Mississippi without a straw purchase or identity fraud both of which are already a crime and it never crosses their mind to think that if criminals can’t get guns in the US they’ll import them illegally or just make their own.

    • Your descriptions of “dangerous weapons” leaves me shaking my head. If we pass enough laws against normal firearms, and enforce them strenuously enough, we will force criminals to begin producing their own weapons like Afghanis do, which will result in weapons which actually ARE dangerous!

  26. Yeah, we’re F’d up and we can’t figure out that we’re f’d up, or that our people are stupid dangerous out-of-control POS, but we’re going to blame “the south” until the di<k-tutorial dealings with them F them up, and still don't fix the problem with our POS people that we seem to keep breeding in our POS (D) blue cities. Then we'll blame the mid-west.

  27. “It’s those SOUTHERN STATES with their CHILDKILLING GUNLAWS. Why, without them, our criminals couldn’t get guns! And without guns, all these criminals would turn their lives around!”

    ^^^
    mind-boggling levels of stupid

  29. Oh God… The “iron pipeline” really? I guess this is the conservative version of the Ho Chi Minh trail now? Well, with your insane liberal policies, might as well just straif and napalm this “iron pipeline” and see where that gets you. Liberalism is a mental condition borne of ignorance and brainwashing.

  31. Of course he’s still going to host that stupid West Indian parade again, several people will be shot and killed, and it will be the southern states fault. Couldn’t be your residents that don’t know how to act like civilized human beings.

  33. All I got was “NYC has a criminal problem but decides firearms in the South are the cause of it”.

  34. Yeah, same false argument that non vaccinated kids are the cause of outbreaks in highly vaccinated communities. The similarities never end.

  36. I’m wondering if the thug culture and drug gangs in NYC that are the *actual* cause of all that violence is somehow the fault of Southerners, too.

  37. Since gun stores in Georgia operate under the the same laws as gun stores in NYC and criminals in Georgia break the same laws as criminals in NYC. FAIL

  38. Yes, where there is a profit, people will ignore the laws. Therefore… we must make more laws?

    Wow…

  40. Funny how all these problems in new york started when they dumped “stop & frisk” and brought in the DeBelasio.

  41. We have strong gun laws, but we’re being overwhelmed with all the guns from these weaker states.”
    The movie Escape From New York needs to become reality.
    Nothing goes in. Nothing goes out.

  42. Sir I would like to point out another common denomination. That is NYC and other large urban centers with really high crime rates are all liberal democrat run. And have been for decades.

    • People there LIKE crime! Just don’t try screwing with our free stuff! Which is always going to arrive next year.

  43. It must be part of the progressive manifesto, “thou shall blame someone, something and anything on your own failings and take zero responsibility for thy self”

  44. Where’s the data? All I see here is a hypothetical. What we do know is crime and violence is far greater in certain parts of large urban areas (million dollar blocks), that over the last 30 years at least 75% of those that commit homicide have an adult criminal record (of the other 25% most are juveniles that by definition can’t have an adult criminal record), that 50-75% of homicide victims over the same period are also criminals, and that over 97% of guns criminals obtained were from friends, family, and other criminals.
    The situation is career criminals killing other career criminals during or over illegal activity, such as the distribution of illegal goods, with illegally obtained guns sourced in an illegal manner. Somehow from that dynamic the CNN commentator here believes the ability to buy a gun in southern states is the problem, nevermind the multitude of felonies committed on the way to “profit”, assuming his hypothetical is even true. This is simply a lazy variation of the “NRA merchant of death” theme, which was already a lazy and false characterization. Chasing the source of guns won’t stop criminals anyway, it would at best change their source. The real problems are enforcement, the corrections system, and the war on drugs, but those are all too large and intimidating to fault, let alone change.

    • Atlanta is not a State and is not indicative of the effectiveness of freer State gun laws. When was the last time Atlanta had a Republican Mayor?
      I can’t remember either and I grew up here.

  47. Yeah New York values. I can relate as the state(really republicans) are talking about taking over Chicago schools. Pathetic democrat hellholes suck. Can’t think of any reason to care…

  48. NYC can FOAD.

    Wanna come live down south? Learn how behave like a person and leave yer “New York state of mind” ultra liberalism up there in yankeeville.

  49. So, the air in NYC animates the eeee-vil guns that otherwise sit passively in their racks, safes and holsters when in southern state, flyover-country; causing them to flail about bullet-hosing Brooklyn once they get there.

    This is to be solved by eliminating guns that just sit there, held by people who aren’t the problem, in those remote states where the problem is not. Maybe fix the air in Brooklyn. Can we get the EPA on this?

    Really the argument seems to be: we can’t handle guns; support a local society that can handle guns; manage BGs who misuse guns (in our jurisdiction); keep the guns we don’t want out of our own back yard; and incidentally keep our own people or police safe. So, because we can’t do that, you can’t have guns.

    Am I missing something?

    The “risk” argument they are using is flawed. I’m not allowed to put you at risk by, for example, running a demolition derby, or robot wars, in the street in front of your house, spewing shrapnel at you as a byproduct. This gun thing is something else. With guns in Southern States (vs. robot wars on the street where you live):

    – Somebody has to drag the Bad Things into your world. They don’t get there by themselves, nor do I bring them. (Bringing them there is already illegal.) If you can’t handle them, maybe keep them out. But what’s that have to do with me?

    – Somebody has to intentionally do something Bad with the Bad Things for Bad Stuff to happen. When they happen, the Bad Stuff is what some Bad People wanted to do. It ain’t the guns, and it ain’t the folks in those Southen States.
    — Really, without someone operating them, guns are pretty much paperweights.
    — And what does someone states away having a gun (or a beer) have to do with one of your neighbors being an idiot, a psycho, or a thug.
    — So, *those people* can handle these dangerous things, but you and yours cannot. It’s almost as if *those people* are better than you. So, you wanna stop them from doing things you can’t handle?

    – The Bad Stuff is pretty localized. Even Brooklyn is free of shrapnel sprayed from the firing of guns in Southern States. You might have a point with cruise missiles or really good artillery. Shoot that in a Southern State and it might land on you. With guns – small arms – your risk is from locals. Maybe pay attention to people who’s shrapnel can reach you.

  50. I’m more concerned about the Bullsheet Pipeline thst runs from his azz to the bottom of his voicebox.

  51. If you anus wipes weren’t so obsessed with violating the Constitution and infringing Americans’ natural, civil, and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear Arms, this wouldn’t be an issue for you! You see, your lawless TYRANNY has created this “problem” and therefore it is NOT a real problem. So, stop bawling about it and repeal your illegal “Laws” that infringe and deny the Peoples’ Rights and guess what? It won’t be a problem anymore, as it never should have been in the first place! Putz!

  52. The DAs logic is inescapable, irrefutable. If no one in any state can sell guns, the traffic from gun sellers into NYC would just evaporate. Can’t fight that.

    Well, except for the “criminal element”, and we all know we can’t do anything about that.

  54. The iron pipeline of guns flowing into nyc is not coming from our friends down south. Holder and Bush forged an alliance. You got it, operation fast receiver!!! The justice dept, atf dhs and Obama are in on this game. Chapo lost a shipment of 50calibers that’s gonna wind up in the big apple. The d.a. will then be able to assign blame to all the guilty parties involved…

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