Daily Press: Time for Virginia to "Enforce the Law" on Guns
By: Lowell
Published On: 5/29/2007 7:55:08 AM
You know, the more I think about it, the more it becomes obvious that what Bob McDonnell and other Republicans have been doing on the gun issue is pure political posturing, nothing more. As the Daily Press writes today, referring to the whole Bloomberg-Bob (McDonnell) brouhaha:
Nothing Bloomberg did required a full-tilt legislative response.
Except in Virginia, where politicians sometimes seem more eager to cozy up to the pro-gun camp than to enforce the law.
Is that unfair? Go back to the beginning of this story: If Virginia were adequately enforcing gun laws, the state wouldn't be well known at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms as one of the top sources of illegal guns used in crimes in other states. It's not as bad as it used to be, before Virginia put in its one-gun-per-month purchase limit, but it's still a problem.
It was Bloomberg's problem. It was Virginia's problem. Now that we've told hizzoner to butt out, let's fix our problem. After all, being a supply source for criminals' weapons is nothing to be proud of.
By the way, for comments by Creigh Deeds and Donald McEachin on this subject, please see minute 52:00 of our latest Blog Talk Radio show. According to Deeds:
My thought on the Attorney General's action is that he just was making a political football out of this whole thing, I thought that the battle of press releases was just ridiculous, and just a political ploy on his part to say to the gun lobby, I'm on your side. And I thought it was particularly insensitive given the fact that just a few weeks before that, we had this awful tragedy at Virginia Tech.
Also, Deeds points out that the NRA gave more money to McDonnell than to him in 2005, despite the NRA de facto having endorsed Creigh Deeds. According to Donald McEachin, all this nonsense from Bob McDonnell about Michael Bloomberg is "absolutely" maneuvering for his upcoming 2009 gubernatorial race with Bill Bolling, George Allen, etc.
Comments
This is the way to get on the gun issue (humanfont - 5/29/2007 12:04:35 PM)
The NRA is constantly talking about how we don't need new gun laws; we just need to enforce the ones we've got. The D party should push this hard in the next cycle. We can beat up the republicans, not by promoting more gun control; just for lapses in enforcing our gun laws through our attourney general. A catalog of failings would be nice.
Republican Key to Success? (K - 5/29/2007 12:46:44 PM)
Change the Virginia state motto to: "Gun Dealer to the Nation."
Then watch as more than a few (alas!) cynical Democrats drool in envy at your foresight.
"Crime arsenal of the Northeast" perhaps (mkfox - 5/29/2007 2:07:44 PM)
Most guns used in crimes north of the Potomac come from Va, stats show. After Bloomberg's straw purchase initiative, Richmond should've said, "Wow, thank you for bringing this to our attention, we'll work with you on it because we don't want guns to fall into the wrong hands because of crooked gun store owners," rather than passing an NRA-pushed bill which protects only crooked businesses. Maybe Va and the South's motto should be: "A race to be the NRA's biggest bitch."
What stats? (countertop - 5/29/2007 4:39:24 PM)
Seriously. Do you have any? The only thing I've seen are Bloomberg's delirious rantings.
I don't say "stats show" without seeing/having them (mkfox - 5/29/2007 8:09:19 PM)
Philly Inquirer reports:
Still, the statistics put Virginia squarely in the midst of the argument. Data once collected by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives tracked the source of guns used in crimes that were collected by city police across the country.
In New York, four out of five guns came from out of state. The single largest source for those out-of-state guns? Virginia (with Florida, North Carolina and Georgia right behind).
The statistics run up the East Coast. In the District of Columbia, for example, Maryland and Virginia together supplied more than half the guns found. In Camden, Virginia was the source for one out of six guns. Virginia was the biggest out-of-state source in Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Each region of the country has its own sources for guns. Chicago drew many from Indiana but also from the Deep South; most Miami guns came from Florida, but its out-of-state sources were Georgia, Texas and California.
http://www.philly.co...
And it used to be even a bigger problem before the gun-purchase limit law was passed
http://scholar.lib.v...
Guess they weren't "delirious rantings" (Lowell - 5/29/2007 9:35:54 PM)
after all.
Countertop: Maybe I'm just confused about this, but why would anyone have a problem with strictly enforcing the gun laws that are on the books?
pandering and ill-timed remarks (bamboo - 5/29/2007 4:28:09 PM)
McDonnell wasn't the only one pandering. White House's Dana Perinno said on the day of Tech shootings that Bush upheld citizen's right to own guns in the same statement expressing official grief. It was so disgustingly inappropriate that it made everything that followed from the WH that week look calculated and politically correct (at least from POV of 2nd amendment radicals). Bush reporteldy said the same himself sometime during that sad episode. Where's responsible leadership in all this? How long can we tolerate what is the equivalent of censorship on debate over reasonable gun policies?
Gov. Kaine has put gun control legislation on the table (Quizzical - 5/30/2007 1:29:53 PM)
This may be a good thread to mention this. On May 23, Gov. Kaine put gun control legislation on the table, without committing to any specifics:
http://www.examiner....
He wants to see the report of the committee investigating the Va. Tech shootings and then take up the issue next Fall.
However, enforcing the laws on the books seems like a sensible thing in light of what's happened.
Besides enforcing exsisting laws, (mkfox - 5/30/2007 2:51:30 PM)
The best thing General Assembly can do is also implement laws prohibiting guns on government and government-owned (libraries, parks, offices) property, implement a three to five day waiting period on gun purchases and close the gun show background check loophole. And to hell with the VCDL and their gun lust! (I'm disappointed the Examiner story didn't interview the Brady Campaign to get the other side of the concealed weapons issue.)