Bloomberg Operating Outside NYC - Again
by Jim Shepherd
Seems New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg doesn't much care where he sends his officers outside their jurisdiction if it advances his anti-gun agenda. And it seems federal authorities have very little interest in slamming him for activities that would land a mere mortal in a federal penitentiary for being an accessory in a felonious act.
[Earlier this week] The New York Times reported that Bloomberg had apparently sent undercover investigators to the January 23 Crossroads of the West Gun Show held in Phoenix, Arizona.
Then, at a press conference, Bloomberg showed undercover videotape of three purchases reportedly made at the Crossroads of the West Show. Among those purchases, a "Glock pistol and two high-capacity magazines -like the ones used in the Tucson shooting."
No reference was made to the fact that the Glock model is among the world's most popular pistols -or that magazine capacities vary according to either regulation, or user tastes.
According to Bloomberg, investigators bought guns in private transactions despite their having alluded to their being unable to pass a background check.
Private sales between individuals are not subject to background checks- but private sellers are not supposed to make sales to individuals who might not otherwise be able to pass background checks. That makes the seller - and the purchaser - guilty of a felony. Anyone party to those illegal purchases (as in the mayor who sent them undercover with the intent to make an illegal purchase) an accessory. A fact that seemed to escape the reporters in attendance.
We're not even going to go into the entrapment discussion - the investigators were slightly out of their jurisdiction, and no word -yet- on their having checked in with local authorities before staging their allegedly illicit purchases.
During his photo-op, Bloomberg told reporters that he and the eldest son of Martin Luther King Jr. had tried to convince President Obama to raise the issue of tighter gun controls in his state of the union address. He didn't, and Bloomberg called that a "missed opportunity" although he said he was "encouraged" that some members of the president's staff assured him Mr. Obama would "take the matter up separately."
Bloomberg's a determined advocate for tighter gun controls- and is absolutely willing to do whatever he thinks necessary to crack down on firearms ownership. And, it seems, he has a willing accomplice in the mainstream media.
CNN's online reports highlighted the Bloomberg story with a "new" fact that "87% of guns seized by Mexican authorities and traced in the last 5 years originated in the US."
Sorry, CNN, but that's just not true.
Only a fraction of the guns seized by Mexican authorities originated in the United States. The majority were purchased and smuggled in from other countries or stolen from Mexican police and military bases.
The drug wars aren't being fought with semiautomatic pistols, they're being fought with military-issued fully-automatic weapons.
The small number of guns which could be traced did, in fact, originate in the United States. But...the majority of those had been reported stolen or sold in secondary purchases, not purchased directly from unscrupulous dealers along the borders.
For all intents and purposes, most tracking of firearms ends with a legitimate sale to an individual purchaser. That purchaser was subject to a NICS background checks and the requisite federal form (4473) on which the purchaser states that he or she understands any lies on that form are federal offenses, and they are legally entitled to purchase a firearm.
From that point, the firearm is generally traced from owner-to-owner by old-fashioned police work. Many times, that trail goes cold with a theft report.
Again, it's a case of a lack of familiarity with the facts - or an unwillingness to challenge any anti-gun rhetoric. The half-truths are then quoted as irrefutable fact by reporters who more than likely generally don't have any knowledge of firearms - or firearms regulations. To many reporters, every gun - regardless of its capabilities- is an "assault weapon".
But ignorance is absolutely no excuse for lazy reporting. Even in New York City, there are experts on firearms that can help a reporter, producer or associate producer do some basic fact-checking.
Regurgitation of supplied statistics and "facts" without a basic questioning of their validity is one of the myriad of reasons that CNN is now nowhere near the top of an industry it founded.
But CNN's not alone in the intellectual laziness, virtually all the "mainstream" media has accepted Bloomberg's half-truths with absolutely no question.
Maybe that's why the "mainstream" is no longer the public's primary source for news and unbiased information.
Republished from The Outdoor Wire.
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