MAIG mayors against illegal guns bloomberg meeting
(Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)
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Dozens of mayors from America’s biggest cities are demanding the U.S. Senate pass more gun control. “We write to urge the Senate to pass during the lame duck session gun safety legislation that has passed the House…,” the mayors’ letter states.

An answer to the crime problem plaguing these cities might not be found in Congress. Rather the mayors should look closer to home for solutions. Or better yet, take a good long look in the mirror.

Their First Demand

The letter was sent by The United States Conference of Mayors and was signed by 74 mayors. They made two demands of U.S. Sens. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

First, they want the Senate to pass S. 736, the Assault Weapons Ban of 2022, which would ban an entire class of firearms – modern sporting rifles (MSRs) — that are commonly-owned and commonly-used. Industry data estimates there are more than 24.4 million in circulation since 1990, with ownership exploding in recent years.

Enacting the ban on MSRs, or the semiautomatic centerfire rifles the mayors misleadingly deem “assault weapons,” would not “in any way infringe on Second Amendment rights,” the mayors suggest. They claim two-thirds of Americans support banning MSRs, but The Reload reported that’s flat false. Less than 50 percent of Americans support such a ban.

That’s likely because more law-abiding Americans than ever before – including women and minorities – have purchased MSRs to use for self-defense, recreational shooting and hunting. In any event, constitutional rights aren’t decided by a popularity contest.

The FBI’s Uniform Crime Report shows more murders were committed by individuals using knives, fists and clubs than by those using any rifle – not just MSRs like AR-15s. The Senate bill would likely not even receive 50 votes, let alone the 60 votes required, as Sens. John Tester (D-Mont.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) have repeatedly voiced opposition.

Their Second Demand

The letter’s second demand is for the Senate to pass a bill enacting a universal background check system to track all firearm transfers, including private ones. The mayors say this constitutes “closing loopholes” and stopping buyers from “circumventing the law.” Those two phrases are oxymorons as the law is the law, as written – there is no loophole or circumvention.

The legislation, S. 529, The Background Check Expansion Act, has severe legal problems as its implementation requires a national firearm registry. That’s specifically prohibited under the 1986 Gun Control Act and the 1993 Brady Act. It’s unlawful because history teaches us that registration is a necessary precursor to confiscation by the government.

The legislation would also, “aid law enforcement’s ability to trace crime guns.” They want to repeal the Tiahrt Amendment which restricts public access to sensitive, law enforcement-only firearm tracing data.

This restriction is supported by Congress, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and law enforcement groups such as the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) because it secures sensitive tracing information which would jeopardize ongoing criminal investigations and put the lives of law enforcement officers, cooperating retailers and witnesses at risk.

They also fail to mention that their own law enforcement agencies have access to trace data for their cities, that they can share data with other agencies and that ATF has joint task forces and regularly share intelligence with state and local law enforcement often derived from examining trace data.

Who Signed the Letter?

The signers are a who’s who of gun control supporters, with one glaring similarity. Democrats make up 92 percent, or 68 of the 74 letter co-signers. The mayors of several of the Top 10 cities which had the most Americans fleeing them in recent years signed, including San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Seattle, Chicago and Detroit. Surging crime and soft-on-criminals policies have been a significant issue in those cities.

(Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)

New York City Mayor Eric Adams signed. He ran his campaign on getting tough on criminals, but has instead deflected action and pushed for national gun control.

Portland ted wheeler mayor
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler (AP Photo/Craig Mitchelldyer, File)

Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler signed the letter. His city descended into chaos and saw a federal courthouse set on fire by rioters. Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell signed too. Criminals in Seattle under previous mayor Jenny Durkan set up a “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone,” or CHAZ, where law enforcement was prohibited. That’s where “Raz the Warlord” was captured on video handing out AR-15s from his Tesla’s trunk, violating several of Seattle’s existing gun laws.

Screencap by Boch. Via Twitter.

Chicago’s Lori Lightfoot, also a signer, has been too busy making dance music videos to address the surging crime problem plaguing the Windy City.

San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo (By Anthony Quintano from Honolulu, HI, United States – This file has been extracted from another file: Facebook F8 2017 San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo (33272015914).jpg, CC BY 2.0, Link)

San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo already passed gun ownership restrictions on residents even though he admitted to CNN his plans won’t address the crime problem. “Skeptics will say that criminals won’t comply. They’re right,” he said.

Several of the mayors who signed the gun control letter come from Red states where voters have approved constitutional carry laws in the past years and expanded the ability of law-abiding Americans to purchase legal firearms, including MSRs, for self-defense.

What the mayors refuse to accept is that criminals don’t follow their laws. They should focus their efforts closer to home and hold criminals accountable instead of running to Washington, D.C., and passing the buck.

 

Larry Keane is SVP for Government and Public Affairs, Assistant Secretary and General Counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

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66 COMMENTS

    • “Liberty then I would say that, in the whole plenitude of it’s extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will: but rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will, within the limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’; because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.” Thos. Jefferson

    • They look like a bunch of Amish got badly sunburned. But hey we all know that cities dominated by Chinese, Cubans, Koreans, Scots, etc are crime ridden hives of villany as opposed to cities that wage war on Christmas, white males, straights, and all those feudalists who cling to the Constitution.

      The one common factor I saw in thirty years overseas in the worst shit holes was gun control, except of course for the “connected,”

  1. They all subscribe to the old addage……”if you can’t dazzle em with brilliance, baffle em with bulls**t”!!

    • What we need now more than ever is for the History of Gun Control Rot to be silent for one year per the request I received from the forum’s self appointed spokesman docdurajoke.

      And according to the potty mouth catcotheclown-show lecturing me about how my fact checked after fact checked statement History Confirms Gun Control in any Shape, Matter or Form is Rooted In Racism and Genocide just doesn’t cut it. Why that’s old hat thinking and mayors and their constituents don’t need to be exposed to any History of Gun Control and such.

      Apparently what’s needed to deal with Gun Control today is to circle around today’s metro sexual Gun Owner battle call, The Second Amendment Is For Everyone…duh that idea is actually old hat bozo.

      • That was unintelligible. Hopefully day drinking is to blame, and not something more serious.

      • That is the written version of extreme slurring of speech. You should take two aspirin, just to be on the safe side.

      • Your suggestions are all well and good but that’s about as far as they go. The real change will come when the voters, who have the primary interest in all this, decide it’s up to them to toss these proselytizing, would-be tyrants out of office and replace them and their entire cadre of bureaucrats with real people who have spent their entire lives in the “real world”.

        The political landscape is made up almost entirely of entitled office holders who never had to worry about paying their own bills with money they, themselves, had to go out and earn. The “racist” component may have been part of the foundational pillars of denying “lesser people” to defend themselves from crooks, vandals and their own authorities, but today’s rulers seek to enslave and control everyone not on their social plain regardless of race, creed, or color. So long as “government knows best” is the driver, no one can be free.

        • Sadly, what the voters think is irrelevant now since elections are now fake. We are no longer citizens, we are subjects.

        • “We are no longer citizens, we are subjects.”

          Not all of us. More than a few MW and southern states, including Iowa, retain citizen status. Easy to complain, more difficult to organize and make changes or shore up liberties. A good start would be to pass state voter ID legislation. It’s made a difference here.

          One thing conservatives often forget is to come down hard on their own when they start to stray to the left. I believe little darling Joni Ernst will have an uphill battle when she tries to run again, for example. And it’s not just a problem with gun owners. She’d seem to rather listen to The Turtle McConnell than here subjects- er, citizen voters. There are still some places where people have both memories and principles.

  2. Judging by the first photo, what they have in common is that they are mostly black, Jews, or women. The founding fathers set it up so that only white, land owning men were allowed to vote. How far we have fallen, as we have strayed from their wisdom.

      • The term “disenfranchising” is only relevant when taking about turning out the vote. The OP wasn’t saying anything about voting. Those demographics are widely known for voting for communism. He was talking about making their voting illegal, which would immediately take away 90% of the votes for gun control. That is the truth!

      • How about excluding those who do not pay income taxes; are public charges; and yes religion. Muslims were prohibited from immigrating to this nation as as far as I know anyone who has more than one wife is still excluded.

        Now we have wymen with penises. I’d also exclude anyone who hasn’t served in the military. Democracy demonstrates that the brain dead, not to mention the dead are elected. Convince me I am in error.

    • Repealing the 17th Amendment would probably fix things quicker then pulling the vote of a huge swath of Americans.

    • “The founding fathers set it up so that only white, land owning men were allowed to vote.”

      Look, everybody! Little Tommy J the racist piece of sh!t decided to grace us with his presence!

      Do everyone a solid and paint your 2 brain cells on the ceiling, please?

      • That was a moronic response to Thomas with no substance and no attempt to use facts or logic to provide a counter argument. Are you a boomer?

        • Rodney, clearly you are a so expert and knowledgeable that your main argument is “are you a boomer?”

          Tell us all about your gender studies major. Yes we can look at the genius of the founding fathers and contrast it with a government so corrupt, so depraved, that it clearly suits you.

          Men without chests, chins, and spines always support their own.

          Pathetic groomer.

      • Sounds like you are the racist here and not informed either. Those items you mentioned have been changed either by Constitutional amendments or by laws duly passed by Congress since the founding of this Nation. We call that progress. I have 5 black cousins, two Chinese and a grandson adopted from S. Korea. I am white and call it the way I see it. I am also 77 years old and have seen the signs in the South saying white and colored on bathrooms and water fountains. Also, saw the Federal Marshalls escort black students into the schools in Alabama and Arkansas.
        More progress. Was around for the Civil Rights movement led by Martin Luther King, again more progress. Is the Country perfect? Nope! Is it better now in terms of people having more tolerance for race and gender difference? Yes! I call it the way I see it and right now the real racists are the ones who are always complaining about it and spewing hate for other who disagree with them. Now if you don’t like what I have said here that’s too bad.

        • That was some powerful virtue signaling. What you progressives call “progress” has been an unmitigated disaster by any measure. Cities are third world war zones and rural America is a hollowed out shell of what you boomers inherited. In a single generation, you turned the best country in the history of the world into something more degenerate than the Weimar Republic. “Oh, but I have black cousins,” you exclaim. No one cares.

        • What a load of fertilizer. We see more black racism, in violent forms throughout the nation. We see more faux hate crimes to signal moral superority, “they were ll wearing Twitter hates…..”

          Worse we see absolute discriminations based on race, gneder and religion by perverts of the worst sort. My foreign friends are amazed by the animals loose in the USA. The Civil Rights Act was a bad joke, it eliminated property rights and the freedom to associate. Who says the US is a better place after its passage?

          By the way I don’t think you’re a better person because you have six accordian playing, Eskimo, jewish, dwarf, bisexual cousins. I think your family has deep seated mental problems and was probably declared personna non grata in every community they tried to settle in.

  3. Why don’t these Mayors just enforce the existing Laws, Prosecute Criminals, and keep convicts incarcerated for the Full Term of their Sentence? Talk about crime falling like a rock!

    • The Democratic Party benefits greatly from their own failures. They cause the problem and then they convince their constituents that they are the solution for the problem and stay in power into perpetuity all while never fixing the problem. Just look at Baltimore if you want an example of what I’m talking about

    • Bill, the mayors don’t enforce existing laws because these mayors are losers and enforcing existing laws is too inconvenient for them.

    • Because solving problems means you can’t run on them again.

      Also, how do you build a police state when people are armed and no one wants a massive police force?

      Not to slander, or even bring Freemasons into this, but the modern Left (and much of the GOP) believes in Ordo ab Chao.

      Create the chaos, let it stew, wait for the people to demand something be done. Then give them what they ask for. Sure, it’s not going to be what the people want but there’s too many people and they’re mostly morons anyway. What’s really needed is fine control and, well, ve ‘ave veys, Komrade!

      They’re probably smart enough not to give it a really bad name, like “Cheka” or “Gestapo” but it’s the same thing with a different name and face.

    • They wouldn’t get the Bloomberg bucks if they did that. You remember Mike Bloomberg? The guy that hired former PR executive for Monsanto and Well Point, Shannon Watts, to run a new PR Firm out of her kitchen and gaslight the public when his PAC Everytown for Gun Safety failed to gain traction with white women.

  4. They’re from cities that have almost exclusively been run by Democrats for many decades. Even in the rare cases where a Republican mayor is elected for a term or two, they’re nominally conservative, and the council stays hard core Dem. Rather than take responsibility for their failed policies and change them, they blame guns and leave their constituents to suffer while doing nothing real to improve their plight. Since they keep getting re-elected, there’s no need to change, so they’re happy to screw the constituents.

    • You might start to think about why that is.

      And you might start figuring that out by looking into “normal schools” before watching/rewatching Yuri Bezmenov tell you all about this.

  5. The dems have won the popular vote in 7 of the last 8 presidential elections. Let’s do away with the electoral college and the repulithugs will never put another scumbag in the White House

  6. What The US Mayors Who Demand More Federal Gun Control Laws Have in Common…

    Donations originating from a certain someone? Money talks.

    • “Democrats make up 92 percent, or 68 of the 74 letter co-signers.”
      That means 6 rethuglican mayors are turncoats and while all need to be tarred and feathered those 6 need to be dispatched now! Looking for the list, I want to know who these anti America creeps are.

  7. Brought to you by the same incompetent racist ideologues who brought you no cash bail and who don’t believe in putting criminals in jail.

    Gun control has nothing to do with decreasing crime and everything to do with the ruling class trying to prohibit average people from having the means to oppose them.

    • thats it. they want control, total control.
      they know while we have arms they can’t get what they want.
      the more rights we get restored the louder they scream.
      they don’t even try to hide it anymore. the lies, the cheating, the blatantly unconstitutional laws they pass.
      for several years I’ve been saying we’re in a cold civil war and they are trying to heat it up.
      NEVER give up your guns because you won’t get them back.
      On your feet or on your knees. Your choice

  8. A prediction. Very few if any people will comply with an assault weapon ban or the rule not law currently being pushed by ATF to make AR15 style pistols with a brace now legal only if you pay a tax and register them which is against the law. My advice to those who own those items is civil disobedience. When those types of things were tried in NY, CT and NJ they were a total flop and law enforcement indicated they would only deal with those issues in the commission of another crime or potential crime. Confiscation is another myth simply because of the numbers involved. They don’t have enough people who are either stupid enough or willing to get shot confiscating your legally purchased firearms. The Second Amendment was clearly stated in the Bruen Decision and there is no reason for anyone to obey these changes which are unconstitutional while those who make them violate the law on a daily basis. If they want compliance, then they should start obeying the law themselves.

    • I purchased my Springfield Saint 300BLK pistol from Springfields website and it was transferred to my lgs where I passed the unconstitutional background check and brought it home. The BATFECES doesn’t get to pull a rule out of their asses and now call it an SBR. The only changes made to this pistol were the addition of a Romeo Red Dot. Leave me the hell alone.

  9. When the problem is perpetually somebody else’s fault you never have to do anything other than blame and complain.

    It’s great for grifters and the useless.

    • Bloomberg, Sharpton, Watts, Adams…so so many we can’t name them all. Just know that they don’t give a flying rat’s ass about you. You mean nothing to them unless you’re in their path. These bastards can’t die soon enough.

  10. Just got a question for Groot, how many of those glock switches in the pic released by CPD a few weeks ago were prosecuted as NFA violations?

  11. Funny that Mayors Against Illegal Guns is all about doing away with legal ones, with no concern for those that are actually illegal.

    If they really wanted to reduce crime, they’d become simply “Mayors Against Illegals.”

  12. Dem leftists are racist in not focusing on the real issue, gangs, that commit most of the murder, mostly by and against the black community. No, lets remove freedom from the citizens by increasing state power and control.

  13. Their a$$h0le$ are larger than their heads? And like Miner & dacian they spend most of their lives talking out of them.

  14. I didn’t know they had color photography when slavery existed.

    Oh, that’s not what the article title was about? I just assumed by the picture demographics…nevermind.

    Funny how pictures like this don’t elicit the same comments (epithets) used towards pro-Trump minorities or even Trump cabinet members.

  15. Proactively dealing with the 6% of the population that is the “usual suspects” would be more effective than the proposed legislation.

    • Targeting the distinct minority of them that are repeat offenders and actually applying the current law would be a better idea.

      Especially since it doesn’t build a system that will, 110% guaranteed, be turned against everyone else most ruthlessly.

  16. Honestly, they’ve done this for quite a while. I’m unimpressed that it continues like some shitbag off Broadway production that goes on for decades years.

    Now, what I am somewhat interested in is why Southwest is suddenly “offering” you the “opportunity” to pay a carbon offset fee.

    Sounds suspiciously like one of those things that works like a cell phone. Optional right up until it’s not.

    • Need to tax us into compliance somehow. With our luck fusion will get figured out and electricity will become cheap and abundant but social credit will determine your connection.

      • You will not move without permission. You will not do ANYTHING without permission.

        And the people who will complain the loudest are the people who are sleepwalking right into the system that will enslave them.

  17. The Senate needs to pass a law outlawing all Liberals including in Congress. Send them to Russia for six months and see if they miss America.

  18. More guns equal less crime. Just ask the rest of the free world.

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