NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, sick of guns finding their way onto his streets, launched an undercover operation regarding the gun show loophole. The loophole exempts private sellers at gun shows to sell weapons without conducting the normal background check. However, the law also stipulates that they can't make the sale if they have reason to believe the buyer would fail the check.
Bloomberg's agents, skipping subtly entirely, simply told the sellers they'd fail the background check. And wouldn't you know it if most of the sellers didn't care a whit!
Steve Benen compares this to the ACORN videos and asks when we're going to see 24/7 Fox coverage and Congressional hearings. I'll tell you when: it's when a Democratic Congressman (Alan Grayson?) gets on TV and says "the next time your Grandma is afraid to walk home at night because of some thug patrolling the street with a pistol, remember that House Republicans think the real outrage would be if that criminal was unable to buy it."
Unfair? Sure. Symmetrical? Definitely.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I'll also note that this is different from the ACORN video in another element (besides not being ridiculous): this is a sample, not an incident. In 35 of 47 cases, the agents could buy a gun; with the ACORN video, the guy had too much time on his hands and, after being sent away by many ACORN workers, kept going until he found one that gave him enough of what he wanted.
There's also the problem that even in the worst cases, the ACORN folks didn't do anything that actually helped the "pimp and 'ho" -- they were giving them erroneous tax advice (you can't just claim dependents on your tax return; you need a valid SS#) -- and in some cases were clearly messing with them, or stringing them along in order to get enough information to report them to police.
Unless these sellers were giving people fake guns, it's not analogous.
Post a Comment