There's an idiot named Eric Schneiderman running in the race for state Attorney General this fall. He thinks the reason there's so much gun violence in Niagara Falls, Buffalo and New York City is that the state's gun laws aren't strong enough.
Specifically referring to the recent massacre at Buffalo's City Grill, he advocated a new law.
"You want to do something to stop gun violence?" he asked. "One thing that we could do that would work is to mandate the microstamping of guns. If we could pass a law that would mandate that all guns sold in the state of New York have such an imprint, then whenever there was a shooting, we could look at the shell casings and we'd know immediately where the gun came from and could then easily find out who owned the gun at the time of the shooting. We missed passing an imprinting bill in the Senate by only two votes. But I'm going to keep fighting for it, no matter what special interests I have to take on."
OK. A couple of things:
New York's Sullivan Law, one of the most draconian gun laws in the country, effectively prohibits most law-abiding citizens from owning a handgun for their own protection.
There's a good case to be made that if there had been one man or woman in the City Grill that night who legally had a handgun and was practiced in its use, McCray could have been dispatched before he had a chance to slaughter five people.
Guys like Schneiderman will never understand this. They believe an inanimate object, the gun, is bad, rather than allowing themselves to believe that there are bad people.
But there are bad people. Far too many of them, in fact. And we think the state's top law enforcement officer should recognize that simple fact.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Sept. 7, 2010 |