Posted on 02/11/2009 6:42:09 AM PST by DocH
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand was a long way from the rural and suburban congressional district she used to represent when she met Monday with the mother of a 17-year-old girl who was shot and killed in Brooklyn last month.
It's in places like Bedford-Stuyvesant, where Nyasia Pryear-Yard died at a teenagers' night club, that the issue of guns changes so dramatically that Ms. Gillibrand has to re-examine how she thinks. Protecting the rights of gun owners and showing a sensitivity toward hunting must be reconciled with stopping gun violence.
Ms. Gillibrand has a new and very different constituency. She represents, for instance, Jennifer Pryear, Nyasia's mother.
"I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt to do what she says she's going to do,'' Ms. Pryear says.
For Ms. Gillibrand, that would mean opposing some measures she never should have supported, even as she looked out for hunters back home.
The Tiahrt Amendment, named for Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., is a case in point. No law-abiding person's interests are served by a law that makes federal data off limits to local police agencies trying to crack down on illegal gun trafficking.
Now Ms. Gillibrand is sounding like a convert, or at least a potential one, to that very cause. She needs to be, if she wants to fend off a primary challenge next year from Democrats who are more strongly committed to gun control than she is.
She needs to come around on an issue of public safety and common sense, while anticipating attacks from Republicans that her seemingly more enlightened views are motivated by political expediency.
There is a sensible middle ground on gun issues, though. Perhaps Ms. Gillibrand, under relentless exposure in her new position, has found it.
"There's a very big difference between making sure hunters can hunt in upstate New York, because it's part of our heritage and our history and the Second Amendment to our Constitution, and fighting against gun violence," Ms. Gillibrand now says — more aware than ever, apparently, of a difference that wasn't nearly so significant to her as a member of the House of Representatives.
That's a notable step for someone who's been a senator for just two weeks. It's won her a potential ally in the mother of a gun victim.
So far, so good.
Keep separating the legal gun owners from the gun criminals, senator. And remember that all of New York is watching.
The issue:
Sen. Gillibrand sees a critical issue in a new light.
The Stakes:
Gun crime can be fought without undermining gun rights.
To comment: tuletters@timesunion.com
The title of the story, and what politicians should focus on, SHOULD be "Yes, CRIMINAL Control", not your title, "Yes, gun control" (Feb 11, 2009).
Like most liberals relating stories of the criminal use of guns, you do not mention the CRIMINAL, only the gun. The gun is an inanimate object that would hurt, nor help, no one without human intervention. In the case of police officers, soldiers, and yes, law-abiding citizens, the use of a gun can and does SAVE lives. It is when the recidivist criminal, coddled by parents (often, an overwhelmed single-mother) and liberal judges, MISUSES a gun, that someone gets killed.
Blaming the guns and law-abiding gun-owners is NOT the answer to these, largely, inner-city (most, run by inept, corrupt liberal politicians) problems.
Apparently, Ms. Gillibrand has been a supporter of the 2nd Ammendment rights of her constituents for years. Unfortunately, as gleaned from your article, she, like many (mainly the half of the country that continues to vote in gun-grabbing politicians), does not have the proper understanding of the 2nd Amendment. It is NOT about hunting. It IS about self-defense and preservation of one's FREEDOMS. It's main reason for being was to protect and defend against an out-of-control, tyrannical government. If you don't think it can happen here, think again. History suggests otherwise.
It is our 2nd Amendment rights which help us ensure our other rights are not taken away.
As far as the Tiahrt Amendment goes, your story paints a false picture of it. It does NOT stop local police agencies from using federal crime data in the course of a CRMINAL investigation. What it DOES do, and rightly so, for our privacy rights, is PREVENT unscrupulous, anti-gun police and their political bosses, from misusing this information in the furtherance of their unconstitutional political agenda.
Here, are the FACTS. Hope you will keep them in mind when you write on this in the future.
There are good reasons for keeping this information confidential, and for strengthening the Tiahrt Amendment and making it permanent:
Releasing the information serves no useful purpose. The Congressional Research Service has repeatedly said "firearm trace data may be biased" and "cannot be used to test for statistical significance between firearm traces in general and the wider population of firearms available to criminals or the wider American public."[1] These limitations exist because the "tracing system is an operational system designed to help law enforcement agencies identify the ownership path of individual firearms. It was not designed to collect statistics."[2]
Traced guns aren’t always “crime guns”; firearms may be traced for reasons unrelated to any armed crime. The BATFE trace request form lists “crime codes” for traffic offenses and election law violations, among many others. Trace information remains available for law enforcement use. The FY 2007 version of the Tiahrt amendment ensures that trace data is available to federal, state, and local agencies "in connection with and for use in a bona fide criminal investigation or prosecution" or for use in administrative actions by BATFE—which is, of course, the principal agency responsible for overseeing the conduct of federally licensed firearms dealers.The language and history of the Gun Control Act are clear: Congress always intended to keep this information confidential, and to allow its use only for legitimate law enforcement purposes. The firearms trace database includes information such as the agency requesting a gun trace, the location from which the gun was recovered, and the identity of the dealer and original retail buyer.
Both BATFE and the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) oppose release of trace data. In fact, BATFE has fought for years in the federal courts to keep the databases confidential, because they contain information (such as names of gun buyers) that could jeopardize ongoing investigations—not to mention law enforcement officers’ lives. For example, a suspected gun trafficker could search databases for names of "straw purchasers" he had used to buy handguns, or for traces requested on guns he had sold. That information could lead him to names of officers, informants and other witnesses against his crimes. (View commentary by FOP President Chuck Canterbury from April 24, 2007)
Even the current language has allowed too many disclosures of sensitive information. For instance, anti-gun groups and the media have repeatedly received confidential trace data from government "leaks." And Judge Jack Weinstein of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn, who presides over New York City's lawsuit against the firearms industry, has "creatively" ruled that the riders do not protect the information that Congress so clearly intended to protect.
[1] Congressional Research Service, Gun Control: Statutory Disclosure Limitations on ATF Firearms Trace Data and Multiple Handgun Sales Reports 3 (June 30, 2006).
[2] Congressional Research Service, Assault Weapons@: Military-Style Semiautomatic Firearms Facts and Issues (May 13, 1992).
One more time for the slow minded. Disarming responsible, law abiding citizens does not reduce crime.
Excellent response.
Pandering and using a tragedy is a 'notable step' and a means of gaining allies?
It's the act of a political jackal and the Times Union approves.
Whether they be ignorant liberal twits and dolts, or something more sinister, left-wing usurpers of FREEDOM (like Schumer, Holder, Feinstein, Biden, and the rest of their scumbag ilk) who know EXACTLY what they are TRYING to do, we citizens need to try and set them straight and put them on notice - WE ARE MAD AS HELL AND WE'RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE!
They are playing with a POWDER KEG, when they start/continue f**king with the natural freedoms we were born with.
Gun crime can be fought without undermining gun rights.
That's what they say when they prepare to undermine gun rights. Never fails. Bedford-Stuyvesant is in schumer's old district. It's fitting that this article would jump off there.
Liberal politicians are NOT anti-crime. Crime is just an excuse to get rid of guns.
They certainly do not have any interest in stopping the cause of crime in their country, their own political agenda.
But it does reduce/eliminate armed resistance to tyranny.
She’s a hack.
The Times-Union is the instruction sheet. She’s just following it, like a cow.
I’m sorry for that lady’s loss.
HOWEVER, was she MARRIED to that kid’s father??? How about her relatives?? How about the mother of the individual who did the intial shooting???
Unless the “Black Community” is forced to face their own part in this sort of horror, all the gun control laws in the world will never stop violent young men - raised in one parent families without a postive male role model - from getting involved with gangs and the drug trade. And Black American women who allow themselves to be used by irresponsible black males without getting a marriage commitment from them are as guilty as the guy who pulled that trigger.
And taking away MY gun rights is no solution to the irresponsible social activities of too many members of the black community.
Yep. I have a legal armory in my closet. If the Nancy Boys wanna come take me or my guns, they better bring more than one person.
Heston was right....”cold dead hands.”
The statement itself is accurate.
I like the way you think.............
Thus the RE-EDUCATION of Ms. Gillibrand BEGINS, just as COMRADE SCHUMER told us it WOULD!
**Heston was right....”cold dead hands.”**
And if I’m still standing when I run out of ammo.. I WILL use it as a CLUB!
There are only two ways the Government can take away the Right to Bear Arms.
They can make laws we follow like bleating sheep - complaining while turning over our means of self defense. Or they can do so with force - and be met with the full force of patriots who will not concede to tyranny.
REALLY coming down on crime in the inner-cities run by corrupt/inept liberal politicians, would involve coming down on black youths (just as with young Muslim men and terrorism, THE major source of violent crime in our inner-cities is young black men).
Since that would enrage (no matter the practical nature and effect of truly lowering crime) their main constituents - the dumbasses that vote them in year after year, they blame inanimate objects instead.
Guns don't vote, and since they've disarmed the local law-abiding citizens, there are no inner-city gun-OWNERS to vote either. The law-abiding gun owners have fled the tyranny.
"BRIGHT FLIGHT", not "white flight", is what has happened to many, if not most, inner-city hell-holes run and inhabitated by left-wing turds.
The guns aren’t any different in Bed-Stuy—the PEOPLE are.
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