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A follow-up to
yesterday's
M-1 story by David Codrea, Gun
Rights Examiner
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One
of the expressed concerns raised by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives over the Korean surplus rifle dispute discussed
in yesterday's column is to not add another source for "crime guns."
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Crime Guns is the
newest gun-nut catch phrase. It "evokes
a hardboiled detective recovering one from a crime scene ..".
It's the centerpiece argument for gun nut NYC Mayor Bloomberg's current
anti-your guns crusade. Which
brings us to this clarification by a retired police commander.
First, he explains how BATFE defines "crime gun":
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"The parties agree that a 'crime gun'
is defined as "any firearm that is illegally possessed, used in a
crime, taken into police custody, or suspected by law enforcement
officials of having been used in a crime."
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His key observations from experience?
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The key word in this definition is "taken into
police custody." I have been a law enforcement officer for over thirty
years and held positions up to the rank of Detective Commander. Only a
very small portion of firearms that are taken into custody could
possibly be considered a "crime gun."
If you expand the term "taken into police custody" to include any
firearm that an LEO has temporary custody, such on a traffic stop of an
otherwise lawful firearms owner, you could literally be running traces
on hundreds of guns for no legitimate purpose. For larger department it
could run into the thousands.
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Jezuz, but ain't we tired of having to constantly expose organized
gun-nut perfidy? I guess that's where the "vigilance" thing comes in. This also set me to wondering if Michael
Bellesiles, after being fired by Emory University, went to
work for the BATF? Maybe indirectly. He's written
another book. Which brings up another point.
Bellesiles considers himself a historian, and was indeed employed
by Emory to teach history. But historians properly have an open
mind about what it is they're researching. In the preface to his superb
Douglas McArthur biography "American Caesar," William
Manchester observed that he held a certain animus for the general, but
was determined to let his research flesh out his account. To his
surprise, he wound up admiring McArthur after discovering that his
perceptions, going in, were based on falsehood and rumor. Bellesiles
got in trouble for violating that rule in Arming America, and repeats in 1877: America’s Year of Living
Violently. Bellesiles is no historian; he's an anti-gun
activist, and a sloppy one at that.
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