A voice of sanity? If liberty is crazy

Tom Teepen apparently believes that being "Enemy No. 1" of rights is something to be cheered, at least when the rights are gun rights. The enemy of rights referred to here (and thus the hero, in Teepen's view) is, of course, none other than New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Bloomberg built up Mayors Against Illegal Guns from a 15-member outfit into one with 225 municipal leaders.

Which is apparently not enough to make the recruitment of foreign mayors out of the question.

New York has sent test customers to states that shrug at dummy buyers who are plainly stocking up to bootleg trunk-loads of firearms into cities with sterner gun laws, mainly for the criminal trade, and especially for gangs.

"Plainly," eh? Were they wearing T-shirts or windbreakers emblazoned with "New York gun trafficker," or something similar?

The supplier states are concentrated in the South and, embarrassed and thus in high dudgeon over the resulting disclosures, some are starting to enact statutes against the practice.

"Some are"? I know Virginia has passed such a law, but I have not heard that any other states have introduced similar bills. I'm not saying that none have, but I wonder how many this "some" is.

By the way, I wonder if Tom is aware that so-called "straw purchases" are already illegal (and have been for years), by federal law. In other words, if Bloomberg's "test customers" (as Tom refers to them) are making straw purchases, they're already violating federal law--the very kind of law that Bloomberg and his ideological allies claim to be so keen on enforcing. The BATFE apparently knows about these illegal purchases--if there is an enforcement gap, that is where it lies. In other words, the gun shops cannot be committing "straw sales," unless Bloomberg's minions are committing straw purchases, which would include lying on the Form 4473--a federal crime--one to which Bloomberg himself would seem to have been a party, by conspiring to make these purchases.

All this has triggered, so to speak, eruptions of denunciation, often in the gun crowd's usual colorful language . . .

Damn it! No one sent me the memo--all this time I've been posting my blog in a black font, not knowing that as a member of the "gun crowd," I'm supposed to use "colorful" language.

. . . and has sparked mocking protests like the Bloomberg Gun Giveaway raffle in Virginia, ha-ha.

The gun shop owners are not billionaires, like their tormentor, and nor do they have the monetary resources that can only come from the taxes collected from the citizens of the largest city in the U.S.--the raffle provided a much-needed infusion of cash to fight the legal war that Bloomberg has declared on them.

If Bloomberg is the "Voice of Sanity," I guess I'd rather talk to the lunatics who insist on keeping their Constitutional liberties.