I just “love” the careful wording of this article:
Nationwide the ATF tracks some 300,000 guns involved in crimes every year.
In 2008 there were about 9,500 murders and approximately 317,000 robberies and aggravated assaults committed with firearms. Are they saying they found nearly every one of those guns and that virtually no gun was used in more than one crime?
No.
Then what are they saying?
The answer is that it includes recovered stolen guns. The anti-gun people try to use the ATF data in ways that imply the guns were all used in crimes and end up with invalid conclusions. Watch them closely.
Another thing I don’t like about the article is the anti-gun ownership tone:
ATF special agent Kelvin Crenshaw says his agency is investigating people related to the weapons involved in all these shootings.
“Every gun has a story to tell,” he says.
Investigators are now looking at everyone from the dealers, who first sold those guns, to the killers themselves – and everyone in between.
“If there is one mistake in your agenda,” says Crenshaw, “we’re gonna catch you and you’re gonna go to jail.”
ATF investigators also say there is no law in Washington requiring people to report a stolen gun to police. they say such a law would surely provide more leads for their investigations.
One mistake and they are going to send someone to jail? Even if it was an innocent mistake? No intent is required?
And apparently isn’t not possible to have too many laws and regulations restricting the exercise of a specific enumerated right. They need to have as many ways as possible to put “those kind of people” in jail.
Well, by the strict definition of the word, if a firearm is stolen, it is, indeed, “involved” in a crime (being the subject of the crime itself). Of course, far be it for the mainstream media to avoid conflating “involved in” with “used in”, but their agenda has been pretty well known since the very beginning.
Speaking of “agendas”, whatever happened to punishing people for denying/abridging rights under the color of the law? I guess our government is only interested in agendas they are not, themselves, supporting… Monopoly of force and all that.
Since the dot.gov’s own study of criminals and guns says a gun wielding criminal will commit at least one felony every 48 hours and 1 gun gun related crime every 84 hours – for a median period of 17 weeks before apprehension. That’s 34 gun related crimes per working criminal every time a soft hearted judge decides the poor misunderstood criminal deserves bail, so he can spend his free time with his loving mother.
Generally, that’s 2.4 times out on bail per trip to the local crime college, be it Deer Lodge, Folsom, Huntsville, Angola, or wherever. As a rule of thumb, once an individual has chosen a criminal lifestyle and gotten through the 2.9 convictions before the first gun related crime, you can depend on 100 gun related crimes for every year he’s on the street. For the rest of his life.
That is why it is so critically important to show the first timers absolutely no mercy. You might discourage them the first time around. By the second time it is far too late.
Stranger