Reading this article is like stepping into an alternate reality:
While the Fort Worth Police Department was making a show of getting guns off the streets, it also was quietly supplying the public with guns.
Over the previous 10 years, the department has sold more than 1,100 of its used weapons to licensed gun dealers, which turn around and sell them to the public, according to department records. It isn’t alone.
An investigation by Texas Standard and Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has found that 21 of Texas’ 50 largest law enforcement agencies sell their used weapons to the public, effectively creating a pipeline of guns flowing right back into communities.
…
Jay Wachtel, a former ATF agent and lecturer at California State University, Fullerton, says departments that sell weapons are playing with fire.
“It’s bullshit. You know instinctively when you put guns out there that they are going to get misused,” Wachtel said. “Nobody that’s gone through a police academy would not consider that possibility.”
…
Jay Wachtel, the former ATF agent, says he doesn’t know how much of an impact these sales would make on gun crime. “Every schmuck who wants a gun, a lethal gun, can probably get one already,” he said, adding that the real issue is deeper than any statistic.
“It’s a moral issues,” he said. “If (police) are OK with a few crimes and few people being killed because they’re making all this money, then they’re OK with it.”
They want the police to destroy their old guns when they replace them. It’s as if they believe there are a fixed number of guns in their reality. And the “logic” of Wachtel in those last two paragraphs is jaw dropping. He admits “every schmuck” who wants a gun can probably get one but in the next sentence claims crimes are committed and people killed because the police are making money. And, as is frequently true, the logic twists are like fractals, they extend as deep as you can dig into it. Look at this sentence:
Every schmuck who wants a gun, a lethal gun, can probably get one…
He appears to distinguish police guns from guns in general as “a lethal gun”. Have these guns been endowed with special powers because they have been touched by the hands of police officers? Or that the police have approved these particular models for use in their departments it means they are more dangerous in the hands of the general public?
One has to wonder what color the sky is in their universe.
These people are nuts. You cannot talk sense into them. You cannot and should not try to accommodate them in any way. It only encourages them. I spent many years (my counselor told me, “Mere mortals would have left years ago.”) trying to live in peace with someone whos brain was apparently wired such that their reality only partially intersected with mine. The way to deal with them is to set firm limits on the behavior you will tolerate, tell them the consequences if they violate those limits, and then do what you said you would do if they step over the line. The result will be unpleasant. But the result will be far better than if you attempt to accommodate them.
This is why I’m automatically suspicious of ATF. Too many are raving fanatics.
The other reason to be suspicious is that every ATF employee is a felon (perjury).
If he is talking about NYC guns in the hands of NYPD police officers, then yes, they are probably lethal to innocent bystanders. New York triggers kill.
Not really sure that the “a lethal gun” phrase isn’t meant for anything other than emphasis – I doubt he ascribes particular properties to ex-LEO weapons. Or perhaps he does, by separating firearms chambered for standard defensive calibers from those used for plinking (like .22LR).
In either case, I don’t see much need to obsess on that particularly, which there’s so much fail elsewhere in his opinion.
“…licensed gun dealers, which turn around and sell them to the public…”
Someone looked into it and figured out that gun dealers sell guns. That’s “investigative journalism” at its finest.
I have an ex cop gun. I think it even has “law enforcement only”, or some such, stamped onto the magazines. It could even be lethal if someone were to be shot with it, but then a box of matches has been known to be lethal, so let’s all shit ourselves in fear of matches.
I heard a good one yesterday; FEAR = False Evidence Appearing Real.
BATFE has a bad case of FEAR, thus posing a danger to themselves and others.
The article is there to support the leftist meme which says;
“All criminals start out as law-abiding persons, therefore it is not criminals we should be paying most of our attention to, but the vast, law-abiding segment which serves as the feeder-stock to all crime.”
Save that and hang on to it.
They’re just taking that umbrella concept and applying it to guns; “crime guns start out as legal guns, therefore we should approach ‘gun crime’ by restricting the pipeline of legal guns.”
They know as well as anyone that it’s an insane statement supported by non-logic. They (the prime movers of the left) don’t believe any of that shit themselves, but they’re hoping some will, and that others will be driven out of their minds by the insanity. They’re just keeping us all back on our heels and walking on eggshells. Don’t knock it. It works.
Pingback: SayUncle » Yup
We will never be safe as long as we have to share a country with these people. Encourage them to secede and then let them go. Only condition is that seceding states have to offer options to stay to individual counties.
The “meme” is that if there are more guns, there will be more gun crimes.
Face it: gun crimes will happen, no matter what laws or passed or what federal restrictions are applied. Stolen guns are used in the majority of shooting incidents, with the possible exceptions of defensive shootings “gone wrong”.
When we pass laws to regulate the acquisition of firearms to law-abiding citizens (no felony convictions, as a standard), we only impose restrictions on ‘them’ which are not applicable to convicted felons. The restrictions infringe upon ourselves … those of us who obey laws … at best.
Yes, we need these laws .. but they have no effect on capital crimes convicted by people who acquire their firearms in extra-legal circumstances.
They ignore our laws.
So maybe we only “need” these laws, to identify the law-breakers?
As if we don’t already know who they are.
Someone once said: “Oh, so we have laws which forbid breaking the speed limit? So we should eliminate these laws, because some people will break them ‘anyway’?”
No. We need these laws to establish a standard of responsible behavior. But we need to enforce these laws, if only to help identify people who are so beyond the norm that they dismiss the attempt to establish a responsible society.
Whenever I see these articles where the “journalist” interviews a former law enforcement agent that is fanatically anti-gun, I wonder how many different current and former law enforcement agents the author had to call or email before finding one that is 1) even willing to talk to him, and 2) actually pushes the narrative the author has been fishing for.
In my limited experience, the vast majority of law enforcement agents (including federal) range from neutral to pro gun. So is this attitude really all that common among law enforcement? Or do these journalists just spend a lot of time trying find the right person to quote?
I think that applying the term “law enforcement” to ATF people is an insult to honest cops.
On your theory, this is probably why you most often see those quotes from police chiefs who are political animals more than, or instead of, cops. So they say what their bosses tell them to say.
I know that some states have laws on reselling guns instead of destroying them – I thought Texas was one of them, though I may be thinking of evidence/ seized weapons and not ex-PD weapons.