City Sells Used Police Shells to Ammunition Shop in Georgia; Bloomberg Unapologetic
Here is the cool thing about Mayor Bloomberg: he is never wrong and always knows what’s best for you, me, and the entire city of New York. Plus the rest of the world, probably. So if something happens in his administration that seems WILDLY inconsistent with his previously espoused views, that is not his fault. That is our fault. We are the ones who don’t understand.
So when it was revealed today in the New York Times that the city has sold spent NYPD shell casings to a Georgia ammunitions shop so that the shells can be repurposed as viable bullets, we knew that our confusion was not the mayor’s fault.
We knew that it was us who just didn’t understand how a mayor who has been so vocal about getting guns off the streets, would be comfortable selling spent shell casings so that they could go on to live again and be sold in the state that was ranked by “Mr. Bloomberg’s national coalition, Mayors Against Illegal Guns…as having the 10th highest rate of crime-gun exports in 2009. In 2006, New York sued 28 gun dealers who had sold guns used in hundreds of crimes in the city. Eight of those dealers were from Georgia.”
While it is legal to sell the spent shell casings to ammunitions dealers, in the past, the city has sold them to scrap metal dealers. This seems to be the first time that the city has sold to an ammunitions dealer and, according to the Times, the city is required to sell to the highest bidder.
So, okay. Bloomberg didn’t WANT to sell to this Georgia ammunition shop, a store that sells loose ammunition “per Georgia’s gun laws, no questions are asked and no identification or registration is required,” which is a practice that is illegal in New York. The city was FORCED to sell to this place because they were the highest bidder! Bloomberg probably feels pretty conflicted about it right?
Wrong. Bloomberg never feels conflicted about anything. That is one of the perks of knowing that you are always right.
The Times spoke with John Feinblatt, “the mayor’s chief policy adviser and the lead architect of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, [who] said Mr. Bloomberg stood behind the sale and would allow similar sales in the future.”
Feinblatt had this to say about the mayor, “He believes, as do all members of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, that our purpose is to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, not keep guns or ammunition away from law-abiding citizens. There’s a big distinction between legal dealers and illegal dealers and criminals and law-abiding citizens. We’re about crime control. We’re not about gun control.”
Oh, really, John Feinblatt? Oh, REALLY???
Because, it seems to us that JUST THE OTHER DAY, Bloomberg had this to say, “There are more and more guns on the street. That doesn’t stop. We’ve just got to get guns out of the hands of people.”
That seems like gun control to me.
But what do I know?
I’m not Mike Bloomberg.
Follow Kristin Iversen on twitter @kmiversen
