Grand Rapids, MI, Mayor George Heartwell pushing for legislation to limit carry

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Grand Rapids, MI, Mayor George Heartwell is a member of Bloomerg's MAIG (Mayors Against Illegal Guns - Coalition Members). Most of us here were not aware of this until VERY recently.

GRAND RAPIDS, MI – Mayor George Heartwell has declined a gun-rights advocate’s offer to join his Coalition for Gun Control, stating that he is “not interested in finding a middle ground.”

Heartwell on Jan. 8 announced his intent to form a task force that would push for legislation to ban guns at public meeting places. The move came in response to the presence of people openly carrying guns at recent Grand Rapids City Commission meetings.

Grand Rapids Mayor George Heartwell on guns: 'I am not interested in finding a middle ground' | MLive.com

This is our right under Michigan state law. Those of us from Grand Rapids, MI, need to be contacting his office to urge him to back away from this course.

We can expect a big infusion of Bloomberg money to try to get legislation passed in Michigan that takes away our gun rights, and they will have help from both Mayor Heartwell and Gov. Snyder.

I just faxed this article to some legislators with whom I have a working relationship, along with the following letter:

Mayor Heartwell's anti-gun stance has only recently come to light. I have since discovered that he is listed as a member of Mayor Bloomberg's gun control organization, Mayors Against Illegal Guns - a highly disingenuous name. Bloomberg's organization isn't just out to prevent illegal ownership of firearms, it is out to prevent all carry of firearms, and to highly restrict the kinds of firearms to which we have access. Mayor Bloomberg has become the number one consultant to the Obama administration regarding gun control, and is fast becoming the spokesperson, a "surrogate", as the news media labeled him, for the administration.

At a time in which law enforcement across the state continues to be reduced, this is a dangerous idea. According to information I received from the Gand Rapids Police Department's Crime Prevention office in my role as a neighborhood watch coordinator, the average response time to a 911 call is around 18 minutes, and with the expected loss of 17 more officers and the re-deployment of most of the remaining officers to the overnight shift, they expected the response time to lengthen to more than 20 minutes. That is not protection; that is cleaning up the bodies after the damage has been done. As to carrying in public places and schools, THOSE are the places where mass shootings are taking place. With a diminishing police force, it is counter-intuitive to tell people that they may not protect themselves. Britain has been held up as an example of what gun control can do for the country, but while they have successfully lowered the number of firearm-related murders, murders committed using other methods has actually increased, and Britain's overall incidence of violence has increased to the point where it has been declared the most violent nation in Europe. The US has an incidence of violent crime of a little over 400 per 100,000 population. The latest data indicates that Britain, on the other hand, has an incidence of over 2,000 per 100,000 population. In taking away the citizens' right to defend themselves, they have turned themselves into a nation of victims.

Mayor Bloomberg is going to be funneling more money into Michigan to advance his agenda, and he is going to have willing helpers in Mayor Heartwell and Gov. Snyder; I'm sure other mayors will join in as well. I urge you to fight their attempts to deny us our Constitutional right to defend ourselves.

I am calling on any forum members who live in Grand Rapids to contact the mayor's office to protest his stated course of action, and then contact your state legislators to urge them to fight Bloomberg's efforts to introduce New York Style gun control to our state.