NJ/PA: A little help with NJ.com

[Highland Ranger]

Need some help posting to a blog, information follows:

NJ.com is the web presence for a bunch of NJ newspapers: including The Star-Ledger, The Times, The Jersey Journal, etc. Over 1MM visitors a month.
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From the NJ state NRA org, ANJRPC:

GUN BAN EXTREMIST ATTACKS ANJRPC PRESIDENT ON BLOG

Gun ban advocate Bryan Miller (of CeaseFire NJ) recently dedicated an entire blog post on NJ.com to attacking ANJRPC President and NRA Board Member Scott Bach after Scott pointed out the absurdity of blaming Pennsylvania gun laws for New Jersey gun crime. Miller's post, entitled "Disingenuousness and Pro-Gun Advocacy," can be found here:

http://blog.nj.com/njv_bryan_miller/2007/10/disingenuousness_and_progun_ad.html

Scott has responded to the attack with a blog post of his own, entitled "Anti-Gun Extremism in the Garden State" which can be found here:

http://blog.nj.com/njv_scott_bach/2007/10/antigun_extremism_in_the_garde.html

Please weigh in with your comments to both blog posts.

 

[Highland Ranger]

My post:

This is simple, and doesn't require a windbag 2000 word article to articulate. The key word in all of this is ILLEGAL.

Laws only effect the LAW ABIDING. Criminals, by definition DON'T CARE ABOUT LAWS.

Moreover, there are already laws on the books pertaining to straw purchases. Enforce them.

Stop trying to export NJ's unconstitutional and ineffective gun laws to other states. duh. We're the laughing stock of the country as it is.

More importantly, grow up. The world is an unsafe place. It won't change in our lifetimes.

If YOU don't have the personal courage or are somehow ethically or religiously opposed to taking responsibility for the safety and well being of you and yours, I respect that.

Please respect my right to defend myself and my family and stop trying to take it away with more silly gun laws.

 

[geekWithA.45]

FYI: Scott Bach and Bryan Miller faced each other on TV in debate in 2004.

Bach totally p0wned Miller. It was a complete route, and thoroughly embarassing for Miller. Miller was forced back on his heels, and had to resort to his "guns killed my brother" pity play.

To Bach's credit, he let Miller keep the pity points, because they were the only points Miller could get out of the debate, and to refute them would make Bach seem hard.

Here's my original report on that confrontation:

http://geekwitha45.blogspot.com/2004_03_01_archive.html#108026778356346783

 

[Highland Ranger]

Miller's Blog for posterity . . .

Disingenuousness and pro-gun advocacy
Posted by Bryan Miller October 03, 2007 2:39PM
Categories: Hot Topics, Law & Order

I invite you to take a look at a fine example of the above on this very site, namely a recent entry by Scott Bach.

Bach is president of the Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs and a member of the NRA Board of Directors. I'd say his thinking and writing is fairly representative of the less extreme wing of the pro-gun community, which is a little scary in itself.

Bach's entry took the County Prosecutors Association of New Jersey to task for its recent call for states with weak gun laws, particularly Pennsylvania, to strengthen them. This in order to diminish the illegal trade that moves handguns from legal sale at gun shops in said states to illegal sale in our state (and their own). It's hard to understand why this request would pose a problem for Bach and his cohorts, but in typical 'no compromise' fashion, it does.

Bach wrote that the prosecutors announced that strengthening Pennsylvania's gun laws would be "the cure for New Jersey's crime problems,' which, of course, they did not, nor do they believe. Bach's "the cure" claim is ridiculous and false on its face.

What the prosecutors said was that, as the top law enforcement officers in their counties, the inflow of illegal handguns from other states makes their jobs far more difficult. This is difficult neither to fathom nor to see what it portends, a severe problem for New Jersey's communities.

Bach also went to great length to describe the handgun purchase background check procedure in Pennsylvania, claiming that "because criminals don't follow gun laws in the first place," stronger gun laws will not impact crime.

What Bach didn't relate is how, because there is no licensing of handgun purchasers or registration of handguns in Pennsylvania (as there are in NJ) and because buyers in Pennsylvania can obtain as many handguns at a time as they wish, criminal entrepreneurs are able to hire stand-ins, who can pass relatively perfunctory federal background checks, to buy guns in bulk in PA for them. These stand-ins are the notorious 'straw purchasers' about whom the public is just beginning to learn.

Bach also failed to relate that the main focus of those seeking to strengthen PA's gun laws is pending One Handgun A Month legislation, which would not require criminals to "follow gun laws" to succeed, because it would be gun dealers who would limit sales by law.

Weak gun laws that enable straw purchasing are a boon to criminals intent on building illegal handgun distribution businesses. These are the traffickers that move illegal handguns to sale on street corners, across kitchen tables and on playgrounds to thugs, drug dealers and their enforcers and violent teens - all people who cannot obtain handguns legally and so depend upon the illegal gun trade. And, these are the handguns that are used to wound, maim and kill.

The interstate version of this illegal trade is what the prosecutors talked about. For, although a significant portion of crime guns recovered in New Jersey were purchased in-state, the overwhelming majority were originally purchased in states with weak gun laws and brought here. Bach conveniently failed to mention this, too.

Evidence? Right there in the data recently published by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive (ATF) that the Prosecutors discussed. It shows that nearly 75% of the crime guns recovered in 2006 in NJ were out-of-state guns. This is consistent with past ATF data.

The top external source state for these guns? Pennsylvania, of course.

ATF's 2006 data on PA also shows how damaging the Keystone State's illegal gun market is internally. Namely, unlike the other major states in the Northeast (NJ, NY, CT and MA), the bulk of crime guns recovered in Pennsylvania were originally purchased in-state. Previous ATF data showed that, in fact, the majority of crime guns recovered in Pennsylvania were recovered within ten miles of gun shops where they were bought, an anomaly among Northeast major states.

You can see relevant source state info for NJ and PA respectively on page 6 of:

http://www.atf.gov/firearms/trace_data/states_and_territories/cy2006-newjersey.pdf

http://www.atf.gov/firearms/trace_data/states_and_territories/cy2006-pennsylvania.pdf

Bach's prescription for NJ gun violence and crime? End plea bargaining, tougher sentences and no early parole. That's it. Nothing about the inflow of illegal guns. Just the usual ex post facto 'lock 'em up.' Would that life were so simple. And, would that the gun lobby did not distract pols and voters from the truth about the menacing illegal gun trade through purposeful disingenuousness.

Permalink: http://blog.nj.com/njv_bryan_miller/2007/10/disingenuousness_and_progun_ad.html

 

[Highland Ranger]

Bach's response

Anti-gun extremism in the Garden State
Posted by Scott L. Bach, Esq. October 10, 2007 6:18AM
Categories: Hot topics, Law & order, Policy watch, Politics

Can drunk driving be reduced by selling fewer cars? Can arson be reduced by selling fewer matches?

The obvious answer to these questions is no. The criminal misuse of any lawful product is not a function of the number of units sold; it's a function of how effectively society deals with the criminals who misuse them.

To reduce drunk driving, we should enforce strict laws punishing drunk drivers. To reduce arson, we should enforce strict laws punishing arsonists. Selling fewer cars won't reduce drunk driving, just like selling fewer matches won't reduce arson. That's just common sense.

Unfortunately for gun ban advocates like Bryan Miller (Executive Director of CeaseFire NJ), the same principle also holds true for firearms. Selling fewer firearms to law abiding citizens who have passed government background checks will not reduce gun crime, because they are not the cause of gun crime to begin with.

But when it comes to anti-gun extremism in the Garden State, common sense and logic go out the window.

Case in point: Miller thinks that New Jersey gun crime can be reduced by rationing guns to law-abiding Pennsylvania citizens. When I pointed out the absurdity of this notion in a recent post, Miller dedicated an entire blog post to attacking my integrity,* revealing a typical distraction technique of gun ban extremists when confronted with a principle of truth that exposes the absurdity of their agenda: attack the messenger.

Miller's group characterizes itself as a leader in the fight against gun violence, but a more apt description might be a leader in the fight against lawful gun ownership. The group seems to support any scheme whose net effect is to interfere with the rights of honest citizens to exercise their Second Amendment freedoms, instead of targeting their efforts at criminals, who are the real source of gun violence.

At a hearing last year in Jersey City, Miller actually argued that laws that get tough on gun criminals are ineffective, yet advocated for an ordinance that rationed firearms just to law-abiding citizens who have been pre-certified by the state as non-criminals after passing a 13-point background investigation. The ordinance passed but was soon invalidated by a Court, which found that the law was not rationally related to its intended purpose of reducing gun crime. Now Miller is pushing similar laws at the state level in both New Jersey and Pennsylvania, citing manipulated statistics purporting to show that Pennsylvania's gun laws are responsible for New Jersey gun crime.

Earlier this year, Miller advocated passage of New Jersey legislation to ban guns based on the size of the hole in the barrel, citing the supposedly evil properties of one particular firearm costing as much as $10,000 apiece and in civilian use primarily by wealthy target shooters. Members of the legislature who believed Miller were embarrassed to discover that the legislation also banned hundreds of common hunting and historical firearms, including the flintlocks and muskets that won the American Revolution and the Civil War. A clear solution to the urban problem of drive-by musketeering, no doubt...

Miller's latest scheme to ration guns to law abiding citizens would not only fail to impact illegal gun trafficking (already a felony for which no new laws are needed), but it would actually interfere with law enforcement monitoring of bulk gun sales by thwarting the reporting of multiple handgun purchases to authorities currently mandated by federal law. In what universe does a scheme like that do anything to reduce gun crime?

Based on actions like these, it is not unreasonable to conclude that Miller and his group have as their unspoken agenda the extremist goal of incrementally eliminating all lawful gun ownership by honest citizens. The only question is, if that's their true agenda, why not just say so? It would make a lot more sense than trying to explain how laws that disarm only honest citizens solve gun crime.

Until recently, Miller and his group have been given a free pass in the media and by many public officials, who have accepted their "solutions" without question. By challenging them in courts of law, principle, logic and truth, law-abiding gun owners have forced them to become more accountable, which may explain why they have now taken to personal attacks on Second Amendment advocates like me.

Unlike some, I am not compensated for the advocacy work that I do. I am motivated only by the conviction that good people should have both the right and the ability to defend themselves when the unthinkable occurs, and that the unique firearms freedoms we have inherited need to be defended, preserved, and protected from those who do not comprehend their significance.

On any given day, I would gladly stand shoulder to shoulder with Miller to support laws that severely punish violent gun crime rather than targeting the tool. But that's not likely to happen any time soon, because Miller has a different agenda. To Miller, I have this to say: it's time to get real and be forthright about what you're really trying to do. If you don't, honest gun owners like me are going to be right there to do it for you.
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(*Since its original publication, some of the personal attacks in Miller's blog post have been deleted by NJ Voices editors.)