View From The Middle
Redneck Gun Sellers Running Around Like An Old Movie Cartoon
By Charles Rogers

It's just like one of those old Warner Bros. cartoons, isn't it? You see the "redneck" from Down South, with a long piece of straw stickin' out of the side of his mouth and a great big, fat shotgun in his hand as he's runnin' after the guy from Up North (obviously a city slicker from New Yuk). They stop to catch their breath - and the background music stops with them. Then the three - the chased, the chaser and the music - all take up where they left off, runnin' across hill and dale.

The music is properly inconsequential, with plucked pizzicato strings echoing every quick step. The guy being chased is the Mayor of the City of New York Michael Bloomberg. The guy doing the chasing is any gun dealer from any of a number of towns in Virginia and elsewhere where they're making a mockery of Bloomberg and a coalition of more than 100 mayors from other big cities who are trying to get Congress to enact some kind of controlling laws so gun buyers can be traced.

It's as simple as that.

The mockery is where a group of gun store owners, including gun dealers who don't necessarily own stores but buy and sell weapons at rented tables during gun shows throughout the year, have formed a supposed gun rights group called Gun Owners of America, according to a published source, to fight Bloomberg and his mayoral coalition. Last week, a couple of the snorting, chortling, childish gun dealers announced they're holding a raffle in March called the Bloomberg Gun Giveaway, where, for every $100 spent at the gun shops, customers get a raffle ticket to win a free gun, supposedly worth about $750.

Obviously, they're mad at the mayors, who recently held that Mayors Against Guns National Summit headed by Bloomberg, but they're also angry because our mayor is suing 27 of them in federal court for illegal gun sales.

Their tactics - aside from the immature Warner Bros. cartoon Gun Giveaway ploy - are obviously backed by the most powerful lobby in Washington: the National Rifle Association (NRA), another group of bullies that likes to play games all over the playground.

In their meeting, the mayors stipulated (while tiptoeing gently, so as not to step on the wrong toes) that they're "not against guns or the sales of guns," with one of the mayors of a big city saying, "Illegal guns have nothing to do with the Second Amendment."

We all know he's right, of course. Unfortunately (for them and their cause) the ordinary gun-totin' citizen is not a member of the militia, even if the NRA says so.

Just so you know, incidentally, the Second Amendment says, "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

I suppose we can argue the subject 'til the cows come home, and the NRA, with all their money and lobbying hold over Congress and those who make the stupid laws that allow AK47s into the hands of criminals will still acquit themselves of wrongdoing over and over.

Even Mayor Bloomberg agrees, somewhat unwillingly, that gun owners have rights (not when it comes to AK47s, of course). What he and the other members of his coalition want is some kind of control. My God, if you look at the statistics regarding gun-related deaths, plus the multiple shootings in this and other cities in the country, how can you possibly complain that records must be taken when these weapons are sold. What's wrong with that?

What are the gun dealers trying to hide? Or is it that they just want to make the money and the hell with integrity?

What is the NRA trying to hide? They've got the job as the big deal lobbyist. They've already twisted the Bill of Rights to suit their purpose, so why do they adamantly thwart every attempt to even record gun sales of the dealers? They say they're doing business legally.....so???

I guess we must consider the source when it comes to the Gun Giveaway game they seem to think is so amusing. Bloomberg said, "These are sick people. Guns kill people. And if they think this is funny, I don't think the parents, or the spouses, or the children of those that (were) killed by illegal guns would find that very entertaining."

It makes me think about that Warner Bros. cartoon with the redneck running around carrying a musket and firing it every few seconds. How foolish he looks.

How foolish they all look.

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