Tactics change like the weather as anti-gunners keep devising sneaky ways to curtail our right to keep and bear arms.
Now, it’s not the judicial or legislative branches of government.
This time, city mayors are leading the charge, especially through the U.S. Conference of Mayors with its 1,400 mayors representing cities having at least 30,000 people.
The list of strategies anti-gunners have implemented in the name of “gun safety” is long. They tried banning certain guns and ammunition, limiting magazine capacity, and taxing guns and ammunition. None of that stopped the tragic killings that get the gun-control crowd up on a soapbox. So they tried a different tactic. Companies like Dick’s Sporting Goods, Kroger’s Fred Meyer stores, and Walmart were happy to comply—narrowing the parameters of who can buy a gun. They tried economic pressure of a different sort. Banks have been attempting to enforce anti-gun restrictions. Using other financial tactics, anti-gunners are pressuring the gun industry with pension plans and institutional investments.
Although the Conference of Mayors is supposed to be a non-partisan organization, it continuously makes anti-gun statements and does its best to counter the Second Amendment rights of ordinary law-abiding citizens by weighing in on federal matters.
Mayors increasingly are more brazen in their efforts to control the lawful firearm activities of citizens and businesses by enacting local gun-control laws and regulations based on their personal views rather than people they should represent—elderly targets of criminals, teen shooting sports enthusiasts, hunters who feed their families with wild game, collectors of firearms, small gun-industry business owners, etc.
By making their personal opinions into law rather than free speech, these anti-gun mayors are becoming bolder in their efforts to infringe your Second Amendment rights and undermine your legitimate business activities with firearms at gun ranges and at gun shows.
Pittsburgh Mayor William Perduto—the man who, after a shooting in a Pittsburgh synagogue, thumbed his nose at the state preemption law as he tried to ban “assault weapons” and some ammunition—came up with a new way to penalize gun buyers. What if the city bought police equipment—firearms, ammunition and accessories—from companies only if they complied with some ever-changing list of criteria? For starters, he mentioned scratching manufacturers from city contracts if they sell semi-automatic rifles to civilians or if they manufacture “cop killer” bullets. The end goal, he said would be to exert so much financial pressure on the industry that the players voluntarily stop making such products.
Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley talked about buying police gear only from arms manufacturers deemed “credible.” No one from the media asked what makes a gun maker credible, of course.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti signed a contracting law in February that required any company wanting to do business with the city of Los Angeles to disclose NRA contracts or sponsorships.
The NRA has filed a lawsuit challenging the city of Los Angeles’ recently adopted ordinance requiring current and prospective contractors working with the city to disclose any relationships with the NRA as a violation of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Make no mistake, the goal of this outrageous ordinance is to discourage NRA membership and silence support for the Second Amendment.
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo wants gun retailers there to videotape all firearm purchases, ban home gun sales, and tighten handgun licensing among a series of changes to the city’s gun safety ordinance.
Columbia, S.C., Mayor Steve Benjamin has used his authority as president of the Conference of Mayors to issue “gun safety” statements calling for new legislation. During its annual meeting last year, the Conference of Mayors passed a series of gun-control resolutions including those to enact comprehensive background checks and prevent arming school teachers.
Continuing a tradition almost as old as the meeting, the assembled mayors schemed in 2017 on how to prevent the American people from exercising their right to keep and bear arms.
The consensus at the mayoral get-togethers are simple: they don’t want to depend on the federal government or state legislatures for action, so they want to take the ball and run with it.
The problem with that, of course, is that you’re going to end up with a scenario wherein you can’t even cross city lines without worrying about what the law is and how it applies to you as a lawful gun owner.
That would be an untenable situation for most people, as some jurisdictions change the law more often than people change their socks. Obeying the law would be so complicated that, the thinking goes, most folks would just toss their rights aside rather than wade through the red tape.
The best way to keep this freight train of anti-gun sentiment from gathering steam and barreling down the track at breakneck speed is for the average citizen to recognize the infringement of our constitutional rights is an insidious cancer attacking us from every angle.
Those in the anti-gun cabal have made that clear.
No longer can we sit idly by and hope the anti-gunners will go silently into the night. Some 85 percent of Americans live in U.S. cities, and many anti-gun mayors run those cities.
We have to be involved in what is going on today and more vigilant now than ever before about our elected officials in all branches of government.
