So Michael Bloomberg has launched a website called “The Trace” that is going to be his own “Independent” anti-gun online publication and gateway to gun control.
I won’t lie, I’ve been beside myself, as anti-gun blogs have all but died, and I don’t do the whole facebook thing. So the fact that it is managed by a professional editor that serves at the pleasure of Micheal Bloomberg does two things. #1. It has made every article I’ve read much more concise than most of the anti-gun blogs that are out there, and #2. It ties every one directly to the Generalissimo of the anti-gun political lobby. I still follow the Brady Campaign, as well as the various Joyce shell groups, but they are mere specters of what they once were. And while Gun Control is still fighting it’s all, nothing feels as threatening as it did around the turn of this century when I first got embroiled in the 2nd Amendment fight…first as a gun banner, and to present days as a supporter of freedom.
Still of all the threats to the 2nd Amendment, Micheal Bloomberg and his loyal retainers seem the most dangerous, so for somebody like me, who enjoys trench warfare with the antis, this site has become a daily read!
Still this article really amused me. It’s titled “Inside a Rabbi’s Plan to Get Cops to Make Smart Guns Kosher”, I found it to be surprisingly balanced, and I deeply suspect that was an accident:
On May 21, several dozen officers from 10 New York–area law-enforcement agencies converged on the New Rochelle Police Department’s gun range for a small gun show highlighting some of the latest developments in firearms tech. As the officers took turns with a prototype shotgun developed by a scion of the Mossberg gun-making family, the show’s organizer looked on from the back of the range, bemused. Rabbi Joel Mosbacher of Mahwah, New Jersey, is not your typical gun impresario or champion of police firepower: In fact, he ended up putting this event together after years as an anti-gun-violence activist. “I thought I’d be making matches as a rabbi,” Mosbacher said later. “Just not between gun companies and police departments.”
You can probably see where this is going, but let’s have a look at a few more quotes:
Smart guns have been in development for decades, but the technology still has to overcome skepticism from many gun buyers. In 1975 the Magna-Trigger arrived, but the fact that it discharged only when the owner wore a magnetic ring on the firing hand raised doubts about its suitability for home defense: What if a spouse was in need of the gun while alone, without his or her ring-wearing partner? The ’90s brought models that were more technologically sophisticated — utilizing fingerprint sensors on the grip, for example, or RFID transponders in bracelets that allowed the gun to fire only when close enough to the radio signal — but no less quickly dismissed. “How long would it be before the first ‘gangland geek’ came up with a device that would block the transponder of any nearby officer (or armed citizen), rendering the good guy’s weapon inoperable?” wrote internationally known firearms instructor Massad Ayoob in a 2000 Guns Magazine article.
But the biggest reason the new technologies raised concern among gun enthusiasts was because of smart guns’ most enthusiastic boosters: politicians and activists trying to reduce gun violence. In the wake of Columbine, Andrew Cuomo, then HUD secretary, brokered a deal with Smith & Wesson to get it to invest more in research and safety, including smart guns. The agreement backfired as Smith & Wesson became an industry pariah for doing Democrats’ bidding, and other companies considering similar deals reversed course.
Obviously this new site doesn’t have a full-time fact-checker or Minister of Propaganda, because such accurate statements wouldn’t have been allowed, not would it be allowed to admit that the S&W boycott and market-flood of used guns that nearly bankrupted the company was a grass roots effort. The anti-gun doctrine should read that the S&W boycott was a top-down edict issued by Wayne LaPierre personally! Since this website and all of the anti-gun activist groups trace upward to one man who controls all, there MUST be a false narrative that the NRA is EXACTLY the same, and that ALL pro-gun advances are from that singular organization.
That’s why Mosbacher and his colleagues, operating through a national coalition of religious groups and community organizations called Metro IAF, are trying to generate market demand instead of government mandates. So far, manufacturers have been more receptive to this approach.
Wait, achieving goals of the anti-gunners with LESS government? Also this website mentions it’s goal is to “Reduce violence”, but this is so far the only article that does seem to have that in mind.
That’s where Mosbacher and members of the Metro IAF campaign Do Not Stand Idly By can lend a hand. In addition to organizing the New Rochelle event, they’ve met with state and local politicians as well as police chiefs to educate them about smart guns and, more importantly, to ask them to sign a letter to gun manufacturers requesting information on their smart-gun offerings. So far, representatives from 73 jurisdictions have signed, from the head of suburban New Rochelle’s police force to the governor of Connecticut to the mayor of Atlanta.
…Ultimately, it will take interest from big-city or state police forces to nudge the smart gun from prototype to mass-produced product, which is why Metro IAF has made sign-ons from such jurisdictions a priority.
And there lies the crux with why the antis are having such a hard time promoting “Smart Guns”, of course the big #1 is that antis want to ban ALL guns, so every law they press is a MANDATE so that modern guns can be banned while new “Smart Guns” allegedly fill the void. Also that all of these mandates exempt police, who are the people who most have their gun used by unauthorized individuals.
I wouldn’t use a smart gun for the same reason why I wouldn’t carry a gun with a magazine disconnect, it could get me killed. If a gun company or tech company convinces a major police force that their product works, and years of trials shows that the products work as advertised, maybe gunnies will hop on board.
It was the same way with the Glock pistol. People were uneasy about a “Plastic Gun”, as well as a semi-auto that had no manual safety, so Gaston got major police forces to adopt his gun, and the rest was history.
As you may have heard on the Gunblog Variety Cast in my interview with Joe Huffman, the “Smart Guns” that currently exist are NOT designed to pass rigor as a police duty weapon, so for now, no deal, and the Rabbi has his work cut out for him.
Still I applaud his methods, despite his taint with Bloomberg in general, and the states of New York and New Jersey, I don’t see his work as a threat to the Second Amendment directly.
Not that the antis aren’t watching him so they can make their next move.
