Two for the Price of One

HR 2640 stalls (again) and Mayor Bloomberg of New York is an idiot.  Both fascinating topics in one article.  On the first issue, it seems that the passage of HR 2640 has been stalled in the  Senate (again), but this time it’s for a decent reason.

But Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) questioned the $5.5 billion the Senate bill would funnel annually to help states automate their reporting to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.  “This bill authorizes more than $2 billion in new spending that is not paid for with reductions in other lower-priority areas of the budget,” Coburn said in a statement.

I suddenly like Sen. Coburn, because he’s doing exactly what an elected official should – question additional government spending.  Sen. Coburn’s objection is the first good reason I’ve seen that we should take a good hard look at HR 2640.  Not because I think it’s going to strip veterans with PTSD of their gun rights (because it’s not), but rather because it appears that it’s going to add even more expenses to the already bloated federal budget, without a clear method of paying for said expense.

I am in favor of this legislation on terms of principle – I don’t subscribe to Larry Pratt’s outrageous lies about this bill – but I don’t want to see additional financial costs without a method for covering those costs.   I still want the bill to pass, but I want it to pass correctly and be properly funded.

On to the Bloomberg issue: during his confirmation hearing for Director of the ATF, Michael Sullivan said that he does not believe that federal law does not bar him from sharing trace data with local law enforcement.  He is correct, inasmuch as the Tiahrt Amendment has never prevented the ATF from sharing trace data with local law enforcement.

…the acting director of the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives told the Senate Judiciary Committee he does not believe federal law bars him from sharing gun trafficking data with local police agencies.

Of course, because Mayor Bloomberg is an idiot, he has to try and spin this his own way.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been critical of the ATF, saying it has impaired New York police investigations of the flow of illegal weapons into the city by refusing to share information on Virginia “gun mill” dealers.   “We welcome the policy shift by the ATF and hope they will commit to sharing this kind of information, which mayors and law enforcement have been calling for,” said Lindsay Ellenbogen, a Bloomberg aide.

See, it’s apple and oranges.  The ATF didn’t share data in those cases because there weren’t any crimes being committed; Bloomberg was trying to build up his lawsuit against certain gun shops.  The ATF has always been allowed to share trace information on crime firearms with local agencies.  Cops know that, which is why the Fraternal Order of Police supported the Tiahrt Amendment.

4 Comments

  1. Straight to the point, that website is flat wrong about this bill. It’s getting to the point where the people against hr 2460 are just trotting out the same arguments over and over.

    Being diagnosed with ptsd, or adhd by a shrink is completely different from being adjudicated mentally incompitent.

  2. In another bright spot, Mayor Idiot failed in a change of venue motion in the lawsuit of which he is a named defendant. A federal judge ruled against moving a GA gun shop’s suit against Bloomberg and others from north Georgia to NY State. I’m interested to see if this clown will finally get his ass handed to him in a part of the country that doesn’t revolve around NYC.

  3. I live in Virginia. The honest gun shop owners I know have contributed to the problem of illegal guns in New York not by selling guns to illicit gun dealers but by being robbed. The guns move North on the I-95 corridor to be traded for cheap drugs in The Big Apple. The heroin and cocaine returns to Virginia to be sold on our streets. You have to ask why dope is cheaper in New York? These gun control laws create a street market for criminals yet deprive honest citizens with a means to defend themselves. New York City has a problem with violent criminals and drug dealers. Gun control only contributes to making honest citizens victims.

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