Virginia doesn't give a rat's ass about its guns coming to New York City.
I know I don't like Michael Bloomberg. I will never forgive him for inviting the RNC to hold their convention here and allowing the NYPD to give over 1,000 young residents a taste of life in a wartime detention center. Yes, he wants the doctors of our city hospitals to know how to perform surgical abortions (bravo). And he banned smoking in bars and restarants (bravo, again). But he's still a Republican Putz. He'd rather fly a helicopter to work than ride the 6 Train, but he does it so he can show that he can tolerate low-lifes like me (gee, thanks, I guess).
But he has mentioned illegal guns coming from Virginia before. And here, Michael Daly of the NY Daily News provides an excellent summary of NYC's relationship to guns that originate in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
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Yes, Virginia, Guns Kill Innocents
By MICHAEL DALY
DAILY NEWS COLUMNIST
Posted Tuesday, April 17th 2007, 9:22 AM
Still love those guns, Virginia?
Ready to admit that it's madness for any psycho to be able to saunter into a gun shop and acquire firepower capable of killing 32 innocents?
Feel different now that the blood is the blood of so many of your most promising young people?
You've been shrugging for decades as illegal guns from your state plague our city, killing and maiming and terrorizing New Yorkers by the thousands, at one point comprising 47% of the guns our cops recovered.
You even yukked it up with a "Bloomberg Gun GiveAway" raffle at a gun shop that sold at least 22 guns used in crimes in New York.
You went into a tizzy when Mayor Bloomberg sued some of your gun shops after undercover agents made fraudulent "straw purchases."
Your idea of gun control has been to pass a law making it illegal for undercover agents like those Bloomberg sent South to make such buys.
You seemed to think it was no big deal when an aide to your junior U.S. senator got caught carrying an automatic pistol into the Capitol, you having voted Sen. James Webb into office as an avowed opponent of gun control.
You had a big debate this year about whether Virginia Tech was wrong to discipline a student who was caught carrying a licensed pistol to class.
Never mind that a Virginia gun license is not half as hard to get as a driving license.
Never mind that there are so many guns lying around that an escaped jailbird managed to get hold of one and kill a cop and a security guard at the edge of the Virginia Tech campus at the start of the school year.
Yesterday, the shooting was in the heart of the campus, which suddenly felt like the bleeding heart of the whole nation.
We certainly have enough parents in New York who know all too well what the families of Virginia Tech will be suffering.
We also have cause anew to give thanks for the bravery of Auxiliary Police Officers Eugene Marshalik and Nicholas Pekearo, who died stopping a crazed gunman in Greenwich Village in March.
We have reason to remember Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly saying that the two brave auxiliaries and the equally brave cops who then killed the gunman may well have prevented a massacre. Our psycho certainly had enough bullets.
When we listened to yesterday's gunshots as recorded by a cell phone video, we assumed the police we saw holding back had been ordered to watch the perimeter while other cops charged through the chained doors toward the gunfire. We hoped they had not hesitated as the cops did during the massacre at the Columbine High School in 1999.
We replayed yesterday's video and listened to those gunshots again, each the hyper-real sound of a gun doing exactly what it is engineered to do no matter who is holding it, no matter who it is pointed at, be they on a New York street or in Norris Hall at Virginia Tech.
Today, Virginia Tech will hold a public convocation in the wake of the carnage. President Bush has said he will attend, but his spokeswoman assures us he remains a firm believer in the right to bear arms.
Also expected to be there is Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, who is returning early from an overseas trip. He recently signed Bill 2106, the anti-Bloomberg legislation that forbids undercover agents from making straw purchases.
Not even the worst campus massacre in American history is about to stop Bob Moates Sports Shop of Midlothian, Va., from going ahead with its big Bloomberg Gun GiveAway. The winner will receive a Para-Ordinance Model 1911 .45 automatic, silver and no less deadly than the black pistol a witness says the Virginia Tech psycho used. The 1911 is part of the company's new line of "Gun Rights" pistols, which carry the guarantee the company will donate $25 to the National Rifle Association for every one sold.
"The drawing is April 19," a man at Moates said yesterday.
No wonder some of our cops up here in New York say the bumper stickers down there should really read, "Virginia Is for Gun Lovers."
What do you say now, Virginia?