"Gun laws" in New York City! It really ticks me off to keep reading this. Contrary to appearances, for any practical purposes there are zero gun laws in New York City. OK, there's this: after you shoot someone dead (that is: too late) assuming the cops catch you, they can not only charge you with murder but they can also throw in an additional charge of illegal firearm possession.
I live in Florida. We have a law in Florida where if I go to a gun shop or a pawn shop to buy a gun, I have wait five days, and supposedly someone even checks to see if I have a criminal record. But Florida politicians being what they are, there's a "loophole" for "private" gun owners which allows them to buy and sell guns with NO background check and NO records kept.
Have you ever gone to a gun show in Florida? I have. They hold them several times a year in public arenas like the Manatee Civic Center; I went to see that one last year. You, or I, or that guy they let out of Raiford State Penetentiary last Tuesday, can stroll into a gun show in Palmetto, Florida with a wallet full of cash and walk out with a dozen high-quality, large-caliber, slightly-used handguns and rifles and a crate of bullets, just like snap.
There were cops in the building; guess what their contribution was to keeping the public safe? they threw out a couple of nosy newspaper reporters at the behest of the gun show management. See, those reporters were probably going to write a Hank Carr/gun show story. Hank Carr was an ex-con, one of those grey-market gun dealers, who had just recently shot his four-year-old stepson to death, and later in the day three policemen as well, with a couple of SKS semi-automatic rifles he had illegally but openly acquired at a gun show. Well, we can't have that kind of negative publicity, now can we? so despite the fact the gun show was a public event being held in a public arena, boom, out they went.
It would take me about a day and a half to drive from Florida to New York City. There are no internal customs stops between the states. Since I am white, not black (thus obviously "up to no good") and the car I drive is neither real cheap (indicating that I am poor, thus "up to no good") nor ostentatiously trashy-flashy with the gold-plate aftermarket trim, the low-profile tires on custom mags and all that (also indicating that I am "up to no good") the chances are ten thousand to one that no policeman will pull me over and discover the trunk-full of guns I am transporting. No, the cops will be strip-searching a car full of black teenagers hoping to find a joint or two as I cruise past with my contraband arsenal. Assuming I've got a shady friend or two in town, I can turn around and sell those guns on the NYC black market for a healthy mark-up. There are lots of guys who do nothing but this for a living.
Also, I have no figures on this but I'll bet you twenty dollars right now that the NYC police spend at least ten times more hunting down either pot smokers or prostitutes than they do ferreting out illegal gun traffickers. Make that "a hundred times."
Yours WDK - WKiernan at concentric.net