Letter to the Editor: In Response to Schimel’s ‘Common Sense’

I write concerning the that appeared on April 29, 2012.  As a police officer and NRA Life of Duty Member, I found her comments offensive, misleading, and indicative of a desperate person using every available ploy to push her increasingly unpopular anti-gun agendas.

It is interesting to note that Ms. Schimel’s definition of “common sense” –microstamping, to be specific – has been defeated at the legislative level every year she has introduced it and has been written off as worthless and easily defeated by every reputable, peer-reviewed study of the “technology” to date. One study went so far as to point out that “common household tools were used to obliterate (microstamped) serial numbers in less than a minute.”

Also of interest to me was the use of a quotation by a the cousin of a gun violence victim, Debbie Griffin Daza, which ironically states what many of us have been saying all along, and which I’m equally certain was not Ms. Schimel’s intent. Ms. Daza’s comments are deserving of repeating and speak volumes to Ms. Schimel’s definition of “common sense.” Ms. Daza believes that “We need stronger gun legislation and control of the guns being bought and sold that are coming into the streets of New York City and into the hand of criminals.”

What legislation, pray tell, is going to stop a criminal from having a gun? Do our legislators truly not understand this? I would venture to guess that if a criminal is set upon committing a homicide, the factor of whether or not the gun is legal is probably not playing into the equation. Similarly, I feel safe in saying that the size of the gun magazine is quite likely an afterthought to him or her at that point as well. I’m also curious as to what fault the law abiding gun owner had in this matter?

Ms. Daza continues “The murderer of my cousin Damon, was out on bail for a previous shooting in the community and had been involved in five other shootings. It is perpetrators like him whose hands the guns are reaching.” This scenario begs several questions - the most obvious of course being “Why is this person out on bail and not in prison?” Are there not laws in existence already that prohibit one from shooting another? How exactly were law abiding gun owners involved in this incident? If Ms. Daza can identify that illegal guns mostly wind up in the hands of criminals, why is this a point that seems beyond Ms. Schimel's comprehension at every turn?

I would be remiss were I to not point out that the Democrats’ last scheme of “common sense” gun legislation called CoBIS was recently discontinued by Governor Cuomo after bilking taxpayers out of $44 million over 10 years with zero convictions to show for it. Please forgive me if I am not in a hurry to endorse Ms. Schimel's next great “common sense” gun legislation.

In conclusion, the majority of police officers I know do not support Ms. Schimel's half-baked microstamping legislation and know that law abiding gun owners are our friends.  Similarly, many of my colleagues are, like me, NRA members. I too would love to see the end of gun violence and sympathize with its victims and their families.

However, Ms. Schimel’s vision of “common sense” does not jive with reality and does nothing but keep her pockets filled from the radical anti-gun establishment and add additional cumbersome burdens to law abiding New Yorkers who choose to exercise their rights under the Second Amendment. 

Dan Morley
Police Officer