Menino, Bloomberg Team Up In Gun Control Ad For SuperBowl

NEW YORK (AP) — The mayors of New York and Boston are rooting for opposing teams in the Super Bowl.

But they’re on the same side when it comes to pushing for stricter gun-control laws.

That’s why New York City’s Michael Bloomberg and Boston’s Thomas Menino have filmed a gun-control commercial that will air during Sunday’s big game between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots.

WBZ NewsRadio 1030′s Rod Fritz reports

The ad was shot Tuesday and will be shown in the Northeast, not nationally.

It shows the two mayors sitting on a couch as if they’re watching the game.

They’re wearing Giants and Patriots jerseys over their shirts and ties.

Bloomberg and Menino are founders of Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

The group has pushed for a stronger federal background check system.

By: CBS News Boston

Letter: 'Constitutional Carry' can't be disputed

This opinion piece is misleading the reader, and not all together factually accurate. The article talks about the permit for Concealed Carry in South Dakota, and the efforts of Rep. Don Kopp and others to change the law to what other states have adopted as “Constitutional Carry.”

It goes on to say that “most everyone knows that it doesn’t take much to get a handgun in South Dakota.” In comparison to where else, I ask? Let’s take Minnesota, which most would agree (at least according to voting history) is somewhat less conservative overall than South Dakota. Minnesota requires, at least, a permit to purchase obtained from the sheriff after a background check and fee. South Dakota doesn’t require this, but requires one to fill out a Federal Firearms License (FFL) dealer form and pass a background check. It’s the same background check the sheriff’s department uses for concealed carry, and additionally in Minnesota, permit to purchase. The point here is that you still have to pass a federal background check to even purchase a weapon, which is step one in the two-step process of getting your concealed carry permit.

Repealing CCW laws are not going to have any effect on crime because, as I pointed out, as long as current rules and regulations are being followed criminals/insane aren’t eligible to purchase them. The Achilles’ Heel of the gun control crowd’s argument is the fact that criminals don’t follow the law. They will get those guns outside of the legal means that law-abiding citizens use, and do you think they will then obey the need for a permit for concealed carry? No. This day in age, any further form of gun control only hurts the law-abiding citizen. The only sensible gun control is already law: criminals, the insane and the violent are disqualified from legally obtaining a firearm. Criminals will always get the guns, we need to learn to accept this fact of life and focus on the rights of the law-abiding citizen.

As the son of a police officer, I hold the safety of police in high regard. To address this issue I have this to say: Police often ask if weapons or firearms are on your person when being questioned. That’s just common sense police procedure. Need I mention criminal vs. law-abiding citizen in this scenario? It’s the same reason I need not detail the ineffectiveness of gun-free zones, per the criminal.

I support Constitutional Carry for one main reason: The Second Amendment itself is not the granting power. The Second Amendment clearly acknowledges the god-given right of the citizen, and militia (mentioned separately), to bear arms. Why are we paying a fee for something the law already recognizes as a right? If you’ve already met the prior obligations to obtain your firearm, the government doesn’t need to levy a fee to exercise the existing right. What’s next, a First Amendment permit to post on Facebook? Hey, it’s just another Amendment, right? There really is no solid argument against Constitutional Carry.

By: Shawn Fritz, Worthington Daily Globe

Colombia experiments with Bogota gun ban

What might be one of the largest experiments in gun control ever attempted is currently under way in the Colombian capital, Bogota.

No weapons are allowed on the streets of this city of 7.3 million people from Wednesday until 30 April.

If the ban results in a significant reduction of the homicide rate it might become permanent.

The ban is being introduced by a former guerrilla - the city's Mayor Gustavo Petro.

"People who own guns legally can still keep them at their homes or at their offices. But they can no longer bring them to public places, carry them while on the streets, have them in their cars," Mr Petro's chief of staff, Antonio Navarro Wolf, explained.

"By doing so we will be protecting them from two things: from becoming a target for criminals who might want to take their weapons, and from using their guns in a moment of madness," said the former MP and governor of Narino, who demobilised from the left-wing M-19 group in 1990, just like Bogota's mayor.

Mr Navarro told the BBC he does not think Colombians are more prone to those "moment of madness" than other people.

But the fact remains that Colombia still is one of the most dangerous places on earth - the country with the fifth-highest rate of violent deaths in the world, after El Salvador, Iraq, Jamaica and Honduras, according to The Global Burden of Armed Violence 2011, a report issued by the non-governmental group Geneva Declaration.

The country's high homicide rate is, of course, linked to ongoing armed conflict and to what Jorge Restrepo, a researcher with the Bogota-based Javeriana University, calls "formidable organised crime".

And critics of Mr Petro's ban have pointed out that most homicides involving firearms are committed with non-registered weapons, most likely smuggled into the country by left-wing guerrillas and the criminal bands that control drug trafficking.

"The bad guys won't care about any ban, just as they don't care about any law," said Campo Elias Jarquin, a security guard.

But Mr Navarro remembers a study conducted in the 1990s that found out that one of every three murders involved legally acquired weapons.

"And the truth is, we really don't know" how many deaths by firearm involve legal weapons, he told the BBC.

"Very few of the guns used involved in homicides are ever seized by the authorities, only 10%. And with such small numbers is not possible to infer how many are legal and how many are not" Mr Navarro explained.

"What we do know is that there are legal weapons involved in homicides, especially in fights and acts of intolerance."

"And we know there were some 1,600 homicides in Bogota last year, and more or less 60% involved firearms," he said.

For Mr Restrepo, Mr Petro's idea has the potential to significantly reduce those figures, if properly enforced.

He contends that a gun ban actually has a bigger impact on armed criminals than on law-abiding citizens, because if apprehended criminals face not only losing their weapon but being arrested, and because criminals are more likely to carry guns than law-abiding citizens.

Mr Restrepo's empirical analysis of a ban put in place in several Colombian departments between November 2009 and January 2010 found a reduction of 23% in the number of gun homicides and of 53% in the number of gun injuries.

Because, for all the outcry provoked by Mr Petro's proposal, Colombia has experimented with gun bans before.

Partial bans - during the weekends or the festive season - have been in place both in the capital and other Colombian cities in the past.

And no weapons will be allowed on the streets of Medellin until January 2013, after the local authorities asked the army to impose a ban similar to the one requested by the mayor of Bogota.

The political significance of Bogota and its sheer size, however, have forced more people to pay attention.

And then there is also the symbolism of a ban coming from Mr Petro, in light of his past.

"From a political perspective it is very valuable that it is a former guerrilla, somebody who has already disarmed himself, who is asking citizens to also disarm," Mr Restrepo told the BBC.

By Arturo Wallace BBC News