Profile Of An Anti-Gun Nut

[Anasazi]

NYC's 'RINO' mayor Bloomberg is heading up an anti-gun crusade at the mayoral level - here's one of his recruits.

http://www.townhall.com/print/print_story.php?sid=196824&loc=/opinion/columns/CamEdwards/2006/05/11/196824.html

Gun nonsense in Mississippi
By Cam Edwards

May 11, 2006


New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is seeking allies in his war on “illegal guns.” The mayor recently held a summit for fellow mayors at Gracie Mansion in Manhattan, attracting the mayors of Dallas, Boston, Hartford, and several other major American cities. They signed a “statement of principle” in which they pledged to fight legislation in Congress that would keep Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) trace data out of the hands of city attorneys (more on that in a moment). They proclaimed they aren’t enemies of gun owners, and vowed to go after guns on the street illegally, rather than lawfully owned firearms. Yet one mayor at Bloomberg’s little rally might be illegally carrying a gun of his own.

Mississippi’s attorney general is currently investigating Jackson, Mississippi Mayor Frank Melton. While the attorney general hasn’t discussed the specifics of the investigation, the Clarion-Ledger newspaper reports that Melton is facing a number of troubling accusations, including carrying a concealed handgun without a license and “obtaining a false arrest warrant to hold someone in jail.” In fact, local media in Jackson have portrayed the mayor as a man who is using his position for desperate and increasingly bizarre pleas for attention.

Melton made national headlines last week when he used his police detail to pull over school buses in Jackson (a misdemeanor, by the way). At the time, Melton said, “I wanted to touch them [the high school students]…. I went through the buses and shook their hands and hugged them and told them how proud I was of them.” It turns out a crew from the NBC program “Dateline” was following Melton at the time.

Melton has also received extensive criticism for his unusual approach to fighting crime. Melton has accompanied police officers as they conduct warrantless searches of homes, cars, and individuals. The mayor has even placed private citizens in “protective custody” without alerting the local district attorney. They may call it “protective custody” in Jackson, but it looks more like kidnapping from where I’m sitting.

Melton’s attire while going on these police raids may also violate the law. The mayor carries a holstered pistol, which the state attorney general’s office classifies as carrying a concealed firearm. There’s one problem: Until last week, Melton didn’t have a concealed carry license, meaning Melton could have been carrying one of those “illegal guns” he’s vowed to go after.

There’s one more irony here. One of the things Mayor Bloomberg is pushing for is the release of ATF “trace data.” New York City’s mayor says this information can show that a small number of “rogue dealers” are intentionally supplying criminals with massive numbers of firearms. The ATF has said that the “trace data” does not and cannot show that information, because a trace doesn’t mean that a firearm has been used in a crime. Despite that, Bloomberg wants that data in order to use it in civil cases against gun manufacturers and gun store owners. One of the statements of principle that Bloomberg’s allies (including Frank Melton) had to sign at the gun summit was a pledge to fight for the release of this information.

With that in mind, it’s interesting to point out that Melton has publicly said he will not release any crime statistics for Jackson. Why would the mayor push for the release of sensitive law enforcement documents while saying the public doesn’t have a right to know how bad (or good) the local crime rate might be? Columnists and pundits in Jackson have been calling on the mayor to release these crime figures for months, yet the closest the mayor has come to doing so is to give the figures to a non-profit he used to head. The non-profit group says it will “audit” the crime stats and release them to the public sometime this summer.

Mayor Melton seems to be suffering from an increasingly common malady I call “Nagin’s Disease.” Its chief symptom is the delusion that being mayor is akin to being a Supreme Leader. In fact, earlier this month Melton declared “I am the final authority” in Jackson. Not quite, Mr. Mayor. The last time I checked, you still have to follow the Constitution and laws of the land.


Cam Edwards is the host of “Cam and Company” on www.nranews.com and Sirius Satellite Radio. A veteran talk show host and political analyst, he blogs at www.camedwards.com in addition to his daily talk show. Cam lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and five children.

Copyright © 2006 Townhall.com

[jtpickens]

Typical anti gun nut they should be put in padded cells so they can't hurt nobody :lool:

[stetson]

He needs to be voted out of office.He's out of touch with common man but again
with his money he does not care.

[Anasazi]

Bloomberg plays to his pacifist zealot audience - of which there are many.

The [COLOR=Red]'No Quarter'[/COLOR] Gun Court.

http://www.newsmax.com/scripts/printer_friendly.pl?s=pf&page=http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/6/5/85700.shtml?s=us

New York 'Gun Courts': Cracking Down on Firearms



NEW YORK -- The court case listed as the People vs. Godfrey Hayle looked like an unremarkable one: Police claimed the 44-year-old suspect tried to ditch a 9 mm handgun last year during a drug bust.

But when Hayle walked into a downtown Brooklyn courtroom last week, state Supreme Court Justice Robert Holdman was unusually attentive - and blunt. For starters, he shot down a defense attorney's bid for a plea deal with no jail time.

"That's not going to happen in this case," Holdman said. "The offer from the district attorney's office is one year. I'm comfortable with that."

It was a message that Holdman - a 42-year-old former prosecutor with a crewcut - sent several times that morning: Don't expect much leniency in one of the nation's busiest gun courts.

"I'm not the gun czar or the new sheriff in town," Holdman said later outside court. "But I am here to uphold the law and make sure justice is done."

While the strategy of making certain cases a priority by funneling them to the same judge in a specialized court isn't unique, gun courts have become a cornerstone of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's highly publicized crusade to discourage criminals from selling, buying and using illegal firearms in the five boroughs.

Bloomberg and judicial officials announced the opening of gun courts in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens about three years ago. Since then, the percentage of gun-possession defendants receiving one-year jail terms or longer has roughly doubled, city officials said.

The Brooklyn District Attorney's Office alone has handled roughly 1,100 cases in gun court since 2003, with about a 90 percent conviction rate. More than half the defendants are between the ages of 16 to 21 years old. Most were caught carrying semiautomatic handguns.

Prosecutors in Brooklyn demand a minimum one-year sentence, even for first-time offenders who technically could receive probation. If defendants don't agree to do the time, they're forced to go to trial, often within six months - lightning speed for the courts. If convicted, they could go away for two years or longer.

"We see every possession of a gun as a potential homicide," said Sue-Ellen Bienenfeld, who supervises six prosecutors assigned to the Brooklyn gun court. "We don't want to wait for somebody to actually be killed."

The country's first gun court was established in Providence, R.I., in 1994. They later turned up in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Milwaukee and elsewhere - part of a trend that also produced drug, truancy and domestic violence courts.

Advocates say such so-called specialty courts resolve cases with more efficiency and consistency. But some legal experts question their value.

Ian Weinstein, a professor at Fordham Law School, said there's no reliable data showing gun courts deter crime. He also argues the courts erode "a generally valued safeguard" of randomly assigning cases to different judges with diverse views and ways of dispensing justice.

The alternative makes for "uniform sentencing that's often uniformly harsh," Weinstein said.

Critics of the no-nonsense system might point to the case of Edward Kogan - a Russian immigrant, bus driver and, by gun court standards, a geriatric suspect.

Police arrested Kogan, 68, in January after spotting a pistol sticking out of his pocket. He also was carrying $11,000 in cash.

Kogan claims the money was his life savings, and that he carried the gun to protect it. In court, his lawyer argued his client was too old and sick with Parkinson's disease to be put behind bars like a common thug.

But Holdman wasn't buying it, in part because police alleged that Kogan had tried to bribe them. As the suspect listened through a Russian interpreter, the judge warned that any plea deal would involve jail time and forfeiture of the money.

Afterward, Kogan's attorney, Barry Black, said he considers Holdman a fair judge. But he also believes his client and others may be victims of prosecutors and politicians more concerned with their crime-fighting credentials than fair play.

The gun court approach "can take the equity out of plea bargaining and turn it into a much more rigid exercise," he said. "You could be Mother Teresa and you're going to jail for a year."