Gillibrand, McCarthy, and the NRA

Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy has come out forcefully against New York Governor David Paterson's pick of Kirsten Gillebrand (photo right) to fill the vacancy of Hillary Clinton as United States senator. Since all of these people are Democrats, what's going on here? For the uninitiated, this has to do with the Long Island Railroad massacre, guns, and the NRA -- specifically Gillibrand's support of (and support from) the pro-gun organization.

In 1993, mad gunman Colin Ferguson went on a shooting rampage on the Long Island Railroad, killing six, including McCarthy's husband. To that point, McCarthy was an unknown Long Island housewife. She used her husband's murder as a springboard to fame, to fanatical support of gun control (and opposition to the NRA) and ultimately to election to the U.S. Congress.

What has compounded the tragedy is that McCarthy has now dedicated her life to taking away the rights and freedoms of law-abiding Americans. Usually, Democrats don't oppose each other in primaries because of disagreement on an issue. (In fact, Gillibrand's top booster was NRA-hater Senator Chuck Schumer). But in this case, so committed is McCarthy to dislodging the Second Amendment that she has taken the extraordinary step of announcing a likely primary run against Gillibrand.

McCarthy's fanaticism may bear fruit with voters in New York City, but the gun control issue has been, and will continue to be, a sure loser for Democrats. Has McCarthy ever wondered what might have happened if a law-abiding citizen had possessed a handgun that day on the train? The killer might have been stopped after only one death. But the passengers, defenseless, had to gang up on Ferguson only after he killed six and had to stop to reload.

Gun control surely abetted Colin Ferguson.

Several years later in Queens came the unspeakable execution-style murders at Wendy’s, about which gun control advocates must have been very satisfied with themselves. They must have been very pleased indeed.

The seven victims, tied up with duct tape, plastic bags placed around their heads, their faces pressed against the cold cellar floor, were vanquished in cold blood, their brains blown out by an illegal .380-caliber semiautomatic. If only we had had strict gun control.

But wait! What’s that? We did have tight gun control? And still these people were killed? How the hell did that happen?

These crimes were committed in New York City by residents of New York City, a place more than synonymous with gun control. Relative to the rest of the country, New York’s gun control laws border on prohibition. Only Washington, D.C. — affectionately known as the murder capital of America — had stricter gun control than New York (before, of course, the recent Supreme Court decision weakening the D.C. gun ban).

Americans frequently hear about battles over gun waiting periods. Should they be three days? Five days? Seven days? Different states have varying waiting periods, a pet panacea of gun control fanatics. California gun controllers boast about their 15 day waiting period. In New York City, there is a six to eight month waiting period. In New York, it is practically a crime to even look at a gun.

Gun controllers are undoubtedly shocked that their precious gun control laws didn’t work on the LIRR or at Wendy’s. They are shocked because they are fools. Gun control never works. The prohibitionists are dumbfounded that the Wendy’s murderers, John Taylor and Craig Godineaux, were not deterred by New York’s gun control laws. These two misfit career criminals, who specialized in the armed robberies of fast food restaurants, did not purchase their weapon from a licensed dealer (a favorite target of gun controllers.) They did not submit to a background check. No waiting period for John Taylor.

Gun control, however, did play a part in the Wendy’s massacre. It played a very crucial part indeed. Thanks to New York’s gun control laws, Wendy’s manager Jean Auguste was forced to tie up his workers. Entrusted with their lives, this poor man never had the option of self-defense. At gunpoint, he bound his employees with duct tape before having his own brains blown out. If only he had had his own equalizer.

Ramon Nazario and Anita Smith (what in God’s name could have been going through their minds?) also felt the naked brutal reality of defenselessness moments before their deaths. John Taylor and Craig Godineaux, if they have any sense whatsoever, certainly must be eternally grateful for the gun control laws that allowed them free rein, without a threat to their actions.

It is axiomatic that career criminals are the strongest supporters of tight control.

Hardened street hoodlums simply do not want to carry out their trade in locales where honest people are armed. This is not only common sense, it has been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt, despite the hysterical and unbearably shrill whines of rubber-headed gun controllers.

The late great Charlton Heston, former president of the NRA, has explained his conversion from Hollywood liberal to sober-minded thinker by describing the mentality he frequently encountered from the lefties in his business. Liberals, he explained, would always justify their political positions with emotion-based rationale, never common sense or a cold look at facts. Nuclear arms control, like gun control, was defended by his colleagues as a “gut issue.” Don’t bother us with the facts. It feels good, so let’s do it.

Douglas Montero, a liberal columnist with the New York Post, actually went to the trouble of speaking to store owners in the same neighborhood as Wendy’s. Montero thoughtfully imparted the stories of shopkeepers whose lives were saved in the midst of robberies by the presence of their own firearms. Garfield Hart, proprietor of an electronics store, pumped a bullet into the chest of an armed bandit with his life-saving equalizer. No plastic bag over Garfield Hart’s head. He’s alive.

Lilly Fu, 27 years old, fired a shot into the neck of a career hoodlum, shooting him dead outside her boyfriend’s cell phone business in Flushing, Queens. Montero wrote, “Fu and Hart could have conceivably been registered as statistics, like the victims at Wendy’s who were led to a basement freezer, bound with duct tape and killed like dogs.” Instead, thanks to guns in the hands of honest people, the real dogs are dead, snuffed out like the vermin they are.

Throughout America, hundreds of thousands of lives are saved and crimes prevented each year because of the presence of guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens. Over the past two decades, “right to carry” laws enacted in many states have enabled citizens to carry concealed weapons — all to the horror of street predators. Crime in those locales has plummeted.

But never mind. Gun controllers will continue to ignore reality and scream for more gun control, while ignoring the screams of the Wendy’s victims, where a gun in the hands of one of them would have saved their lives.

Indeed, it is tragic that McCarthy cannot see that Gillibrand's position on guns might have saved her husband's life.