Put McGruff to Sleep

Now that the election is safely over, President Obama has announced that he intends to bring back the "assault weapons" ban that expired in 2004. Obama wouldn't know an "assault weapon" from a pin cushion because there is no one definition that everyone agrees on. To gun controllers, an assault weapon is pretty much any rifle that looks mean.

More importantly, the pragmatic effects of the ban will be what they always are: depriving law-abiding citizens of their Second Amendment rights, while doing nothing to fight crime. Obama, like Kirsten Gillibrand's likely primary opponent Carolyn McCarthy, wants to get tough on inanimate objects instead of street criminals.

Now it is unclear whether or not either one of them has ever been photographed with the mascot of the gun control movement, but both should be. McGruff, the alleged crime-fighting canine famous for his Columbo-style raincoat and the slogan, “Take a bite out of crime,” first made his bones as the mascot for the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC). As he became more famous, McGruff began appearing live at the various “Night Out Against Crime” festivals and, taking a break from his Santa Claus suit, would be photographed with every smiling politician.

But this dog, despite his reputation, is clearly not “man’s best friend.” In fact, as the barking advocate against the right to bear arms and the howling shill for removing legally owned firearms from the homes of honest citizens, McGruff can more accurately be called the “criminal’s best friend.” It is time to put McGruff to sleep.

The NCPC is a taxpayer-funded federal agency, which, under the guise of an advisory council and public interest advocacy body, actually functions as a mouthpiece for the most notorious anti-gun organizations in America. So McGruff, in reality, has evolved into a quasi-employee for the very groups that are most helpful to America’s criminal element. This is on the order of Smokey the Bear making public service announcements for the advancement of pyromania.

The brochure put out by the NCPC, “Dealing With Gun Violence,” is nothing more than a propaganda sheet for gun-banning fanatics. In it, McGruff steals the message of Eddie Eagle, the mascot of the National Rifle Association’s child gun safety program — “Stop, Don’t Touch, Get Away, Tell a Grown-Up You Trust” — which is the only sensible point in the pamphlet, since imitation is the highest form of flattery. But McGruff, of course, goes further, advocating the complete removal of guns from homes with children.

This mixed up mutt also advises, “Ask local officials to advocate a variety of ways to prevent handgun violence, such as increasing local regulation of those with Federal Firearms Licenses, consumer protection regulations governing manufacture, taxes on ammunition, bans on so-called ‘assault weapons,’ gun turn-in days and liability legislation.”

Whew! That’ll do the trick! Crack down on law-abiding people and inanimate objects. Rumor has it that Chuck Schumer has been spotted running into a phone booth just before McGruff appears on the scene. (In fact, the “gun turn-in” charade is actually one of the more hilarious inventions of the anti-gun movement. The basic idea is that, given some public-spirited incentive such as free Yankee tickets or an autographed picture of Cindy Crawford, hardened criminals will surrender with amnesty the very weapons they were about to use to rob a bank. The program even embarrasses most gun banners.)

The brochure also lists three “organizations” to contact for more information: The Center for Handgun Violence, Coalition to Stop Gun Violence and the National School Safety Center. All of these groups are staunch proponents of eliminating the right to bear arms and of cracking down on the gun-availability to law-abiding citizens. Nowhere in their literature do they distinguish the honest firearm owner from the gun-toting mugger. And nowhere in the brochure does McGruff propose that criminal perpetrators be locked up and given strict prison sentences.

This grotesque misuse of the American tax dollar is part of the larger abominable and tyrannical trend to conduct a regulatory war on the Second Amendment. Using government agencies, rather than the legislative process, to snatch away freedoms is the new and very efficient method of accomplishing the anti-gun agenda without having to face the will of the voters.

The awesome power of an unrestrained federal government is the certain road to totalitarianism. This back door method of abolishing freedoms has manifested itself not only through the NCPC, but the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF), which has dramatically cut the lawful availability of all firearms by strangling commerce. BATF simply will not license honest dealers, decreasing their number by close to half since 1993.

Bill Clinton gave broad power to ban ammunition to the Treasury Department, which can potentially result in the ban of rifles used for hunting, target shooting and personal protection. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has pressed for a ban on firearm advertising. Ignoring that guns are used successfully for self- defense more than two million times per year, the FTC has labeled firearm ads “false and misleading” on the topic of personal defense.

The Clinton (and presumably Obama) White House has also used the Department of Defense, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of the Interior and even international agencies such as the United Nations and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) to issue myriads of rulings and regulations designed to obstruct, interfere, and eventually prohibit the private ownership of firearms.

Even the Center for Disease Control, which views firearms as a “germ” that must be eradicated, is being used as a propaganda machine for the anti-gun movement. Before these monstrosities metastasize further, McGruff ought to be neutered or, even better, put out of his misery, as a fair warning.