U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “It is clear that we must crack down on deadly, military-style assault rifles, which is why I voted to pass Senate Bill 1657, which holds gun dealers accountable by ensuring dangerous criminals and those with a history of mental illness or domestic violence cannot get their hands on a weapon,” Illinois State Representative Fred Crespo claimed in a letter to constituents. “I also support House Bill 1469, which would prohibit the sale and possession of high capacity magazines which turn regular firearms into fully automatic weapons” [emphasis in original].
First, gun dealers in Illinois don’t sell anything without controls mandated by the feds and the state, and “prohibited persons” are called that for a reason. If citizen disarmament edicts really meant such people “cannot get their hands on a weapon,” we’d expect to see results vastly different from reality, not that the political trough-feeders don’t use still unacceptable reductions as an excuse to brag about what a bang-up job they’re doing.
Second, really? Magazines can convert a gun to full-auto? This is one of the guys responsible for crafting “commonsense gun laws”?
At first I had to make sure the letter wasn’t a put-on, because I doubt The Onion could do a better job at parodying gun-grabber cluelessness. Sure enough, gun owners were giving Rep. Crespo a well-deserved shellacking on his Twitter feed, and he actually doubled down on stupid over at his Facebook page.
“A recent statement from my office incorrectly described two gun safety bills. I appreciate this error being pointed out because I would never want to misinform my constituents. I had intended to inform them of my work with Republicans and Democrats to pass House Bill 1467, which bans bump stocks and other modifications used to make semi-automatic weapons operate like fully automatic machine guns, and my support for House Bill 1469, which prohibits the sale and possession of high capacity magazine clips like those used in the murder of Chicago Police Commander Paul Bauer. I’ll continue working to keep weapons of war out of our community, and striving to provide the people I represent with the latest developments from our Capitol.”
Crespo blames his “office.” What a weasel. So much for “the buck stops here…”
He insists he “would never want to misinform my constituents,” adding new corroboration to the truism that for “progressives,” every day is Opposite Day.
He evidently is above the magazine vs. clip controversy, but what the hell—he wants to ban them all, because “weapons of war” should evidently only be in the hands of the “Only Ones” who have proven trustworthy enough to keep and bear them.
Who could disagree with that? Aside from the Founders…?
The shameful level of subject matter ignorance is hardly new.
“This right here has ability with a 30-caliber clip to disperse with 30 bullets within half a second,” California State Senator Kevin de Leόn blathered at a press conference to a fawning media that didn‘t know enough to question his claims. “Thirty-magazine clip in half a second.”
Then there’s New Mexico gubernatorial candidate Michelle Lujan Grisham, who called for a ban on “high magazine cartridges.” And it gets better (worse).
“I will tell you these are ammunition, they’re bullets, so the people who have those now they’re going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won’t be any more available,” Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette claimed as justification to ban magazines. Her spokesflack, trying to do damage control, doubled down on the ignorance:
“She simply misspoke in referring to ‘magazines’ when she should have referred to ‘clips,’ which cannot be reused because they don’t have a feeding mechanism.”
And who can forget New York Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, who thought the barrel shroud she wanted to ban was “the shoulder thing that goes up”? Or New York State Assemblywoman Patricia Eddington, who maintained .50 BMG rifles needed to be banned because:
“Some of these bullets have an incendiary device on the tip of it, which is a heat-seeking device, so you don’t shoot deer with a bullet that size. If you do, you could cook it at the same time.”
That any of these authoritarian control freaks consider themselves qualified to weigh in on anything having to do with firearms is nothing short of political malpractice. But the true shame, as has been pointed out throughout the years, is owned by a constituency allowing a real-life version of “Idiocracy” to become inevitable.
Perhaps anyone dumb and dependent enough to vote for Fred Crespo and other gun-grabbing frauds is too stupid and irresponsible to own a gun. That’s just the kind of voter they’re counting on…
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating / defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament.
In addition to being a field editor/columnist at GUNS Magazine and associate editor for Oath Keepers, he blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.