But if Mr. Trump has a political imperative, so do his targets. States need to balance their budgets, unlike the federal government. The federal government is covering the cost of more than 2,000 National Guard troops sent to Washington from six states, at an estimated cost of $1 million a day. That serves as a reminder that such resources could also be available in other cities, if requested.
Federal support for local policing has also had a long history of bipartisan support. Ms. Bowser is one of many Democratic politicians who have sought to put more police on the beat but have run up against budget constraints. Democrats in Congress have been the primary champions of federal assistance for local police forces through the Community Oriented Policing Services — or COPS — program, first passed as part of President Bill Clinton’s crime bill in 1994.
Federal-local partnerships have always shown promise, said Thomas Abt, founding director of the Center for the Study and Practice of Violence Reduction at the University of Maryland. Working with mayors and local officials, the center has become involved with policing in Memphis and Knoxville, Tenn., as well as St. Louis and Boston.
In all four cities, police reforms have emphasized intervening with the people and places at the highest risk of violence, balancing law enforcement accountability with empathy for the difficulties the police face, and maintaining legitimacy and credibility in high-crime communities, said Mr. Abt, who wrote a book on policing, “Bleeding Out."
Knoxville, St. Louis and Boston have seen violent crime rates decline faster than the national average, he said, and Memphis — the newest city to partner with the center — is on track to join them.
Secondly, they're wondering if there's an exploitable divide between Second Amendment Trump supporters versus Law and Order Trump supporters. This is also said to be a news story.
President Trump’s political appointees rolled back Biden-era regulations and diverted officials assigned to weapons cases to immigration raids. The White House has also proposed steep cuts to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and installed disengaged, inexperienced leaders to oversee its increasingly marginalized work force.
While these moves have not exposed major political divisions, they have caused some uneasiness among gun-rights supporters who are concerned that law-and-order officials like Ms. Pirro, who once supported restrictions on assault rifles, will create a chilling effect on legal gun owners in the district and in the surrounding area.
“It sends a message we don’t like,” said Luis Valdes, the Florida director of Gun Owners of America, an influential gun rights group that has pushed for the repeal of most federal gun laws.
It is not clear how many of the guns confiscated by the city’s Metropolitan Police Department or federal law enforcement agencies have resulted in prosecutions, or how many cases were later dropped. In at least one case, Ms. Pirro’s office withdrew firearms charges against a person found to possess two guns after the search was determined to have possibly violated Fourth Amendment protections against illegal search and seizure.
What is clear, however, is that gun cases are a central component of the federal government’s push into Washington.
As I understand the Second Amendment maximalist position, it is roughly this: eliminate the ATF; eliminate the National Firearms Act and the Reagan-era ban on newer automatic weapons; constitutional carry; nationwide reciprocity. As far as I know, it has never embraced eliminating the ban on violent felons possessing or carrying guns.
There probably is a point at which enforcement of DC's ridiculously unconstitutional gun laws crosses a line for sensible Second Amendment thinkers, even perhaps short of maximalists. But to exploit that divide, you'd have to have an alternative. What's the alternative on offer from Democrats?
Even the most ardent "all guns should be legal" gentlemen I know draw the line for firearms ownership at people with certain diagnosed mental illnesses, convicted violent felons, and non-citizen, non-green-card holders. A few friends also recommend that people with dishonorable discharges from the military also not be permitted to own firearms, but there's a lot of argument over that point among my friends.
ReplyDeleteDrug use is also something a lot of my circle consider grounds for non-ownership, at least for a probationary period. Especially meth, PCP, and other strongly psychoactive things. I can't think of any 2nd Amendment supporter I know personally who doesn't put some behavior-based or medical limit on exercising that right.
LittleRed1
What's the alternative on offer from Democrats?
ReplyDeleteI think it's something along these lines (the limits between them are fairly broad and nebulous; a Venn Diagram would have lots of overlaps):
1) No guns, and turn the ones you have in at a purchase price we'll decide
2) OK, you can have a gun, if we agree you truly need one. But one that only fires a very few bullets, and if we agree you need one on your job, you must keep it locked, unloaded, in the trunk of your car
3) OK, you can have a gun, if we agree you truly need one for your home, but only if you keep it locked in a safe, unloaded, and capable of firing only a few bullets.
4) No rifles. Maybe bolt action, needing a new round inserted after each shot, for hunting only. But don't be going around shooting Bambi or Peter Rabbit.
Eric Hines
Eric, you left one out.
ReplyDeleteNo guns, and turn them in, and if you are lucky we will put you in a gulag instead of killing you outright as an enemy of the state.
It is curious , that the anti firearm people are so fixated- much like having a belief in the efficacy of Mounted Lancers in 1914. Their whole viewpoint is an anachronism. If they really want something to worry about, they should try home built UAV's.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that's a good point. They keep coming after our rifles, but its the handguns that cause almost all of the murder; they keep coming after our guns, but it's UAVs that are the killers of the Ukraine war.
ReplyDeleteIn their scheme, they go after what they think they are most likely to succeed at with the hopes of building momentum and disarming us completely.
ReplyDeleteThey don't care about the killing. They care about breaking our spirits and taking away our ability to resist tyranny. They cannot abide a free people with a good sense of itself, and they can't throw us into gulags if we are armed and prepared to fight it.
They are fine with career criminals and will gladly ally with them to destroy the spirit of the people. Solzhenitsyn writes about some of that: “A Communist system can be recognized by the fact that it spares the criminals and criminalizes the political opponent.”
It's funny how they tell on themselves and don't even notice it-
ReplyDelete"Ms. Bowser is one of many Democratic politicians who have sought to put more police on the beat but have run up against budget constraints."
Law enforcement should be within the top four or five things a municipality should be doing for it's citizens. If you don't have enough money for law enforcement, surely you aren't doing any welfare programs or community development grants, right?? They put everything bass ackwards and then complain there isn't enough money, like the college student who asks his parents for more money because they spent what they had on beer.