Roy Exum
It wasn’t lost on me that on the same day Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed legislation to “allow just about any Tennessean” to legally carry a firearm without a permit, President Biden laid the biggest egg of his career. Understand, I like some of the stuff Biden is trying to accomplish but gun control – while a liberal flame point – is so far out of reach the President would fare far better trying to beat his stumble-bum experts on this particular topic in the board game Parcheesi. Tennessee became the 19th state on Thursday where a permit is no longer required to strap on a .44 magnum or discreetly slip a 9 mm Glock in your coat pocket.
In 2019 the gun-control lobby was shocked when 13,900,000 (13.9 mm) firearms were purchased legally, all with background checks, bills of sale, and registration. But in 2020 we had the George Floyd riots, the despicable “stand down” leadership in Democratic-controlled cities and – of course – the “Defund the Police” do-gooders who have in fact doubled the gun violence in every city where those buffalo roam. What’s this, cried the liberal elites, when, by jingo, the figures for legal gun sales climbed 65 percent over the 1999 record. That’s right, 23 million guns were bought last year so, in quick math, we have …. drum roll … 36.9 million new-gun sales in the last 24 months and every one legal.
But no, that’s not accurate: When the ‘whatever-you-call-em’ boys ransacked the Capitol building in Washington, on Jan. 6, and liberal leadership allowed it by ignoring multiple warnings, the FBI was also stormed … with 4.3 million requests for background checks, compared to 2.7 million in January, 2020. Thank goodness in February 2021 it had slowed to 3.4 million, but – wince – that’s up 23 percent over last February and now that the Floyd verdict is coming, Katie bar the door! For Joe to make good on gun control promises in such a climate makes him look like a goof.
In Michigan – where some lizards plotted to kidnap the Governor last year, remember that? -- January 2021 was 155 percent over January 2020. In New Jersey … my heavens, up 240 percent over last year. Believe it or not, nobody has any idea how many firearms are actually sold but one source believes there are in excess of 700 million firearms in the United States, a land of roughly 325 mm. people. Other sources swear that there over easily over a trillion (with a “t”) rounds of ammunition “in hand,” ready in now almost half of America’s households.
The president embarrassed himself by saying the Constitution’s Second Amendment is “not absolute” and then he launched onto some ridiculous patter about “ghost guns,” a term for those guns who are bought piecemeal, one part from this guy and other parts from other merchants, so the buyer can assemble an illegal fully automatic firearm without serial numbers. I fear Joe is in the grape juice; those ain’t even an itch compared to the enormity of 36.9 million shiny new guns in less than two years with a banner crop already in 2021.
The “real” ghost guns are those that can be bought within an hour in any poor neighborhood in America. Cruise through Chattanooga’s Alton Park, “the projects” off of Fourth Street, or down Dodds Avenue or Dodson in East Chattanooga. You’ll find some loiters, especially in the late afternoon. Flash a “Benjamin” (slang for $100 dollars) and a “Grant” (a $50 spot) and the game is on. Make sure the “seller” notices a couple of Glocks, or better yet an AR-15 in the hands of your seat mate; ‘street buys’ don’t follow Better Business Bureau standards. Come back in 30 minutes and you can take your pick out of a duffle bag and … er, “you need bullets with that?”
Here’s a dose of truth; Chicago is the U.S. city with the toughest, the most stringent gun laws of any big burg in the USA. The first quarter numbers of the most legendary ‘shooting gallery 'in the nation show that since Jan. 1 there have been 836 shootings, all within the city limits, 152 of the shootings fatal. Since last Saturday night at midnight, there have been 73 shootings, with 20 on Easter and another 20 the day before yesterday. In four days, we have 16 dead in one American heartland city, and Biden is stumping for “executive action?” Brother, please sit down and tell us why VP Kamala ain’t said squat after you made her Queen of the Border over two weeks ago.
The Democrats were all glitter when two of theirs won Senate seats in a terse Georgia election but, all of a sudden, why did FBI background checks jump 68 percent (904,035)? Understand, background checks are not requested unless there is an actual sale of a firearm. I’m talking nine-tenths of a million guns. Thusly, if we sold 23 million guns as a nation, what’s with Georgia infatuation. The only answer is to "wait-and-see.” Bu the pregnant pause is “see what?”
A national columnist opined this week that the “landmark trial” of George Floyd, unfolding in Minneapolis, “is one fraught with consequence for racial stability (or lack thereof) in the United States. If there isn’t a guilty verdict, it will be seen as conclusive evidence that Black lives don’t matter. The country will explode.”
According to black activist Shaun King, writing under the headline “America will riot if Derek Chauvin isn’t convicted for killing George Floyd,” King wrote: “Yes, Dr. (Martin Luther) King said that riots ‘are the language of the unheard,’ but hear me now – if Derek Chauvin is not convicted of some degree – first, second or third – of murder, if he is not held accountable in the court of law, a reckoning is going to befall this country one way or another. And it should.”
FROM ‘TIME’ MAGAZINE: “There are widespread concerns that, if Chauvin is not convicted, Minneapolis will again erupt in protests. The city has already put up more than $600,000 in barriers around city buildings and police stations in case of unrest.
Chauvin’s arrest was “100 percent performative,” Oluchi Omeoga, a Minneapolis-based activist with the Black Visions Collective, tells TIME. “There was a lot of external pressure… I thought it was more symbolic than anything else. Changes come from completely changing the system.”
Omeoga, who has little faith in the trial’s outcome, says that the time since Floyd’s death has been a year of community and coalition building. “My job as an organizer is to help our older folks and younger folks dream of a world that does not exist yet,” Omeoga explains. “We’re trying to create something that has never existed in our lifetime.”
* * *
Whoa … I plead for common sense and pray for calm. Perish the thought that 36.9 million guns, all under two years of age, added to a gazillion others, should help decide anything. And that should be President Biden’s True North over any and all.
Many millions of us pray against a clock that is ticking.
royexum@aol.com