“We don’t like the ‘control’ word. I’m a gun owner, I own 6 or 7 guns, I’m a strong supporter of the 2nd Amendment… And to clarify, I don’t have any semi automatic rifles” says gun control propagandist Mark Kelly, during a recent podcast audio interview with Edward-Isaac Dovere of Politico. His wanting to shy away from the word “control” seems to fit in with the PR and marketing ploys from Moms Demand Action figurehead Shannon Watts, even though what they really do want is “control”, and as such, that means they cannot possibly be supporters of the 2nd Amendment.
“She’s (his wife, Gabby Giffords) somebody who really believes, and I think rightfully, in the right place and time that there are legislative solutions to problems. And I think as a memeber of congress, former of congress, she’s frustrated that more of her colleagues can’t see this. You have, I mean for years now, we’ve had a lot of members of congress, mostly republicans, that have believed and also have said that there are not solutions to this. They say that criminals don’t follow the law, so what’s the point in passing, you know, more restrictive gun laws. You know by that logic, we wouldn’t have any laws to make anything criminal activity, right? We would have no laws against, you know, murder or assault. And if we didn’t, I could pretty much guarantee that there would be a lot more murders in this country if they were not illegal, right? I mean I think everybody could accept that. It’s the same for gun violence. So she, you know, she gets, at times, she gets frustrated. You know that congress, you know the body that she served in and that she loves, cannot do the right thing because of how their influenced from a very powerful and you know financially strong corporate interest. So that, you know, frustrates her.”
Kelly then goes on to talk about how he and Gabby visited the victims of the 2013 Boston Bombing, which, of course, required no guns to pull off.
Mr. Dovere (assuming he self identifies as a “he”, it’s a little hard to tell given the NPR-like tone of his voice) chimes in with “One of the arguments that came back was ‘well if this had been a truck plowing into people you wouldn’t say we should have truck control’, right?” to which Mr. Kelly responds “No, we would try to protect ourselves from trucks crashing into people, absolutely. That’s why if you go into Times Square now, there’s all those big cement barricades. 100% we would. So, you know, it’s not the gun, it’s the person, who, by the way, has the gun.”
Mark Kelly then repeats one of the most common lies of the gun CONTROL crowd, by saying “So, there are laws that do work, we know that, as we, as you look around the country, states with the strongest gun laws, states like Hawaii, and Massachusetts, and New York, and New Jersey, and California, have significantly lower gun violence than states like Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama. I mean, it’s very clear…”
That could be true or untrue, depending on which set of data you look at, and what you consider to be “gun violence”, while also seemingly ignoring crime rates in general. Do suicides count as “gun violence”? Or is it only homicides? What about firearms serving as deterrents? What about states with one large city where gang violence is rampant, but the rest of the state is rural? Would Mark Kelly feel more comfortable walking around Compton with a big sign that reads “I AM UNARMED”, or would he prefer to do such in Burlington, Vermont?
This is just one of the many ways in which gun control proponents can cherry pick data sets to serve their purposes.
But I digress, and direct your attention back to the interview.
Mark Kelly then mocks Senator Richard Shelby for Shelby saying “I’m a 2nd Amendment guy”, which Kelly responds “Nothing more sophisticated than that” while laughing.
While continuing to talk about the senate and members of congress, Kelly says “I think if you’re a member of congress, and you fundamentally believe laws don’t work, you should quit. I mean, you really should, you’re in the wrong job. And that goes for anything, including this issue.”
On the NRA, Kelly says “They say they’re about freedom and rights. How ’bout somebody’s freedom to be able to go to a concert and not get murdered. That’s a freedom, too. But your point, they, at this point, they’re trying to help an industry make money and sell more guns…” with Dovere interjecting with “Sell more guns to fewer people, is your theory, right?” and Kelly responding “Yeah, we used to, gun ownership in the United States used to be more than 50% , now it’s more below 40% “ he says, with an upward inflection toward the end, like it’s a question.
“If you’re a felon, I don’t think you have a right to on the internet and secretly buy a weapon that you’re gunna use to hurt somebody else. That’s not freedom in my book. That makes the next person to get, you know, shot, by the former convict or the domestic abuser, or the suspected terrorist. I mean, that’s where their freedom is affected.”
Mr. Kelly is seemingly unaware that it is currently illegal for a felon to do that.
He continues with “Chicago does have strong gun laws. The problem is that Indiana doesn’t. And the county outside of Chicago, people go into Chuck’s gun store, people know this, and anther one, and I forget the name of, and they buy firearms and they resell them, without doing background checks, and they’re basically doing something that’s legal. It’s hard for the ATF to enforce, to do anything about this. More people traffic guns from Indiana, where guns are very easy to buy, because of the laws in Indiana, that’s why we need strong federal legislation. Washington D.C. is another good example. Washington D.C. has relatively high amount of gun violence. Well, the guns don’t come from Washington D.C., typically, they come from Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia. They get sent up I 95. You know police officers call that the ‘Iron Pipeline’ because it’s where guns are trafficked, along that highway. So it just reinforces the fact that congress should do their job, and then we could start to, you know, like I said, it’s not inevitable that we have to have tens of thousands of people dying each year. It’s not normal. Other countries that our like ours do not have this problem.“
Holy cow. Where do we start with that blathering of rhetorical soup?
Mark Kelly, like many others, blames Chicago’s murders on neighboring states. But if it were Indiana’s fault, why isn’t the homicide or violent crime rates as high in South Bend as it is in Chicago? Even Indianapolis only has about 60% of the homicide rate that Chicago has. By Kelly’s logic, everyone in Indiana and Iowa should be dead by the end of the year due to massive “gun violence”.
Secondly, Kelly is saying he’s aware an FFL that is knowingly violating federal laws. Has he reported this to the FBI or ATF? If Chuck’s gun store is illegally participating in straw purchases, then that’s, you know, illegal, and the ATF can strip them of their federal firearms license and the FBI can arrest them for federal crimes.
Thirdly, Kelly also seems to think that it’s perfectly legal for someone who is legally “allowed” to purchase a gun to make straw purchases, with the intent to sell it someone who can’t pass a background check. Has Mark Kelly ever looked at the Form 4473? It is illegal for someone to do what he is suggesting.
Fourthly, Kelly says that the ATF can’t do anything about this. He’s wrong. The ATF can strip these gun shops of their license.
Fifth, Mark Kelly says that Washington D.C. only has a “relatively high” amount of “gun violence”. He’s sort of right on that. But, in fact, Washington D.C. has the highest rate of homicide of anything considered to be a “state”.
He immediately starts to blame Virginia for this. Except, as with the Indiana-Chicago example, homicide rates are much lower in Virginia than in Washington D.C. Virginia’s homicide rate is about 5.8 per 100,000 people. D.C.’s homicide rate is 24 per 100,000 people. South Carolina’s homicide rate is 7.4, less than 1/3 of what D.C.’s is, so Kelly strikes out there as well.
What Mr. Kelly doesn’t want to talk about is Baltimore, which is close to D.C., in heavily gun controlled Maryland, with a homicide rate of 55.4. Yes, more than double what D.C.’s homicide rate is.
As if that part isn’t hysterical enough, Mark Kelly then takes aim at conceal carry reciprocity. “Why is one state gunna have to be subject to, you know, the laws of another state that has very weak laws. You know if you’re in California, as an example, you know, you’ve gotta convince law enforcement that you’ve kinda got a reason why you want to be carrying a gun. You know what you do in Florida? You apply to the department of agriculture online. You don’t have to be in Florida to get a Florida concealed carry license. You don’t ever have to have visited Florida. We could do it all, we could do it here before the end of this interview. You know is that really, does that make sense? I mean, no training, you know, no background check, you know, nothing.”
Mark Kelly is either intentionally lying, or he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Overall, he’s complaining that it’s too easy to “have” the 2nd Amendment rights that he earlier claims to support, and seems to confuse “rights” with “privileges”. In Mark Kelly’s world, he would have to get approval from a government agency in order to “have” his 1st Amendment rights to speak on a podcast interview.
Secondly, he is wrong when it comes honoring laws of a state while having a concealed permit from another state. If someone has a CHL from, say, Oregon, where CHL holders are not prohibited from carrying in public buildings or on school grounds, travels to, say, Kentucky, where guns are banned on school grounds, the person from Oregon still cannot carry on school grounds in Kentucky. They have to obey the laws of whatever state or other jurisdiction they are in.
Thirdly, to get a Florida concealed weapons permit (they’re called different things in each state), one must go through a training course and pass a background check.
Even the anti gun “smart gun laws” site knows this:
Florida does not prohibit a person from carrying a concealed firearm on or about his or her person if the person has a license to carry a concealed firearm.1 Florida is a “shall issue” state, meaning that the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services must issue a concealed weapons license if the applicant meets certain qualifications. The Department must issue a license to carry a concealed weapon if the applicant:
- Is a U.S. resident and a citizen of the United States or a permanent resident alien of the United States, or a certified consular security official of a foreign government that maintains diplomatic relations and treaties of commerce, friendship, and navigation with the U.S.;
- Is 21 years of age or older;
- Does not suffer from a physical infirmity which prevents the safe handling of a weapon or firearm;
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Is not ineligible to possess a firearm due to a felony conviction;
Among other things. They also go on to explain:
An applicant for a Florida concealed firearms license must demonstrate competence with a firearm through one of the following methods:
- Completion of a hunter education or hunter safety course approved by the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission or a similar agency of another state;
- Completion of a National Rifle Association firearms safety or training course, or a firearms training or safety course or class conducted by a state-certified or National Rifle Association-certified firearms instructor;
- Completion of a firearms safety or training course or class available to the general public offered by a law enforcement, junior college, college, or private or public institution or organization or firearms training school, utilizing instructors certified by the National Rifle Association, Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission, or the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services;
- Completion of a law enforcement firearms safety or training course or class offered for security guards, investigators, special deputies, or any division or subdivision of law enforcement or security enforcement; or
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Presents evidence of equivalent experience with a firearm through participation in organized shooting competition or military service.6
Mr. Kelly seems to suggest that folks with a conceal carry permit/license are somehow more dangerous than those without. He could not be more wrong.
A 2016 report expands on this, courtesy of Daily Wire:
The report, written by Crime Prevention Research Center president John Lott, notes that it is “very rare for permit holders to violate the law” and compares the crimes committed by permit holders to police officers and the general population. The police committed 103 crimes per 100,000 officers, while the general population committed 3,813 per 100,000 people, 37 times as much as the police crime rate.
And yet, the same metric shows an even lower crime rate for permit holders.
“Combining the data for Florida and Texas data, we find that permit holders are convicted of misdemeanors and felonies at less than a sixth the rate for police officers,” Lott writes. “Among police, firearms violations occur at a rate of 16.5 per 100,000 officers. Among permit holders in Florida and Texas, the rate is only 2.4 per 100,000.10 That is just 1/7th of the rate for police officers. But there’s no need to focus on Texas and Florida — the data are similar in other states.”
As Mark Kelly turns his attention to the Las Vegas shooter, he says “We should also probably address the fact that this guy was able to buy, I don’t know, dozens of AR15s. I think he had some AK47s as well. In a short period of time without the ATF being notified. If those were handguns, under federal law, if you buy more than one handgun in five days, the ATF gets notified.”
So, Mr. Kelly wants the ATF notified if someone is buying a bunch of rifles. Should the NTSB be notified is someone is buying a bunch of cars? Should the parks department be notified is someone is going to too many parks?
He continues with “So you have an American citizen, in this case, trying to kill 50o people in a short period of time. He is sending a political message. And that message is ‘I can kill a lot of people very quickly because of our laws here in the United States, and you can’t do anything about it'”
Mr. (?) Dovere stops him and asks “How do you get to ‘because of our laws’ being part of that?”
Kelly responds “I mean look at the arsenal that he amassed. This guy, you could argue… but you know, in any other country, you know, I think it would be a different argument. But here, you know, it is so obvious. In the United States, that you can buy an arsenal very quickly, of very deadly weapons, to murder a lot of people all at once. And show me another reason why this guy did this. You can’t come up with it. Right? Nobody knows. It’s pretty clear to me he was sending a message… The message he’s sending is ‘hey, I am capable and willing and I’m gunna go out and do this, and I’m gunna kill a bunch of people all at once. And to me, that is political here in the United States.”
They wrap up the conversation by taking credit for Maggie Hassan defeating Kelly Ayotte in the 2016 senate race, and saying that voters want these gun laws to “protect” the communities, while seemingly ignoring every “gun sense” candidate that got their butts whipped in the election, then talk about about space exploration.
