CCRKBA CHALLENGES CONYERS TO CLOSE ‘POLICE GUN LOOPHOLE’

BELLEVUE, WA – The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today challenged incoming House Judiciary Chairman Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) to “close a real loophole” that seems to be putting quite a few guns on the street, particularly in his own congressional district.

“Conyers is an avowed anti-gunner who believes only cops should have guns,” observed CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “Well, in the past six months, in and around his hometown of Detroit, police have lost at least five guns, including a submachine gun and an M4 semiautomatic rifle that are still missing. Instead of looking for ways to restrict our gun rights, maybe Mr. Conyers ought to be looking for those missing guns.

“Of course,” Gottlieb said, “the typical Conyers approach would be to hold every cop in the country responsible and institute some one-size-fits-all regulation for how police take care of their firearms. That would be ridiculous. The overwhelming majority of lawmen and women are responsible with their firearms. So, too, are the majority of gun owners. They’re not criminals and should not be treated like they are, yet gun laws Conyers and his cronies have supported over the years do exactly that. ”

“For years,” said CCRKBA Executive Director Joe Waldron, “anti-gunners have campaigned against a mythical gun show loophole. A Department of Justice study of state and federal prison inmates found that less than one percent of these criminals got their guns from gun shows, and the anti-gunners know it. But instead of going after criminals, they use the crimes these thugs commit as an excuse to attack the rights of law-abiding gun owners.

“This campaign against gun shows is a fraud,” Waldron added, “designed only to fool American citizens into believing that something is being done about keeping guns out of the wrong hands. It’s a deplorable charade.”

“We’ve still got a reward posted for the recovery of anti-gun Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske’s stolen pistol,” Gottlieb noted. “It was taken from his car, parked on a downtown Seattle street in 2004 while he and his wife were shopping. There have been firearms stolen from SWAT vehicles, guns lost by cops in rest rooms, and yet the gun control crowd insists that the problem is with gun shows and law-abiding gun owners.

“The only loophole,” Gottlieb said, “lies in the collective imagination of Conyers and his ilk. Unlike them, we would never hold every cop responsible for the lapses of a few, same as we don’t hold all gun owners responsible for crimes committed by armed criminals. Every time one of these thefts happens, it reflects badly on every over-worked, under-appreciated, often under-paid police officer and sheriff’s deputy in the country. Holding all of them responsible is as silly as blaming gun shows and gun owners for this country’s crime problem.”