A Response to Mike Beard's Whining

from Sam Levin
[email protected]

Originally published on this website January 2, 2001

The following is my response to the Mike Beard, President of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence use of the seven dead victims in Wakefield Massachusetts to foster his dream of victim disarmament. You can read his editorial here:

http://www.csgv.org/content/press/press_releases_boston_122800.html

Hey Mike Beard. I love how you dance on the graves of the seven victims in Wakefield, Massachusetts to foster your extremist victim disarming agenda. It makes the job of me and other pro victims rights advocates a whole lot easier refuting the utter stupidity of you and your organization.

Did you know that Massachusetts has among the strictest gun control laws in America? Funny to see how well these erroneous unconstitutional laws don't work. In Massachusetts, it is very difficult for a law abiding citizen to get an FID card. I should know, I lived there for almost 20 years. There are all sorts of steps one must go through to get an FID card. They need to fill out a form, allow several days for the "authorities" to do a background check, and even go through registration files to get their firearms registered once they have been purchased. There is a fee for that too. The total cost of purchasing a firearm in Massachusetts (FID card, ammo, registration, and gun) is about 800 dollars. That is just for a used gun, Mike.

It is even harder to get a conceal carry permit in Massachusetts. Yes Mike it is true. 90 pound women must "prove a need" on why they should be allowed to defend their lives and dignity while they are OUTSIDE their homes. Then again you feel that it is better for a woman of such stature to be brutally raped and murdered than armed and trained in the defensive use of a handgun.

I wonder how you would feel if G-d forbid such an awful thing happened to your wife. How would you feel Mike? How would you feel if your wife was caught in a dark parking lot one night by some thug high on crack just before she was able to enter her car? How would you feel knowing that she might have been able to defend her life if she had immediate access to a self defense firearm? I don't think you would feel all that bad. You don't believe in "gun violence" remember?

It kind of makes me laugh thinking about the name of your organization "The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence." As if to say violence is a device rather than an act. I wonder how well it would hold up in court if Michael McDermott argued that the gun did it. The stupidity of him doing this would seem rather humorous. The constant historical repercussions of your agenda, however, are not!

Michael McDermott never went through any of the requirements to get the firearms he used to commit those murders. He was a paranoid schizophrenic so there was no way he could ever get an FID card. Yet somehow he managed to get those firearms. How can this be Mike? Massachusetts has the such strong victim disarmament laws! Do you ever stop to think that perhaps if the law didn't prevent his coworkers from being allowed to carry firearms that maybe just one of them would have been armed and might have stopped him? It happens you know. I know what you're thinking right now too. His coworkers carrying guns is more likely to kill one of them than to kill in self defense. But the problem with your organization along with the rest of the anti self defense organizations is that your statistics only count times where someone was killed with a firearm. If someone is injured, or scared off by the presence of a firearm, you don't count those incidents. The reason being that you know if you did, you wouldn't have a case.

According to what I observed from your website, you are composed of 100,000 members and 44 "civic organizations" that advocate for a ban on handguns and assault weapons. You also claim many times on your website that the majority of people support gun control. That is an interesting statement. It stands to reason that you feel the majority determines what is right. The majority of Americans supported slavery prior to the civil war. Did that make it right? Seeing as you support making people vulnerable to such oppression, it wouldn't surprise me at all if you supported such gross violations of human rights too. After all, if people are disarmed, their freedom and existence is rendered at the whim of the state or some violent criminal like Michael McDermott who obeyed no laws whatsoever to carry out his murderous rampage on seven disarmed innocent people who just happened to be obeying the laws you advocate -- thus rendering them helpless prey.

Is your rationale with the whole issue that most people cannot be trusted to have handguns, so we should ban the ownership of handguns, which most people will abide by, because they can be trusted?!

You cry for congress to pass more "meaningful legislation" when you know that none of the extremely tough gun control laws in Massachusetts prevented the shootings?! You claim Americans want stronger gun control laws, yet the stronger gun control laws in Massachusetts that you advocate obviously just don't seem to be working. You know for an undeniable fact that this incident was not prevented by the tough gun control laws in Massachusetts and yet regardless of their ineffectiveness you want to adopt such tough laws as a national policy?!

No offense Mike, but you're stupid.

You did a wonderful job using the latest tragedy to exploit your agenda. It makes my job a whole lot easier.

Sincerely,

Samuel Levin

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