Nutter, Rendell Unintentionally Blast Other Police Departments For Firepower

Days after a Philadelphia police sergeant was killed with a semi-automatic rifle, Mayor Nutter and Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell called upon Congress to enact a new federal assault-weapons ban that would remove such weapons from the streets.

Right.

Here's the kicker. Check out this quote from the full story in the Philadelphia Daily News:

"Those weapons have one goal and use in mind," Nutter said. "They are to destroy human beings and do it as quickly and as dangerously and in as devastating a fashion as possible."

Which raises the following question: Just what conditions would it be okay for police officers in Columbus, Miami, Chicago and Washington DC to destroy human beings quickly, dangerously and as devastatingly as possible? For all of these police departments have been, or are being, armed with rifles identical to that which Messrs. Rendell and Nutter want banned from civilian possession.

Here in my great city of a few years back, while the City Council was demanding that competition rifles be banned because they were such an overall danger, and particular danger to children, they were quietly planning to purchase "patrol rifles" for the Columbus Division of Police.

Below is a portion of testimony I gave before the Columbus City Council back on July 1, 2005 regarding this issue. Council members never addressed the question, and would not answer queries from local media about the planned purchase of said rifles.

"I am gratified, as are many people in our city, that Council has been long looking at, and decided to invest in "less than lethal" tools for officers to carry. Officers have long carried pepper spray, but I refer specifically to the many hundreds of thousands of dollars invested by Council in Taser stun guns. These tools are designed to incapacitate a crime suspect, rather than severely injure or kill them.

"The people of Columbus also assume, since Council is no longer talking about Tasers in these hearings, that you have decided that "less than lethal" is the way to go. So it is a mystery to a growing number of people that Council is now suddenly considering the purchase of weapons that in Council’s own words through this ordinance have only a single purpose . . . to efficiently and quickly kill human beings.

"Why does the city want to buy such guns that it is trying to ban? And please explain to every taxpayer sitting in Council chambers tonight, watching on television, or reading of this hearing in tomorrow’s paper, why the very guns you want to buy you are calling "semi-automatic rifles," but for purposes of gun registration and surrender to the authorities, you have proclaimed these same guns, "assault weapons."

"Council owes the people of Columbus, whose tax dollars you are gambling with these cheap stunts solely designed to terrify them, a credible explanation of why you want to spend their hard-earned dollars on these guns that you have been demonizing since last August."

BTW, does the language I quoted from my council sound familiar? It's because variations of the "destroy human beings" and "efficiantly kill" line now being used by Nutter and Rendell was focus-group tested by the anti gun groups several years ago -- long before it started showing up in testimony from doctors and a politicians in different parts of the nation.

Folks, this is the kind of nonsense our politicians (and a few trauma surgeons) spout continually. Just keep your ears honed to the words and your eyes on who is spouting them. You'll connect the dots. As for Rendell and Nutter's demands . . . if Congress knows what is good for them and the nation, they will ignore this call.

But then it will all really depend on who is sitting in the White House next January 20, won't it?