Front Sight, Press

Three more gun shops caved into the Bloomberg gang’s criminal extortion. It’s easy to condemn the shops for giving in and settling with hizzoner the extortionist, but no individual gun shop has the financial resources to fight an extended court battle with Bloomberg and the City of New York. They settled to survive.

“Hot Shots Jewelry & Pawn of Marietta, Georgia; Miller Rod & Gun of Youngstown, Ohio; and Dick’s Pawn of North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina have all agreed to settlements providing for a Special Master selected by the City and appointed by the Court to monitor their firearms sales activities. They have each also agreed to submit to close monitoring of their records and inventory, which may include videotaping of their sales activities and continued undercover surveillance.” Source

Managers and owners at the shops said financial considerations prompted their decision to settle. “It was going to cost $50,000 in attorney’s fees,” said Rick Morketter, manager of Dick’s Pawn, of North Myrtle Beach. “We wanted to take the path of least resistance.” Source

Not all the gun stores are running up the white flag. Old Dominion Gun & Tackle is fighting the Bloomberg gang with the aid of a gun raffle sponsored by VCDL

For every 100 dollars spent at Old Dominion Gun and Tackle, customers get a raffle ticket for the Bloomberg Gun.

The gun is being given away by the Virginia Citizen’s Defense League in response to federal law suits filed against several gun dealers in the Commonwealth by New York City’s Mayor…

…The Bloomberg gun will be given away in April. The giveaway is an attempt to keep store owners from going out of business. Old Dominion Gun and Tackle had to pay $10,000 in legal expenses. Since the giveaway, business has gone up.

“This past February my sales were greater than my Christmas sales in December and that’s never happened in the whole 27 years I’ve been in business,” says Alverson.

The Department of Justice has dropped the lawsuits, but two Virginia gun dealers were forced to close from legal bills. Alverson hopes the raffle is enough to keep his business alive.

He says, “We can’t control where the guns go after they leave here no more than Bloomberg can control the drug trafficing that comes into our cities.”

…Bloomberg had called the gun dealers involved in the giveaway “sick people.” Source

The most appalling and objectionable dimension of this case is that the Justice Department is allowing this criminal enterprise to continue rather than shutting down Bloomberg and his goons for federal firearms violations and criminal conspiracy.

The Department of Justice made a tepid and wholly inadequate response to Mayor Bloomberg’s felonious campaign to drive out-of-state gun dealers out of business with lawsuits. In a letter, they said:

“Although a decision has been made not to move forward with case filings in these matters, there are potential legal liabilities that may attach when persons outside of law enforcement undertake actions typically reserved for law enforcement agents,” Department of Justice spokesman Bryan Sierra said Thursday. [That legal risk is] “particularly acute when such persons misrepresent that they are the actual purchasers of the firearms,” he said. Source

The gun rights community is all lathered up about the Parker decision, and rightfully so, for its affirmation of the Second Amendment. Yet, if vigilante mayors are allowed to launch criminal conspiracies and destroy the businesses of gun shop owners, what good will our Second Amendment rights be if we can’t buy guns anywhere.

AG Gonzales and the BATFE need to do their jobs and rightfully enforce the law. (Of course, it’s possible that they’re too busy trying to stay out of jail themselves to worry about a silly little thing like enforcing the law and doing their jobs.) If you or I did what Bloomberg and his goons did, we would be prosecuted. Is Bloomberg above the law because he’s a wealthy RINO?