Deke Is Not a Gun Sissy

by Austin Rhodes   My disagreements with Augusta Mayor Deke Copenhaver have been pretty well documented over the years. I have called his hand on any number of bad/ill-conceived/misguided/just plain stupid notions over the years, which include, but are not limited to: The unconstitutional fight against Video XMart, and the three-quarters of a million bucks it cost the city. Failure to hire a competent and independent emergency management director. The lack his personal involvement in the ongoing controversies involving the re-organization of the municipal government. No accountability or voice when it comes to the issue of redistricting. A genuine absence of leadership when dealing with the local state legislative delegation. The mere fact that Fred Russell is still in town, drawing a municipal salary. Okay… so there are just a few of the greatest hits. Yes, there are many criticisms one can have of Mayor Deke, but being a sissy when it comes to the Second Amendment is not one of them. Yet the mayor recently found himself in the crosshairs of many pro-gun patriots when he signed on with a coalition of city chiefs from around America, headed by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who call themselves Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Take a look at what Copenhaver and 600 other mayors are uniting to demand: A. Punish — to the maximum extent of the law — criminals who possess, use and traffic in illegal guns. B. Target and hold accountable irresponsible gun dealers who break the law by knowingly selling guns to straw purchasers. C. Oppose all federal efforts to restrict cities’ right to access, use and share trace data that is so essential to effective enforcement, or to interfere with the ability of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to combat illegal gun trafficking. D. Work to develop and use technologies that aid in the detection and tracing of illegal guns. E. Support all local, state and federal legislation that targets illegal guns; coordinate legislative, enforcement and litigation strategies; and share information and best practices. F. Invite other cities to join in this new national effort. Those bastards! I know, you are asking where is the punchline? If the mayors are against illegal guns, it would have to be quite a stretch to assume they are against legal guns, right? No, of course not. At least not if you are a member of a group called “Georgia Gun Owners”, who penned the following breaking news flash in a widely distributed email this week:   “N Y C Mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg wants to ban guns in Georgia. And as ludicrous as that sounds, he already has a number of allies in the state… including Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed. Bloomberg has teamed up with rabidly (our Deke?) anti-gun mayors from Atlanta, New Orleans, Washington, D.C. and Chicago to impose their big-city gun control on the rest of America, and Kasim Reed has joined their efforts. Following Bloomberg’s anti-gun example in New York City, twelve Georgia mayors from around the state have joined in the anti-gun campaign to destroy our gun rights. Members of this group include the mayors of Atlanta, Macon, Augusta and Roswell — and eight others — all added together represent more than one million Georgians! What that means is, a large percentage of our population has elected mayors who not only are anti-gunners, but heavily-funded by them. The danger to our gun laws here in Georgia is almost indescribable. “ For a moment, I thought there had to be a connection between the Georgia Gun Owners and the Peach State branch of NORML. I say that because it must take a tremendous amount of weed to get so many folks so paranoid over nothing. I believe the mayors to be genuine in their concern, and I will give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to their collective efforts to support the Constitutional rights of legal gun owners everywhere. But I would suggest that they park the platitudes, and put their collective political muscle in the face of the people that really matter in the battle against illegal gun violence, Superior Court judges. Sentence offenders who use guns in their crimes to the maximum time allowed by law. No minimums, no mediums, just the max. All those idiots who were arrested in Operation Smoke Screen? Every damn one of them should be in jail for the next 20 years. That was 77 people. A similar local sting done in 2007 yielded 130 arrests. All convicted should have been put in jail for the next two decades. They were not. That is on the judges, and the prosecutors, if they got cute with plea bargains. So mayors, if you want to make illegal guns a thing of the past, put the people who use them illegally in the deepest, darkest hole current law allows. Unless you guys really are sissies.  You Might Also Like: