A creative, non-legislative way to get guns off the street
slate.com
slate.com
http://clinton4.nara.gov/WH/New/html/20000317_2.html
The rest of the gun-buying public declared a "S&W Death Penalty" and stopped buying anything from S&W.
Smith and Wesson nearly went bankrupt and the British company that owned S&W sold it off for a pittance to a small American gunmaker.
First, there are a lot of companies that sell exclusively or almost-exclusively to the civilian market, or are kept alive in between periods of major government purchasing by the civilian market. E.g.: Bushmaster, who is almost certainly one of those companies that Spitzer would like to punish, doesn't shy away from military/LEO orders but is primarily a civilian arms company.
Given the choice between relatively consistent sales on the civilian market or feast-and-famine by selling to the government (who can inundate you with orders one year and leave you with nothing the next), it wouldn't surprise me if some manufacturers just turned down government orders if they came with too much red tape.
The net result of Spitzer's plan might be a decrease in the number of suppliers willing to deal with the government, rather than the civilian market; it might also cause companies to split off rough parts production and have the finish work done by separate companies -- one for the government and one for the civilian market.
Of course, if such a scheme keeps people like Spitzer occupied and from making a real mess, more power to it. Gun control isn't a vote-getter because, for a great many people anyway, it really isn't a significant or pressing problem.
Those of us who were in law enforcement in New York City in the late '80s and early '90s remember how drug dealers pioneered the use of 9-mm guns. We heard over and over from our friends in the police department that they were outgunned, that their service revolvers were no match for semi-automatics in a shootout. So what did the police do? The New York City Police Department finally bought 9-mms, too. It was a classic arms race, with the gun manufacturers in the economically enviable position of selling bigger and better guns to both sides.
So the proposal, then, is to restrict the government from escalating the arms race by either creating policies or internal politics in such a way that the police can't purchase the weapons that they otherwise would?
"Police friendly" arms manufacturers would continue to sell guns that they think the police want. They're expensive, dated, and proprietary. This is roughly analogous to the state of government tech procurement before the large push for open systems. They will always be behind the curve because they will have no market for their innovative designs since their hands will be tied compared to "police unfriendly" manufacturers.
The police were behind the 8-ball because they failed to innovate. If you take the divisive stigma of firearms out of the picture and look at it as a strategic game, it seems obvious to me that messing with the incremental demand of one (albeit large) customer isn't going to bend the industry to your will.
The Obama White House recently made it clear—abandoning a campaign pledge—that it won't push for a legislative ban on the sale of assault weapons. Yet a series of provocative recent events has revived the gun debate: the international tension arising from Mexican drug gangs using guns purchased at American stores, the 10th anniversary of Columbine, and a Supreme Court case invalidating a District of Columbia law prohibiting the possession of guns at home.
Let's enumerate these events:
1) A foreign country has problems sealing its borders at both ends. Drugs on the south and firearms, allegedly, on the north. It's interesting to point out that the automatic weapons that the Mexican gangs are using are incredibly hard to find in stores here -- they're not the guns you buy at a rural Wal-Mart. It also conveniently ignores the elephant in the room -- pervasive corruption of Mexican officials.
2) Tenth anniversary of a tragedy. Referring to Columbine as a "recent" event is incredibly disingenuous.
3) Supreme court case invalidating an unconstitutional law. The letter of the law was upheld but you'd endeavor to attack the spirit of it?
This is a shameful attempt to take Obama to task on, frankly, a minor component of his platform at a time when he inherited a complex and severe economic mess unheard of in generations, if ever.