How States Like Georgia Make Cop Killing Easy

Last week, our society once again paid the price in blood for a government run by the galactically stupid and ideologically inept.

In New York, a police officer died. While a tragedy, that is not the story here. It's why this 25-year old member of the NYPD, Brian Moore, lost his life in a hail of bullets a week ago. It is once again a story about those of us living in the 21st century, suffering due to the actions of those bathing in a sea of branded myth and intellectual decay. Or as it's known in common parlance: Georgia.

Last year, when I first started writing this column, I covered the many foibles, distortions and atavistic tics of those who would seek to put guns in nursery schools, bars and churches, and give Stand Your Ground rights to felons. But you gotta give credit to Georgia legislators, for whom it takes a lot more than legal precedent, common sense and the opposition of constituents and law enforcement to prevail upon them to do something rash, like preventing people from getting shot. As God is their witness, they'll never go hungry for bullets again!

The problem is that decisions made by pencil-dick provincial legislators in one state affect the health and safety of those living in every other contiguous state, which is where we now find ourselves. In New York City, a city in a state that chooses not to hand over policy to those with the cognitive capacity of a worn-out whoopee cushion, 90 percent of guns recovered from crimes come from out of state.

New York, you see, is among the states that have common-sense background checks to prevent felons, domestic abusers and the mentally incapable from getting guns—states that don't think it should be harder to get birth control than an assault rifle. Georgia, on the other hand, exported two times the national average of guns used in crimes. Guess which of these models for gun regulation leads to 48 percent fewer law enforcement officers killed?

I'll give you some time, especially if your name is John Lott.

So what do we know? We know Officer Moore was killed by a violent felon (attempted murder charge and nine arrests, two for assaulting police officers) not allowed to possess a firearm. We know that the firearm that led to Moore's murder, a .38-caliber revolver, was stolen from a gun store in Georgia in 2011. We know that it was one of 23 guns stolen overall, nine of which ended up on the streets of New York in crime scenes. We know that in 2006 and 2009, Georgia was the leading exporter of crime guns to other states.

We know that Georgia is so concerned about the welfare of its citizens, that it not only doesn’t require one to report lost or stolen guns, but it prohibits localities in the state from doing so (so much for right-wing talking points about “local control!”). We know the effect of this is to allow a vibrant gun-smuggling operation of “straw purchases” for people who can’t have guns, very lucrative for dealers or others who lack a conscience but love to charge a premium. And we know that Georgia lacks universal background checks by design, so any loon, terrorist or person with an axe to grind can walk into a gun show or go online, and buy guns that possess military firepower.

Let your kids walk alone to a playground a mile away, we'll swoop in like jacked-up Kal-El and threaten to take them away. That also goes for people who say there are positive benefits from smoking pot. Clearly, the only response is to have someone resembling a Terminator T-800 Cyberdine Systems Model 101 with a badge kick through your door through your window and deprive you of a child. Wanna sell a gun to a psychopath and serial killer? Or kill someone else’s kid by “accidentally” shooting through a wall? No worries! it’s just how we roll.So right around the time we celebrate the 15-year anniversary of the The Brady Campaign’s Million Mom March on Washington, D.C., an officer died. He didn’t have to die. It was a choice that legislators made. To make it that much easier for this to happen. In the words of a dolt of a Tennessee legislator, while adding guns to their state parks as a sop to the National Rifle Association, “an act of God.”

God seems to get a lot of help from pretzel-logic, bullshit wranglers, if you ask me.