When we hear statistics about how many guns a particular city “took off the streets,” we tend to look at the numbers as them being, you know, firearms. I mean, there are legal definitions of what constitutes a gun, and while a cap-and-ball pistol doesn’t meet those, we might cut a police department slack for making an arrest over one of those.
Or we might not, because arresting someone over something that’s not legally a firearm is stupid.
But at least in that case, it’s something that’s a gun for all practical purposes, even if it might evade the legal definition of a firearm. The NYPD’s 72 Precinct, though, was very proud of a gun bust recently that, frankly, they should be ashamed of posting.
Now, take a look there and tell me what’s wrong with it.
If you said those are blanks, then you would be correct. These are, in fact, blanks. That’s a blank-firing replica gun.
Now, I’m not saying that one of those can’t be used illegally. It most definitely can. If you point it at someone and threaten them, you’re likely still getting an aggravated assault charge. If you try to rob a store with it, it’s still armed robbery. In a case like that, it doesn’t matter if it’s a real firearm or not. It’s the threat of shooting someone that matters with regard to the charges.
And blank guns are restricted in New York City, mostly because they can be converted into functional firearms.
But it’s not one, at least as of yet, and the NYPD is trying to peddle a lie to people to make it look like they accomplished more than they really did. The post mentions three guns in three days, but now people are wondering how many were really guns and how many were gun-shaped objects.
If they’d at least acknowledged that it was a blank pistol and that the law prohibited them, also, I think a lot of people might not have said much. Yet if you look at the Facebook comments on that one, folks are brutal. Why? Because they were stupid for saying they took a gun off the street.
I don’t know who made that call, obviously, but someone thought it was a good idea to make that post, and in the process, they have managed to make the entire 72nd Precinct look like morons, when we know that’s not likely to be remotely accurate.
The truth is that while the media might be able to warrant being excused for not understanding guns at all, the police don’t get that luxury, even if the knob posting stuff to social media might not actually be a police officer. If he is, then it’s even worse, but there’s no good reason to frame this as the cops taking a gun off the streets.
Now, I have to wonder just how many other guns the NYPD has taken off the streets over the years that were’t guns, were never going to be guns, and we simply didn’t know about it.
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