State Rep. Levdansky antigun

[1trueamerican]

http://http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08139/882488-109.stm

looks like some letters need to be sent...levdansky claiming to be a hunter and working with the antis to take guns away for self protection.

mike

[JoeWilliams]

There are plenty of hunters who are anti-gun. They think we should just be allowed to break out our deer rifles for a week a year, and have to keep them locked up the rest of the time. Somehow, they are silly enough to believe that once the antis have the rest of our guns, they won't be coming after "hunting and sport" guns.

[BenningBoy]

Good of him to point out the best way to do a straw purchase. I'd have never thought of using a prostitute for that purpose.

[knighthawk06699]

Originally Posted by BenningBoy

Good of him to point out the best way to do a straw purchase. I'd have never thought of using a prostitute for that purpose.

These are the very same ass hats that don't enforce the gun laws we have on the books now. How ever they will tell you just how to make a straw purchase. I guess they figure the more illegal guns there are on the street the easier it will be to get their agenda pushed. The thing they do not realize is by getting their agenda pushed through the only thing they are going to do is get the law abiding citizens body count raised. I will be damned if that count includes anyone in my family!!!!

[1trueamerican]

the article is on the first page of the editorial section...being read today by a great many non hunters / non gun owners.....the guys a jerk...sucking up to the anti's before the november elections...

mike

[ham385]

I started typing up this letter to send to the Post Gazette in rebuttal, but then I had a good idea for a change. I thought I'd post it here for peer review before submitting it.

Representative Levdansky,
I was stunned when I read your letter in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. As I read your letter, I noticed multiple contradictions and fallacies. I also couldn't help but notice the blatant undertones meant to incite fear in the reader. While I don't personally own a handgun ***THIS IS TRUE***, I take offense to your letter because you assume ignorance of your audience.

The letter starts by recalling the assassinations of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Bobby Kennedy. These were tragic incidents. All three men were great political leaders who made wonderful contributions to our country, but their assassinations have nothing to do with straw purchases of handguns. This is obviously an appeal to emotion, and an irrelevant one at that. Please don't assume that I am so simple as to not understand the difference.

Later in the letter you make the following statement "Who would want his or her handgun in the hands of a criminal or a child who found it?" How could reporting a lost or stolen firearm prevent a child from finding it? Again, this is an appeal to emotion that has no relevance.

Towards the end of the letter you make a false statement, and from this I take the most offense. "Pittsburgh police recovered 968 firearms in 2007. Only 80 of those were reported stolen, and 70 others were registered to the person who was arrested. That means 818 guns were confiscated from criminals or found tossed somewhere and the original owner never reported them lost or stolen." Pennsylvania has no gun registration. The state police maintain a database of sales, but it is not complete, far from it. Either you don't know the truth, sir, or worse, you do know the truth and have chosen to spin it to serve your argument. Regardless, these numbers are inaccurate, sir.

Finally, your letter appeals to the citizenry for support of your proposal to require reporting loss or theft of a handgun within 72 hours. There are multiple problems with this, which I would like welcome a response for.

What if the owner was on vacation, or otherwise didn't notice the theft? I would consider that to be criminalizing the victim.

I've heard rumor there was an exemption that the theft would have to have been know of. If so, I have to wonder, how could knowledge of the theft be proven in a court of law? I personally know several people whose houses have been burglarized multiple times. Simply setting some threshold for the number of times a handgun were stolen leaves owners like them open to persecution, as you quote the NRA saying, it would make criminals out of victims.

One of the tenants of our legal system is that 100 criminals should be set free before 1 innocent be persecuted for a crime they didn't commit. Your proposed law would require so many exemptions, that it would be nearly impossible to prove guilt. Our legal system is bloated enough; we don't need anymore unenforceable laws.

What we do need is tougher penalties for criminals. According to the Bureau of Justice (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/rpr94.htm), in 1994 Released prisoners with the highest rearrest rates were robbers (70.2%), burglars (74.0%), larcenists (74.6%), motor vehicle thieves (78.8%), those in prison for possessing or selling stolen property (77.4%), and those in prison for possessing, using, or selling illegal weapons (70.2%). More recent statistics are not available on their website.


These are the average sentences and time served for prisoners released in 1992 (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/psatsfv.txt)

Average Percent of
Average time sentence
Type of offense sentence served* served
---------------------------------------------------
All violent 89 months 43 months 48%
Homicide 149 71 48
Rape 117 65 56
Kidnaping 104 52 50
Robbery 95 44 46
Sexual assault 72 35 49
Assault 61 29 48
Other 60 28 47

Please, read those numbers again. According to these statistics, robbers serve less than 4 years and 70.2% are arrested again.

Representative Levdansky, as one of our elected officials, you have the power to fix this. You can classify anything more lethal than a butter knife as an illegal weapon, but criminals will still be criminals. It's easy to vilify guns, they invoke fear, but you'll never fix the problem by addressing the tools used by the criminals without addressing the criminals themselves.

[danp]

Levdansky is absolutely anti-gun when it all comes down to it. Keep in mind he was an integral part of the push for the "victimized twice" lost & stolen bill which we thankfully defeated in april.

From what I heard he will be opposed in the November election by Monica Douglas (R).

[stephpd]

Does this article have links to be able to directly comment a rebuttal? Sometimes I see comments to articles but I've yet to find a link to be able to do so.

Seems the only way to fight this type of thing is swift and direct. Articles that don't allow discussion only let people see one side. If the anti's post their should be an open discussion. Sending an email only effect the one person. Everyone else just sees the propaganda and not the rebuttal.

[ham385]

I intend it to be a letter to the editor ( hoping they publish it )

[awkx]

Originally Posted by ham385

I started typing up this letter to send to the Post Gazette in rebuttal, but then I had a good idea for a change. I thought I'd post it here for peer review before submitting it.

Your letter looks very good. If you're planning to submit this as a "letter to the editor" to be printed in the Post Gazette, please note that there is a 250-word limit for such letters (yours is more than 500).

Later in the letter you make the following statement "Who would want his or her handgun in the hands of a criminal or a child who found it?"

A colon belongs after "statement", as in:

Later in the letter you make the following statement: "Who would want ...?"

What if the owner was on vacation, or otherwise didn't notice the theft? I would consider that to be criminalizing the victim.

I've heard rumor there was an exemption that the theft would have to have been know of.

Not just a rumor, it's clearly a part of the bill: "within x hours after the loss or theft is discovered" (emphasis is mine). (HB 29.) Of course, there is still the problem regarding how to prove that the owner knew that the gun was stolen.

One of the tenants of our legal system

I believe you meant "tenets". (Both are from Latin "tenēre" ("to hold"); a tenant is someone who holds land or a place of dwelling, whereas a tenet is a principle/doctrine that is held as true.)