In a video produced by Now This on facebook, Boston police commissioner William B. Evans attempts to rant about the NRA and the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act. Except Mr. Evans can’t get basic laws and statistics right, and comes off sounding more like a bumbling idiot.
“Massachusetts has the toughest laws of any state, and that’s why we have the lowest amount of gun deaths” he starts off with. Except he’s wrong. According to the gun grabbing “Giffords Law Center” website, Massachusetts ranks 4th in their strength of anti gun laws. Regarding “gun deaths”, that depends on what you consider to be a “gun death”. If you look at gun murders, Massachusetts ranks 19th, with 1.8 gun murders per 100,000 people. Tied with Nebraska, which scores a D on that same “Giffords Law Center” report and has relatively lax gun laws. Several states with much looser gun laws are statistically safer than Massachusetts, including nearby Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, along with Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and several other states that generally have lax gun laws. If you factor in gun related suicides, then Massachusetts ranks as 2nd fewest, behind Hawaii.
He continues with describing the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act effects as “It will make guns easier to be put in people’s hands in this country. The whole idea is to make one state’s laws effective in all other 49 states so states that you don’t have to carry a permit you don’t need a license – very little requirements – they will be able to go anywhere in the country.”
Except he’s wrong. Again. The Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act does not put guns into the hands of anyone who does not already have a gun. Sorry to burst Mr. Evans’ bubble, but the NRA does not go around giving guns out like candy. Secondly, the Act does not modify other state laws. For example, if it’s illegal to carry a gun in a public building in State A, but legal in State B, a resident from State B will not be able to carry their gun in a public building State A. State A’s individual laws still stand in that regard and people would still have to abide those laws. Thirdly, for residents of states that have Constitutional Carry (no license or permit required to carry for someone who isn’t legally prohibited from owning a gun), you will still need a license or permit to carry in another state. For example, Maine is a Constitutional Carry state (with a gun murder rate that is less than half of what Massachusetts’ is, by the way). Residents of Maine would not be able to just carry into Massachusetts. They would still need a permit or license to do so.
So we’re only three sentences into this joker’s diatribe, and every word he’s said has either been an intentional lie or he is just plain ignorant on the issues. Either way it does not reflect well on someone who’s tasked with overseeing the police department of a major U.S. city.
So let’s continue!
Evans then babbles on about sending a letter to Congress opposing the CCRA, before saying “Last thing, like I said, is us to make guns more readily available, to let guns circulate across all 50 states. We need one universal background check that we’re all consistent on. We need to be able to do mental health checks. We don’t need their residents coming to Massachusetts and carrying guns around sporting events, around large crowds, like the Boston Marathon.”
Is he saying that his state doesn’t use the FBI NICS for background checks? Because that’s one system that is federal that everyone is supposed to use, and includes records of people who have been adjudicated as mentally “defective”. So what he’s talking about already exists and is already required by law.
Interesting that he specifically brings up the Boston Marathon, because he, of all people, should recall that the Boston Marathon bombers in 2013 were muslims who used pressure cookers and modified them to be improvised explosives to kill 5 people and injure approximately 264 more. Evans himself was a participant in the marathon that year and served as one of the lead investigators on the case. Does Evans support background checks and licensing for pressure cookers?
After saying “I monitor who gets licenses to carry… We closely watch who has a license to carry… By making guns readily available, it puts everybody at harm,“ Evans talks about how the requirements for getting a concealed license. “They come into police headquarters here, and they fill out a form, and they get fingerprinted and at that time we do extensive background check on them locally as well as across the country. And if we find that they’ve been convicted of a felony, whether they have domestic violence in their background, mental difficulties, we’re going to deny them that license to carry.”
So that’s pretty much like every other state does. Exactly what a state like North Dakota requires. North Dakota, by the way, has a gun murder rate that is 1/3 of what Massachusetts’ is.
It’s around this time in the video where viewers may begin to question Mr. Evans’ comprehension of basic English. He appears to struggle in his attempts to form simple sentences, to the extent where Now This has to add missing words in brackets in order to clarify what Mr. Evans is trying to say. Even then it doesn’t make much sense.
But I digress. What this moron says next is probably the most ignorant part of his whole spiel:
“It’s troubling to me that some states don’t do background checks. And you can basically go into their stores, like you can to buy a saw, and you can walk out with a gun.”
That is flat out untrue. Either William B. Evans is lying to everyone, or he has no idea what the current laws and policies are. Any Federal Firearms License (FFL) dealer is mandated by federal law to perform a background check on anyone buying a gun, in every state.
Evans continues with “Anything that seems logical to them (referring to the NRA, supposedly) regarding guns, doesn’t make sense. Anything that seems to make it harder to get a gun or safer to get a gun, they seem to be against it.”
What in the covfefe does this guy mean by “safer to get a gun?”
With his next statements of “The answer for them, like the president, is give teachers guns. Give everyone guns. And somehow that’s going to be a solution? I don’t think so. I think that’s only going to lead to more tragedies in this country,” Perhaps Mr. Evans should lead by example and disarm his police force. After all, in his own words, more guns lead to more tragedies, so by disarming the Boston police officers, Evans should see fewer tragedies. Right?
While he says “There’s too many guns out there and it breaks my heart as a dad, as a chief, to see these young kids killing each other. I just wish, you know, people who are for more guns in this society would have to visit every mother like I do. We should be getting tougher, not loosening up the gun laws,” he doesn’t say what the correct number of guns should be. If there are too many guns, what is the ideal number of guns?
What William B Evans isn’t talking about in the video is Boston’s crime rate. According to NeighborhoodScout.com, “The crime rate in Boston is considerably higher than the national average across all communities in America from the largest to the smallest, although at 31 crimes per one thousand residents, it is not among the communities with the very highest crime rate. The chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime in Boston is 1 in 33. Based on FBI crime data, Boston is not one of the safest communities in America. Relative to Massachusetts, Boston has a crime rate that is higher than 96% of the state’s cities and towns of all sizes” and “For Boston, we found that the violent crime rate is one of the highest in the nation, across communities of all sizes (both large and small). Violent offenses tracked included rape, murder and non-negligent manslaughter, armed robbery, and aggravated assault, including assault with a deadly weapon. According to NeighborhoodScout’s analysis of FBI reported crime data, your chance of becoming a victim of one of these crimes in Boston is one in 134.”
Anyone who’s been following the gun debates know that this idiot’s PR fluff piece is par for the course when it comes to the civil rights prohibitionists. They are either clueless on what the actual laws are or they have to lie through their teeth to promote fear and hysteria.
While Evans wants to lecture the rest of the country on gun laws and blame hundreds of millions of legal, non violent gun owners for “gun violence”, perhaps Commissioner Evans should be looking at ways to improve the city where he’s the head of law enforcement.
William Evans can be reached on his office phone at 617 343 4500.
https://www.facebook.com/NowThisPolitics/videos/2063863336978479/
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