Brooklyn Boro

Profitability of guns, illegal & legal, topic of Municipal Club forum

DA Ken Thompson Enlightens Heights Breakfast Meeting

July 11, 2016 By John Alexander Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Leah Gunn Barrett is the executive director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence (www.nyagv.org). Photo courtesy of NYAGV
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Some startling statistics and grim reminders moved a breakfast forum audience last week, when Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson noted that 11,000 people are murdered by guns annually. Thompson added that another 20,000 are wounded or die from suicides.

Co-speaker at the forum Leah Gunn Barrett, executive director of New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, spoke passionately with personal experience against what she called “the insanity of assault weapons.”

The breakfast was another in a series of forums sponsored by the Civic Division of the Municipal Club of Brooklyn. Founded in 1897 by the Brooklyn Eagle, the Municipal Club has continued unabated for more than a century as a quiet but concerned watchdog group made up of 100 men. Recently the club began admitting women, and this year, as president of the club, Eagle Publisher Dozier Hasty introduced a more aggressive Civic Division to examine problems of deepest concern for Brooklyn.

At the June 8 forum, Thompson focused on “the Iron Pipeline” of illegal guns brought into New York City from southern states. Noting the profitability factor, Thompson said that guns could be bought cheaply — sometimes even legally — down South and sold in Brooklyn for four or five times that amount.

“Our whole country is caught up in a crisis of gun violence,” he added. Driving his point home, Thompson said that 14 people had been shot in Brooklyn in the week prior to the event.

The DA also discussed how gun violence is not limited by neighborhood. People in Brooklyn Heights are just a likely to feel the scourge of gun violence. He said the most important thing is for people to pay attention to gun violence so that it never reaches their door. He showed a video of a member of Folk Nation, a violent street gang that terrorizes its victims, circling a courtyard filled with children at play, before randomly shooting at individuals, including a 50-year old man who was shot and killed.

Thompson said that even though New York has the strictest gun laws in the country, the problem is that “the city is being overwhelmed by guns coming in from the southern states. Anyone can go buy guns in the South and bring them across state lines into the city.” Thompson did acknowledge that his initiatives have helped stop 600 guns from hitting the streets of Brooklyn, and his office has helped shut down a number of gun smuggling rings.

“We all have a stake in combating gun violence,” said Thompson. “The good news is that gun violence is down in Brooklyn.” He discussed the Crime Strategy Unit (CSU) that his team created to help identify “drivers of crime” and keep those who fall into that category in custody. He added that the Violent Criminal Enterprise Unit (VCE) does not just go after people in the borough, but actually goes to the South to apprehend gun smugglers, whom Thompson described as the “merchants of death.” Once caught, these criminals are often placed in Rikers Island.

The DA spoke about programs his administration has created which go into schools to teach kids that there is a better way to handle problems than by reaching for a gun.  He stated that his office has been the most aggressive of the city’s DA offices in combating this issue. Thompson concluded by promising to not stop fighting until “we break the ‘iron pipeline’ and keep guns out of our city,” adding, “When you hear about a shooting in Brooklyn, ask yourself, where did that young man get a gun?”

Gunn Barrett spoke next, calling it a “sad morning,” referring to the five police officers killed in Dallas. Barrett has been with New Yorkers Against Gun Violence since 1993 as an outspoken advocate for universal background checks for gun buyers. She told the audience that her older brother was a store owner who was shot and killed by an intruder in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and that her younger brother was almost shot by a criminal in Aurora, Colorado; for Gunn Barrett, the topic of gun violence is a personal one.

During her discussion, she appealed to Gov. Andrew Cuomo to do more to strengthen the laws for gun control so that guns would not find their way into local neighborhoods. While she acknowledged that New York has relatively strong gun laws, she said she hopes they can be made even stronger.  She said that “No factory turns out illegal guns — the problem is that in 38 states, it’s easy to get a gun without a detailed background check.”

Gunn Barrett expressed frustration with assault weapons, which she termed “weapons of war designed by the military and for the military,” being marketed as sport items. She cited the type of weapon used in the Newtown school shooting as a prime example of an assault weapon falling into the wrong hands.   

One attendee at the July 8 forum, Vietnam veteran Mike King, a lawyer and member of the NRA, began to challenge Gunn Barrett in the hot issues of interpretation of the Second Amendment, which gives Americans the right to bear arms. The ensuing discussion came at the end of the meeting and became so engaging that one forum attendee asked, “Can the Municipal Club sponsor a debate between these two at the next meeting?” 

For more information on joining the Brooklyn Municipal Club, readers should contact [email protected].

 

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