The useful thing about This Week's George Stephanopoulos interview with Philadelphia's impressive top cop Charles Ramsey is how sensibly Ramsey responds to the idea that having civilians with weapons on the scene of the Aurora massacre would have protected them. Do listen to the interview - he also talks about how sensible gun control would make his job a lot easier:
Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey worried that the deadly mass shooting spree in Aurora, Colo. will “fade into the background” and nothing will be done to put in place “reasonable gun control laws” to reduce gun violence across the country.
“For me the question has been, you know, what will change as far as any gun control legislation in the wake of Aurora, Columbine, Virginia Tech, Ft. Hood – I mean, the list goes on and on,” Ramsey told me this morning on “This Week.” “And unfortunately, in my opinion, the answer is absolutely nothing.”
“There will be a lot of talk, there will be a lot of discussion, there will be some debate,” said Ramsey, who leads the fourth largest police department in the country. “But this will fade into the background, like all those other instances that have occurred, unfortunately, and people will just go on and continue to be able to get their hands on guns and continue to inappropriately use those guns to commit violent acts on the streets of our cities.”
Ramsey blamed a “lack of courage” at the federal level for failing to put in place stricter gun control laws, especially on restricting Internet sales and banning assault weapons.
“I have an issue with people being able to buy ammunition and weapons on the Internet… I don’t know why people need to have assault weapons,” Ramsey said. “There needs to be reasonable gun control put in place. And we talk about this constantly, and absolutely nothing happens, because many of our legislators, unfortunately, at the federal level, lack the courage to do anything.”
Ramsey acknowledged that “gun control isn’t going to totally stop this sort of thing from happening,” but he said it would reduce gun violence that he and other law enforcement face as “a daily occurrence.”
