Gee, it’s almost as if New York City’s famously restrictive gun control laws are really just a scam for politically-connected opportunists and politicians to cash in on those seeking to exercise their Second Amendment rights.
As the New York Daily News details, yet another alleged fixer has been ID’d in the city’s extensive gun licensing scandal . . .
A politically connected businesswoman got gun permit applications upgraded and rubber-stamped by the NYPD’s corrupt license division in early 2014, multiple sources told the Daily News.
They called the deals “de Blasio specials” after the famously anti-gun, anti-cop mayor. How’s that for irony?
Brooklyn real estate agent Charlene Gayle allegedly received the VIP treatment when she accompanied members of the Orthodox Jewish community seeking full-carry firearms licenses, the sources said.
Ex-NYPD Lt. Paul Dean alluded to the allegations in paperwork filed in Manhattan Federal Court Wednesday.
Dean’s supervisor in the unit allegedly told him, “This person takes care of Mayor de Blasio and in return we are supposed to take care of this person,” Dean’s attorney wrote.
Former Officer Dean was just sentenced to 18 months in prison for his escapades involving the Licensing Division corruption.
So it turns out that New York pols aren’t really so anti-gun after all. They just want to make sure they don’t miss an opportunity by handing out permission slips without a suitable quid pro quo.
The Daily News’ Stephen Rex Brown apparently typed this graph with a straight face:
It is unclear if Gayle’s alleged role in arranging the upgrades was improper. A spokesman for Manhattan Federal prosecutors declined comment. Gayle did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Let’s see, Gayle was “a longtime donor to de Blasio” and other Brooklyn politicians. Those who wanted to exercise their right to keep and bear arms used Gayle to grease the palms wheels. The Daily News story doesn’t mention any payments Gayle received for her (alleged) services, but other “expediters” fingered in the scandal bragged of pulling in $18,000 per permit, so you do the math.
Federal prosecutors have brought a series of cases that revealed the License Division was rotten with corruption around 2014. Shady “expediters,” including a crooked former Brooklyn assistant district attorney, an alcoholic Shomrim patrol leader and a Queens businessman, showered officers with cash, strippers, paid vacations and other gifts in exchange for special treatment for gun permits. The NYPD has since overhauled the unit.
In short, it appears that some of New York’s anti-gun city fathers (and mothers), the same people who claim that doing something about “gun violence” requires them to enact some of the nation’s most oppressive and unconstitutional restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms, were really running a kind of money laundering scheme.
The expediters would collect big fees from New Yorkers who wanted gun permits. They’d then share the graft with License Division employees who were on the take. And politicians.
The Big Apple’s gun control laws were (and may still be) a convenient source of indirect, revenue for the same grifters who hold the power to keep those laws as restrictive as possible. The money the expediters and VIPs like Gayle allegedly take in comes back to them in the form of political contributions.
This is what happens to a disarmed populace.