“The ex-owner of the gun shop that sold the weapon used to shoot two city cops in a NYCHA stairwell says the public should blame the poison, not the peddler. ‘I have no responsibility for [the shootings],’ Bill Bernstein told the Daily News. ‘Once the gun leaves my shop I have no control over what people do,’ said the conservative Republican. ‘It seems like New York has a criminal problem as opposed to having gun problem,’ he clucked.” Clucked? I guess that tells you what you need to know about the Daily News. That and the photos they chose to illustrate the article. But their between-the-lines commentary does nothing to blunt Bernstein’s blunt response to their enquiry . . .
Bernstein, a Bronx-born, pro-gun Orthodox Jew and a graduate of the prestigious private Horace Mann School, wrote on Facebook that he offered his prayers to the injured officers.
But he said he “resents” any suggestion he did something wrong when he sold an unknown buyer five weapons in June 2010 from his Eastside Gun Shop in Tennesse.
“That’s simply wrong,” Bernstein said.
“Mind reading is not a requirement for this job. Neither is seeing into the future,” he said.
“I don’t know what’s in somebody’s mind.” . . .
He said he didn’t remember the specific sale but was confident the buyer produced valid ID and passed a federal background check — because otherwise Bernstein would not have sold him any guns.
“Guns are used in illegal crimes all the time,” he noted.
According to the Daily News, Bernstein was “instrumental in the repeal of a Tennessee state law requiring thumbprints from weapons’ buyers.” He’s currently running for a seat in the Tennessee legislature. We wish him luck and award the plain-speaking Jew our Gun Hero of the Day award.