Firearms & Freedom

Kim du Toit already weighed in on this one, but I felt compelled to chime in, being about fellow Wisconsin resident Steve Lauer and Lauer Custom Weaponry. Steve was interviewed on NRANews, and said that Bloomberg’s ban was the greatest advertising he could hope to get. 

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A Wisconsin company that disguises deadly firearms with bright paints and camouflage has a new target: Mayor Bloomberg. 

Lauer Custom Weaponry, whose products were banned in the city in 2006 because they make dangerous guns look like innocent toys, is taunting the anti-gun mayor with a line of paints named “The Bloomberg Collection.”

The company – which named its purple hue after Barney, the dinosaur beloved by toddlers – is peddling a rainbow of candy-colored paints for each of the five boroughs. 

There’s red for Manhattan, rose for the Bronx, blue for Brooklyn, green for Queens and orange for Staten Island. 

And as an extra slap – a stencil of the mayor’s face for the barrel of the gun.

Gun owners also can plunk down $129 for a “Bloomberg Collection EZ Camo Kit” to pimp out their semiautomatics and rifles with a brick wall and graffiti decoration. 

It’s no joke. 

An outraged Bloomberg called gun-coloration kits “a tragedy in the making.” 

“Making a quick buck by coloring a handgun to look like a toy is craven and beneath any honest businessman,” Bloomberg told the Daily News. “By coloring these guns, a real one looks like a toy, and a police officer won’t be able to tell the difference.” 

“Imagine an officer who comes upon a teenager pointing a pink gun into a crowd. If the gun is a toy, an innocent teenager may be killed – and others, too.” 

Our police officers have a hard enough job as it is, and that’s why we passed a law to prevent these deadly tragedies from occurring.” 

It’s just the latest time Bloomberg has come under fire from the weapons industry for his efforts to shut down New York’s illegal gun trade. 

Last year, a Virginia gun shop held a “Bloomberg raffle” – with the prize a brand-new gun – to protest the mayor’s crackdown on stores he says are illegally peddling firearms that end up on New York streets. 

Not to be left out, the National Rifle Association soon plastered a picture of Bloomberg as an octopus on the cover of its magazine. 

This time, Bloomberg angered Steve Lauer, owner of Lauer Custom Weaponry, when he pushed through a law that punishes anyone who uses, buys or sells a gun-coloration kit in New York with a year in jail or a $1,000 fine. 

“The mayor picked us out as being the pink-gun guys,” said Toby Johnson, who described himself as Lauer’s “right-hand man” at the Chippewa Falls company. 

The bright paints were meant to help rescue workers and range masters locate guns more easily – not fool cops, Johnson said. They regularly sell the colors named after the boroughs and have even sold “five or six” Bloomberg camo kits, Johnson said. 

Women also are big fans of the colors, he added. 

“The ladies like it. They fashion their guns after their clothing,” Johnson said. 

But at least one woman was angered by the “shameful ploy” and “disgraceful marketing.” 

“In the hands of a child, a real gun made to look like a toy has deadly consequences,” said City Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan).

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The line that gets me is: “Imagine an officer who comes upon a teenager pointing a pink gun into a crowd If the gun is a toy, an innocent teenager may be killed – and others, too.” Pretty simple to me, a teenager pointing a potential weapon at a crown is not innocent. An officer should assume a weapon is real, and engage accordingly. Typical gun banners, blame the object, not the people. 

And what about magic markers? You could make a FAKE gun look REAL!!!  

You know what the next step after banning bright guns is: Ban dark guns! They are too easy to hide!   

Kudos to Steve and the rest of LCW, it is great to see someone take on this foolishness.