NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly appeared on Face the Nation this morning to talk about gun control, and while he voiced support for an assault weapons ban (several were captured by police in the Bronx yesterday) Kelly noted that those weapons only accounted for 2% of those arrested for gun possession. "The problem is the handgun. 60% of the murders in New York City are caused by handguns, and we simply have too many of them," the commissioner said, before pointing out the city's record low murder rate last year.
Commissioner Kelly said that the universal background check—one of the four measures President Obama asked Congress to pass earlier this month—would help immensely in cutting back on illegal sales of guns. Bob Schieffer also got Kelly to expound some on the new gun detector the department is developing with the Defense Department and the London Metropolitan Police which spots terahertz radiation emitted by humans but blocked by handguns. "It's still too big for deployment in a reasonable way. It's sort of like the cellphone was 20 years ago. We hope to be using it experimentally in the next 6 months."
Schieffer and the Commissioner shared a laugh when the moderator asked if there were civil liberties concerns with the technology: "Oh sure, this is New York, no question about it. We're working with our attorneys to make sure that it is appropriately used, we want to get everybody on board before it's widespread use."
