An elderly couple stopped in the newsroom Thursday morning to tell me about how they almost got scammed. It was the classic grandma and grandpa scam. We’ve done stories about this particular scam in the past, but I told them it wouldn’t hurt to remind readers. They got a call from a distraught young person claiming to be their granddaughter. The “granddaughter” was crying and sobbing and said she was drinking and had been in an accident and was in trouble. The call came from Florida. The granddaughter lives in California. When her grandmother asked what she was doing in Florida, the caller said she was on a week’s vacation. She said she needed $3,000 for legal fees, fines or insurance payments. The grandchild then passed the phone to her “attorney,” who assured the victims that everything was going to be OK. The total cost is $6,000, but the grandchild has $3,000, so only $3,000 more is needed. The attorney offered some story about how Florida law works and that the insurance won’t cover the other drivers’ damages because alcohol was involved. The attorney says the grandchild was “barely over” the limit and wouldn’t face arrest if they would just send money. The victims asked how to send the money and the attorney was all too happy to instruct them to go to the nearest CVS, Walmart or grocery store and purchase six $500 iTunes gift cards. The attorney offers to call back in one hour at which time the victims were to read the account numbers off the backs of the cards. In the case of the local couple on Thursday, I must give proper credit to Kroger. When our local scam victims went into the store to get the gift cards, it raised a red flag with a manager. The manager told the victims to be wary. The couple went home without buying any gift cards and when the “attorney” called back, they asked to talk to their “granddaughter.” When they got her on the phone, they asked her what her brother’s middle name was. No surprise, she got it wrong. Then they asked her to tell them her grandfather’s middle name. Wrong again. They hung up and called their real granddaughter who was doing just fine in California. “She sounded just like my granddaughter,” the grandma told me. Of course, the “granddaughter” is crying and sobbing and carrying on. This creates an emotional situation that’s tough for a grandparent to ignore and makes it difficult to see through the ruse. I hope there’s a special little corner in hell reserved for people who rip off grandparents by taking advantage of their kindness. *****A horrific gun crime happened in Virginia this past week. A live-on-the-air shooting of a TV news reporter has brought guns back into the media spotlight. Of course, anytime something bad happens with a gun it gets huge coverage. Over and over we hear about the “epidemic” of gun violence to the point where most people think gun violence is out of control in today’s America. Never mind that violent crime is down in today’s America. I know why national media types do it. Most of them hate the idea that America has a gun culture and tradition. They will do anything they can to tear it down. They paint gun owners with a broad brush of contributing to this “rampant epidemic” of gun violence. Never mind that a tiny percentage of 100 million law-abiding gun owners in America – less than 1 percent according to FBI statistics – are involved in gun-related crimes. And never mind that nearly 80 percent of all shooting deaths are drug, gang or crime related and committed by somebody with an illegally owned gun. Demonizing guns and gun owners has become a favorite pastime of the national media. It would be comical if it wasn’t so tragic. The caption under an editorial cartoon of a news anchor we ran Friday said it best, “BREAKING NEWS: There’s been another senseless shooting. Stay with us as we spend hours and hours discussing the killer and his quest for notoriety.” Want to reduce gun violence? A good start would be to enforce the gun laws we already have on the books, we’d be on the right track to reducing gun violence. A good analogy is drunk driving. The incidence of drunk driving has been declining, for years. Aside from lowering the BAC limit to .08, there haven’t been any new laws placed on the books. Cops just got really proactive about enforcement. I think the same thing could happen with guns. If enough people got arrested for owning illegal guns, the word would get out and fewer people would be willing to risk it. That was the whole point behind the “stop and frisk” program in New York City under the previous two administrations. Thousands of illegal guns were taken off the street because of that policy. Violent crime rates fell. Enter the new NYC adminstration, which ended the stop and frisk policy amid concerns of civil liberties. The result? More guns on the street, more murders, more violent crime. Who could have seen that coming? So now the very same people in NYC who toiled tirelessly to end stop and frisk are decrying the increase in violence. But that’s not surprising. I’ve spent years trying to figure out the mindset of some liberals. They tell us that aborting babies is a choice, devaluing human life itself. They tell us prayer in school or the Ten Commandments in a courthouse is unconstitutional. They tell us that all manner of vile stuff like pornography is constitutionally protected. Hollywood types send a steady stream of violent and sexually oriented “entertainment” material – movies, music, video games – to our young people. Under the guise of taking care of the poorest among us, policies allow millions of Americans to feel entitled to a government check instead of working for a paycheck. To get elected, politicians use class warfare and race to divide us and make some among us feel inferior or superior. So we have a generation or two of people who have grown up being told they’re entitled, life has little value, they’re inferior, religion is an arcane fairy tale and there’s no power higher than government. Then, of course, when one of the products of this culture snaps and shoots somebody, liberals wring their hands and say something needs to be done about guns. Ah, the irony. And if, per chance, a guy immersed in this culture decides to get a license and carry a gun to protect himself and his family, he’s labeled a paranoid lunatic. Sure, universal background checks and tougher screening might help keep guns out of the hands of mentally unstable people. And there should be mandatory sentences for anyone who commits a crime with a gun. Laws like these – in addition to increased enforcement of existing gun laws – could help reduce gun violence. But it seems to me we’ve got a lot more to worry about than guns.
