Mayor Bloomberg has been a thorn in the side of the NRA for some time and he has no plans to ease up. Instead, in the month since the massacre at Sandy Hook Bloomberg and his buddies in the growing Mayors Against Illegal Guns have been upping the pressure to Demand a Plan to end gun violence. And today Bloomberg—who is in Baltimore this morning delivering the opening address at the “Summit on Reducing Gun Violence in America" at Johns Hopkins University—turned to the opinion pages of the Daily News to push it a little further.
"If we are serious about protecting lives, we have to get serious about enforcing our laws," he wrote in the op-ed. "It’s not enough to punish crime; our goal should be to prevent it." Bloomberg, who also appeared on Meet The Press to press his opinion and talked up his plans to reform the GOP to the Washington Post this weekend, went on to explain that one of the biggest issues with gun control is not gun owners, but the gun lobby (which he says isn't as strong as everyone says it is: "Last November, I supported five candidates for Congress who were running against NRA-backed candidates. Four of them won, showing that the NRA’s power is more myth than reality."):
This issue is not about whether we uphold the Constitution. It’s about whether members of Congress have the courage to buck a special interest group that is endangering our children — and all of America.
Gun owners understand this. In fact, more than 80% of gun owners support common sense steps — like background checks for all gun sales — to strengthen our gun laws. They recognize that those laws protect them, too. Right now, any violent criminal can log onto the internet or go to a gun show and buy a gun illegally. Whether or not you are a gun owner, that reality threatens all of us.
And that threat sadly is not going away the way we're going. To that end the mayor and his mayor friends are pushing Americans to sign their Demand A Plan petition which "urges the President and Congress to require background checks for every gun sale, ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines and make gun trafficking a federal crime." Because, as he writes:
But we cannot solve the problem of gun violence by ourselves. About 85% of all guns used in New York City crimes come from out of state, largely from states with very lax gun laws. This is a national problem that requires national leadership from our elected representatives in Washington. I have spoken with both President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, and I am hopeful that they will take concrete action this week.
Vice President Biden is scheduled to submit his recommendations to President Obama today, and Obama will give a press conference this morning at 11:15, during which the topic of gun control is all but certain to come up.
