New York City Independent Mayor Michael Bloomberg believes that the shooting incident involving former Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords should have prompted a national debate regarding gun control and is dissapointed with the lack of action from members of Congress.
Mr. Bloomberg, whose city has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, said Sunday that he would redouble efforts to curtail the sale of illegal handguns in his state.
“You’d think that if a congresswoman got shot in the head, that would have changed Congress’ views,” said Mr. Bloomberg. “I can tell you how to change it, just get Congress to come with me to the hospital when I’ve got to tell somebody that their son or daughter, their spouse, their parent is not going to come home ever again.”
In January of 2011, immediately following the shooting of Ms. Giffords, Mr. Bloomberg called a coalition together for the Mayors Against Illegal Guns. The meeting included several New York City lawmakers, who listened to a passionate speech from Mr. Bloomberg regarding a push for more awareness about gun control at the federal level.
The Arizona congresswoman recently retired to focus on recovering from her gun shot wound to the head last year.
The mayor believes that the federal laws regarding gun control contain too many loopholes, for example a lack of requiring background checks. He claims that more Americans have been killed since the 1960s by illegally obtained guns, than were killed in all of World War II.
Mr. Bloomberg is calling for more federal spending on gun control laws. During the Super Bowl, he appeared in a commercial with Boston Mayor Thomas Menino calling for more awareness of gun control laws.
Gun control in recent years has become a political argument over the Second Amendment, regarding the upholding of the individual right to bear arms versus the government’s right to protect citizens and prevent crime.
Speaking Sunday, the New York mayor cited recent statistics that show New York among the nation’s safest cities, adding that more must be done to protect the state’s law enforcement and individuals visiting the nation’s most populous city.
“New York is now so much lower than almost every big city, we still had a cop shot last week with a gun that somebody had, even though the federal laws prohibited that person from having a gun,” said Mr. Bloomberg Sunday. “The background database isn’t up to date, private sector sales of guns is something like 40%, and they don’t do background checks.”
The ad featuring Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Menino during the Super Bowl regarding gun control brought the issue to the national spotlight. Gun control has not been a central issue discussed by Democrats or Republicans in recent months. It will be interesting to see if Mr. Bloomberg’s calls for more awareness on the issue will effect the upcoming general election.
