Bloomberg’s Anti-Gun Headlines May Reach Beyond New York City
July 1, 2006

by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor

New York City’s billionaire Republican mayor, Michael Bloomberg, invited other big city mayors into his Gracie Mansion parlor back in April (See Gun Week, May 20 issue), advertising a new kind of national gun control campaign that would trump both the White House and Congress.

He and his co-host, Democrat Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, claimed that the purpose of their summit was not to attack the Second Amendment but to crack down on “illegal” guns and the dealers who are selling them. But that’s an old dodge.

Aside from the publicity and fawning headlines generated by Bloomberg’s carefully orchestrated press agentry, there is a lot more to his “illegal” gun campaign than meets the eye.

First, Bloomberg is trying to carve himself a national image while he breathes as much life as he can into New York City’s lawsuit against the firearms industry.

The suit is the poster child for unwarranted and wasteful litigation that Congress and the White House sought to prevent with enactment of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. Most other such municipal lawsuits had been dismissed for other causes, well before the law was passed in 2005; others have been tossed out because of the new federal law.

However, the New York City suit lives on because a notoriously anti-gun federal judge in Brooklyn, Jack Weinstein, has allowed it to proceed. Weinstein has tried to force anti-gun decisions in other gun cases in the past, but has been overruled on appeal. Still, the anti-gun New York Daily News describes Weinstein as “courageous.”

New York Law
At the heart of the Big Apple’s wormy suit is the claim that the firearms industry is well aware of the traffic in “illegal” guns and knows who are the unscrupulous dealers—including those licensed and regulated by New York state as well as the federal government—but continues to supply those dealers with more guns. In order to prove this claim, New York City’s lawyers want access to gun tracing statistics in the possession of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

The Tiarht (Rep. Todd Tiarht, a Republican from Kansas) Amendment to earlier ATF appropriations legislation blocks public release of ATF gun tracing data. Legislation currently on Capitol Hill would permanently block release of the data that New York City wants; Bloomberg made some of his early 2006 headlines by testifying against the bill in Washington. The prohibition on public use of data in the Tiarht Amendment and related legislation is supported by ATF and major police organizations, and has even been supported in the past by Bloomberg’s police commissioner.

Bear in mind that all handguns in New York state must be registered and their owners licensed in order to be considered “legal.” In New York City, the same standard applies to rifles and shotguns. A federally licensed dealer who sells handguns in New York must also have a state license. The city also requires that dealers obtain two forms of identification from prospective buyers, one of which has to be a state pistol license. In addition, all sales, whether in a store or at a gun show through a dealer or between private parties, require background checks. As of May 2, 2006, ATF no longer allows New York state handgun licensees to bypass the National Instant Check System for any firearm sale.

While New York City’s current homicide rate is significantly lower than it was in the 1980s and ’90s, it is still quite high with about 700 or more murders a year. Guns are not the only weapons used by murderers and armed robbers, but they still make a dramatic political target. And gun control is always a popular hobbyhorse for New York City politicians to ride. Most of the bad new gun laws proposed in Albany are authored by lawmakers from the New York City area.

Since most people in the metropolitan area don’t know much about guns and associate them with crime and most of the media outlets are anti-gun, this is fertile ground for the anti-gunners, whether they are local politicians like Bloomberg, state lawmakers like Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, or federal officials like Sens. Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton. For them, there is seldom a downside to being anti-gun.

The ‘Sting’ Fizzles
In mid-May, Bloomberg made new headlines by filing civil suits against 15 out-of-state firearms dealers, alleging that they were major sources of guns used in violent city crimes. The suits were based on a free-lance, non-police “sting” conducted at Bloomberg’s order, designed to bolster the city’s lawsuit and publicity campaign blaming outsiders and the firearms industry for its crime problems.

The New York Daily News headlined its report with “Bloomberg bull’s eye.” Other media were similarly enthusiastic about what they called “Mike’s war on gun dealers.”

Many law enforcement professionals had criticized the Bloomberg “sting” as jeopardizing several ongoing criminal investigations.

On May 26 The Daily News trumpeted “Police sting disarms trigger-happy shops” when city police raided two long-time local gun shops, one in Brooklyn, the other in Queens. They arrested the owners and seized some 450 guns from the two stores.

Later, Associated Press was a little more restrained in reporting that “two licensed firearms dealers were charged with misdemeanor weapons offenses on May 24 after police reviewed videotape of a sting operation conducted in connection with the suit.” The sting was another off-the-cuff, non-law enforcement operation ordered by Bloomberg. It was reported that the two stores had originally sold several guns used in city crimes between 1994 and 2001.

Next, on June 6, “Double-Barrel Mike,” as The Post called Bloomberg, announced some new local ordinances related to guns. Included was a demand for a local “gun-thug registry.”

Dubbed the Gun Offender Registration Act, the bill would require anyone convicted of criminal possession of a weapon to register their addresses with the city police and appear in person every six months for four years.

Bloomberg also wants gun dealers to perform an inventory check every six months—rather than once a year, which is required by current law.

Bottom Line
What’s the bottom line on Bloomberg’s agenda? Well, it may be a run for the White House.

Syndicated columnist Robert Novak hinted in a June 10 piece on TownHall.com that Bloomberg may be quietly considering a run for president in 2008. The New York Sun also reported that Bloomberg may be a 2008 presidential candidate.

Novak, a veteran Washington pundit, suggested that billionaire Bloomberg may use some of his big bucks to bankroll the run, which he is currently denying. His term as New York mayor ends in 2007 and he is term-limited from succeeding himself.

According to Novak, Bloomberg has been tapped for money by Unity08, the third party effort that was set up by ex-aides to former President Jimmy Carter. Hamilton Jordan and Gerald Rafshoon were mentioned by Novak as the guys with their hands out for Bloomberg’s loot, which the columnist suggested would only be given to the Unity08 movement if Bloomberg, himself, turns out to be the candidate.

With anti-gun state attorney general Elliot Spitzer, who some people claim will be the next governor in New York, anti-gun Hillary Clinton, also a predicted winner for re-election, and anti-gun Andrew Cuomo, architect of the Smith & Wesson-Clinton Administration gun deal, a likely successor to Spitzer, Bloomberg has to look elsewhere for higher office. National office is one way to go, but he may discover that his anti-gun publicity campaign, so popular with the New York City media and voters, may not play as well in the rest of the country. But then, if he’s unsuccessful in his presidential bid, maybe he’ll settle for being appointed the new US ambassador to the United Nations.
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