In the latest Mayor Bloomberg gun control push, he is urging the city’s notoriously generous legions of Democratic donors to withhold funds from four Democratic senators who opposed an expanded background check bill earlier this year.
The letter, which were sent out to hundreds of the city’s major donors on Wednesday, attacked the four Democrats who joined Republicans in blocking a compromise bill that was “supposedly” “designed to keep guns out of the hands of criminals,” according to Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a group Bloomberg founded and provides the majority of funds to. The name, itself, is completely misleading as they are not against “illegal” guns per se, but rather guns in the American culture in general.
The bill reached the Senate floor just months after a gunman killed 20 first graders and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, prompting gun control advocates to exploit the tragedy and push for significant changes to U.S. gun control laws.
The plan to expand background checks, or rather build a federal database of potential threats to the State, was sold as an effort to sales made online and at gun shows. It failed to become law after Republicans threatened to use a filibuster to block any gun proposal that did not get 60 votes in the 100-member Senate.
It was a “stinging” defeat for the billionaire mayor, who had aggressively used his personal and substantial wealth and political bully pulpit to push the measure. Typical leftist rationality; argue against “big business” at the same time using your relationships with those same people, your own wealth and power, to forward the agenda of “big government” – hypocrisy.
At the time when the bill failed, Bloomberg called the defeat a “damning indictment of the stranglehold that special interests have on Washington.” Of course, you might have interpreted the bill’s failing as the prevailing of reason against despots like him and his pal Barack Obama who are so shameless that they will step on the graves of dead children to control the “filthy masses.”
He said his group would work to defeat opponents of gun control in the 2014 midterm elections. Wednesday’s letter, first reported by the New York Times, targets Max Baucus of Montana, Mark Begich of Alaska, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Mark Pryor of Arkansas. Bloomberg’s letter says:
I am writing to ask you: the next time these four Senators want you to support them with donations to their campaigns, tell them you cannot. Until they show that they will stand up for the American people and not the gun lobby, tell them you cannot support their candidacy. These “no” votes were a slap in the face to Americans everywhere.
In scathing language, the letter criticizes the senators for undermining efforts to keep Americans safe, at the same time as they approached New York donors for contributions.
At least one of the senators targeted by Bloomberg said bring it on Bloomberg. Senator Begich of Alaska told the New York Times:
In Alaska, having a New York mayor tell us what to do? The guy who wants to ban Big Gulps? If anything, it might help me.
Belgich might be right, as he must defend his seat in a state that Mitt Romney won by a double-digit margin.
Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a Democrat and a chief sponsor of the bipartisan background check plan the Senate blocked, told reporters he would like to see more money going to “gun culture states” – like his own – to finance an information campaign about why Americans should not fear the background-check expansion. Manchin, who seems to repeatedly smash on his own statesmen while at the same time throwing party’s on his yacht “Black Tie” said:
It’s well-intended, they all have different approaches and they have a right to have that approach.
Others, especially Democrats, have recognized that the effort could backfire resulting in the Republicans winning back control of the U.S. Senate, making new gun control legislation all but impossible. A Democratic aid told Reuters:
Mark Pryor is the only Democrat who could win in Arkansas. Making it less likely that he will win, will make it more likely that Republicans take control of the Senate, which would doom the prospects for expanded background checks for the foreseeable future.
The aide said that in some states, Democrats targeted by Bloomberg could use the liberal New York mayor as a foil to campaign against. Still, the aide quickly added: “It is never good to have someone spend millions of dollars against you.”
