Bloomberg Obfuscating Gun Debate

Mayor Bloomberg, founder of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, is lambasting gun shows with misleading statistics, and with video footing showing people committing something which is already a federal felony. Yes, when you knowingly transfer a firearm to a prohibited person, it’s already illegal, it has nothing to do with gun shows, and is something these individuals could be prosecuted for under current law.

Plus, Bloomberg claims that ATF data shows 30% of illegally trafficked. This is misleading. First off, the study he’s citing is nearly a decade old at this point, and secondly, only looks at a subset of illegal gun trafficking. More recent studies have found that gun shows, or lack thereof, do not have a significant impact on crime.  But as long as we’re using decades old studies, what about the study in 1997 by the National Institute of Justice that showed only 2% of crime guns originally came from gun shows?  Or the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2001 report, surveying prison inmates, that found only 0.8% of offenders reported getting their guns from gun shows? If we’re going to have a public debate about this, the public needs to know the full context of the debate. Bloomberg is deliberately obfuscating the nature and scale of the problem in hopes of pushing through regulations that will destroy gun shows.

All I have to say to Mike Bloomberg is that we’re already coming after your Mayors, and we’ll get more of them out, either through convincing them to leave, or through booting them out of office, as time wears on. The more you speak about this issue, the more evidence we’ll gather that MAIG is a gun control group. But we’ll also be coming after your gun laws next, through the courts. Bloomberg is trying to fight a Battle of the Buldge, a last, desperate offensive against the forces allied against him. He might have some successes here and there, but ultimately, like the German Army, New York’s gun laws finished. I think that’s what he’s really afraid of.