NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a conservative Independent, attacked President Obama and Mitt Romney’s debate performance, claiming their positions on gun control amount to “gibberish.”
“I think what we did get was a perfect example of obfuscation and very little honesty,” Michael Bloomberg said Wednesday at a press conference, according to Capital New York. “If you think about it, the president, as I remember, said he wants more conversation. Well, we’ve been saying this for quite a while now. We don’t need more talk. We need some leadership. Governor Romney said he brought both sides of the debate together. Well, why isn’t he trying to do that right now?”
“Then they had all this gibberish talking about education, that education is the solution to stop the killing,” the mayor continued. “My recollection is that if the Aurora theater shooter, he was a Ph.D. candidate, OK? And Virginia Tech, the massacre was committed by a student at a first-class university … The solution is to prevent all people who shouldn’t have guns from getting them.”
Michael Bloomberg’s comments were seconded by Stephen Barton, an Aurora, Colorado shooting victim. who was was shot in the neck and face. Barton starred in a television ad before the first debate in Denver, asking the candidates to outline plans against gun violence.
“The demands of 270,000 Americans for President Obama and Governor Romney to address gun violence broke through during tonight’s debate,” Stephen Barton said in a statement. “I am glad that a concerned citizen asked about guns — but sadly, there were no real answers. We are going to keep demanding a specific plan from both candidates to end gun violence.” Stephen Barton has been working with the Bloomberg-backed Mayors Against Illegal Guns.
Gun control advocates seek to turn the tide in homicides and suicides, particularly in urban settings. Several studies have examined the correlations between rates of gun ownership and gun-related, as well as overall, homicide and suicide rates within various jurisdictions around the world. To date, there is no strong evidence of a significant correlation between national gun ownership rates and the total number of people murdered or the total number who killed themselves.
Advocates for gun rights look to Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany as cautionary tales. In those totalitarian regimes, gun control legislation was later followed by confiscation, which would soften victims up for genocide.
For example, the Nazi’s Weapons Law of March 18, 1938 granted gun ownership rights to the general public, but was modified in November of that year to prohibit Jews from possession of any weapons. Approximately 6 million Jews were slaughtered during World War II.
Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union introduced gun control in 1929, coinciding with the beginning of the repressive Stalinist regime.
Gun control came up during the last night’s Presidential debate when an audience member asked about the Obama Administration’s progress on renewing the assault weapons ban. President Obama praised the 2nd Amendment and called for a “comprehensive strategy” to prevent gun violence, including increased economic opportunity for young people. He said that he shared her “belief that weapons that were designed for soldiers in war theaters don’t belong on our streets,” but fell short of standing firm on an outright ban of guns.
Mitt Romney, endorsed by the National Rifle association (NRA), said he was not “in favor of new pieces of legislation on — on guns and taking guns away or making certain guns illegal.” Like President Obama, he too quickly shifted to talking about two-parent families, and said decreasing poverty would decrease gun violence.
Answering a follow-up question from moderator Candy Crowley, Romney claimed an assault weapons ban he signed in Massachusetts was supported by both gun control and gun rights advocates. Obama accused Romney of favoring a ban “before he was against it.”