Bloomberg On Guns

I am not a big fan of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and if I lived there I seriously doubt that I could ever bring myself to vote for him. For one thing, he's all over the map politically -- going from being a Democrat to a Republican, and then when the bloom came off the Republican rose he started calling himself an Independent. But the main problem I have against him is his concerted efforts to deny the Wall Street Occupiers their constitutional rights to freedom of assembly and free speech.

But every now and then, this rather strange political animal and die-hard member of the 1% does something to make me think he may not be a totally hopeless case after all. Just a few days ago, Bloomberg reacted to the politicization of the Komen Foundation by donating $250,000 to Planned Parenthood. That's just a drop in the bucket compared to his total wealth, but it was still a good and decent thing for him to do -- and I applaud his gesture.

Another area where he comes off sounding like a reasonable human being is when he talks about guns. This is what he had to say about guns on Meet The Press:

You’d think that if a congresswoman got shot in the head, that would have changed Congress’ views. I can tell you how to change it, just get Congress to come with me to the hospital when I’ve got tell tell somebody that their son or daughter, their spouse, their parent is not going to come home again. This past, this week, even though the murder rate in New York is 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.


You know, the federal laws say you can’t get a gun if you have a drug problem, psychiatric problems, criminal record or [if you are] a minor. And yet Congress doesn’t give moneys to make sure we can have a background check. They have too many loopholes. The background databases aren’t up to date. Private sector sales of guns are something like 40 percent and they don’t do background checks, I don’t know who has to get killed for people to start saying ‘wait a second, this is enough.’

What he has to say is very reasonable. He's not calling for changing or eliminating the Second Amendment. He's not even asking for any new laws that might restrict the rights of the average American to own a firearm. He's just asking that the nation (and the states) enforce the laws that are already on the books, and fully fund those enforcement efforts.

I have to agree with Mayor Bloomberg on this issue. Laws are useless unless they are enforced, and they cannot be enforced until the funds for enforcement are available. Our nation has decided (and even many NRA members agree) that there are some Americans who should not be allowed to own guns -- like convicted felons and the dangerously mentally ill. But while a structure has been put in place to accomplish this, it is not fully enforced. This must change.

A failure to enforce the laws already on the books doesn't just put political leaders in danger -- it puts all Americans in danger. That is inexcusable.