Photo by Gage Skidmore courtesy Flickr under Creative Commons CC BY-SA 2.0.
When Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York City and the founder of multiple gun-control groups, announced he was running for president, he also said his news service would not investigate him or his rivals now vying for the Democratic Party’s nomination. He said Bloomberg News, which has over 2,000 employees, would, however, keep investigating and writing opinion pieces about President Donald J. Trump.
So Bloomberg’s many reporters arguably now have marching orders to openly behave as operatives for the Democratic Party’s agenda.
This prompted David Martosko, the U.S. politics editor for the Daily Mail, to tweet: “I predict Trump rallies will include this: ‘Is there a Bloomberg reporter back there in the fake news section? They fly on Air Force One every day and chase me around but Little Mike won’t let them investigate ANY Democrats. It’s crooked as hell.’”
That isn’t likely to happen, however, as the Trump administration quickly announced that Bloomberg’s reporters would not be given press credentials to attend its campaign events.
Bloomberg’s decision not to allow his reporters to investigate Democrats is hardly surprising. His gun-control group Everytown for Gun Safety, for example, already doesn’t talk to reporters who won’t print its propaganda almost verbatim. Everytown isn’t interested in honest, bipartisan fact-finding on issues related to guns. They are propagandists.
This is how Bloomberg behaves. Even Bloomberg’s current political website states, under the banner “Taking on the Gun Lobby”: “While other elected officials live in fear of the NRA, Mike has led the effort to stop gun violence and keep communities safe.”
That statement is hardly a declaration that Bloomberg intends to bring people together to attempt to reduce homicide rates where they are high, such as in areas with stringent gun-control laws, or to find better ways to prevent bad guys from getting guns. But rather, it’s a political statement, a declaration from Bloomberg that he wants to vanquish his political opponents.
After declaring that his large news outlet, like his campaign, would behave as a political machine, he went to Colorado to unveil (no surprises here) the basic framework of his gun-control agenda.
Bloomberg’s gun-control plan includes:
- “Universal” background checks
- A new ban on popular semi-automatic rifles and so-called “high-capacity magazines”
- Raising the age to buy a gun of any type to 21
- A two-day waiting period for all gun purchases
- A gun-owner licensing scheme that would force all gun owners to first obtain permits before buying a firearm
- A ban on all guns in schools, colleges and universities with the exception of law enforcement—as if the “gun-free zone” idea has been working
- A requirement that “all gun owners must report to police if their firearms have been lost or stolen, within 3 days after they know or should know that their guns are missing.” [Emphasis is ours]
- The repeal of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) so that anti-gun activists can sue gun makers out of business when some criminal uses their product illegally
- And Bloomberg wants to: “Formally declare the gun violence crisis to be a public health emergency to expedite funds and research.”
There is more to Bloomberg’s long wish list for how he would like to infringe on or outright take away your constitutional rights, but you get the point.
Bloomberg also says that even if he doesn’t win the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, he will continue to use his $55 billion or so fortune to push his gun-control agenda in state and national politics.
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