Well-known gun-control advocate Mike Bloomberg said today that President Obama should push for yet more gun control.
“This should be his number one agenda. He’s the president of the United States, and if he does nothing during his second term, something like 48,000 Americans will be killed with illegal guns,” Bloomberg said on Meet the Press. “That is roughly the number of Americans killed in the whole Vietnam war.”
Bloomberg stressed that Obama shouldn’t solely concentrate on legislation, which may or may not be able to pass.
“What the president can do is number one, through executive action, he can order his agencies to enforce the laws more aggressively,” Bloomberg said. “I think there’s something like 77,000 people who have been accused of lying when they applied for a gun permit. We’ve only prosecuted 77 of them.”
Bloomberg didn’t mention his source for those numbers during the program.
“Nobody questions the second amendment’s right to bear arms,” the mayor continued, “but I don’t think the founding fathers had the idea that every man, woman, and child could carry an assault weapon.”
Dismissing the idea that politicians had reason to fear going against the NRA, Bloomberg remarked, “The NRA’s number one objective this time was to defeat Obama for a second term. Last time I checked the election results, he won and he won comfortably. This myth that the NRA can destroy political careers is just not true.”
UPDATE: Bloomberg’s spokesman says the source for his remarks was this 2011 Justice Department study.