We in Pennsylvania have municipal races coming up this November, and that got Sebastian and I thinking about gun rights at the local level. With Michael Bloomberg making more noise out of New York about gun control, it made sense to take a close look at his pawns on the ground.
As one of the largest gun blogs and generally having the ear of Glenn on the issues, Uncle was able to successfully make membership in Bloomberg’s group a liability for Knoxville’s Bill Haslam. Unfortunately, targeting most of these mayors won’t be so easy. Some of them legitimately share Bloomberg’s view on gun rights and would like to see them curtailed. Others don’t really know what they signed up for – accounts by some former Bloomberg mayors suggest that it is sold as a group that really does focus on crime issues rather than taking positions against concealed carry and leading lawsuits for third party actions against gun store owners. These mayors simply need to be educated.
According to Bloomberg’s website, there are 103 mayors in Pennsylvania in the group. When the federal concealed carry amendment was up for debate and the Pennsylvania coalition of mayors sent a letter to Senators Casey and Specter, we pulled up the local mayors over at PAGunRights.com. It’s been one of the most popular pages since we brought the site back online last month. I’m sure more than a few folks had no idea their mayor was spending part of his/her July campaigning against concealed carry rights.
In my next post on the topic, I’ll have a whole bevy of statistics and potentially vulnerable mayors around the state. (By vulnerable, I mean either a chance at unseating them or simply convincing them to get out of Bloomberg’s group by a few constituent phone calls.) In Pennsylvania, we found mayors in some unexpected places.
Speaking of unexpected places, do you know with 100% certainty whether your own mayor has ever been involved in the group? (No peeking at the website!)
[poll id=”16″]
UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit Readers.  See Part II, Part III, Part IV, and Part V here.
Well, it’s been three days now since a 72-year-old New York City business owner used his legally-owned twelve gauge Winchester pump shotgun to kill two out the four thugs who were about to restrain one of his employee’s wrists at gunpoint, and our old pal, Mikey Bloomberg the hysterical gun-hater-mayor, has yet to say one word on what was nothing but an “armed citizen” story that completely backs up those of us who support our rights to keep and bear arms.
Here’s another link to this story:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/08/13/2009-08-13_harlem_biz_owner.html
I’m not fully confident that the list gets updated regularly.
My former Mayor was on the list but I doubt him being vote out had anything to do with Bloomberg.
Mayor John Link of Edgewood KY is close by (I use to work there). And the Mayor of Cincinnati is on the list.
I realize the list may not be updated often. Unfortunately, it’s the only list I know about. But it’s probably accurate to a reasonable degree.
I had to check the website. Ours isn’t but many neighboring town Mayors are.
Some are not, but I think that maybe reflects the rotating nature of the job and a town-corporation that doesn’t allow those kinds of blanket policy-statements. I mean you got some doofus lady in the rotating city-council of Campbell (WTF?) is signed-on, but not Berkeley?? Maybe Bloomberg isn’t radical enough for them? And Irvine is about as conservative as you can get (from a NorCal perspective) is among them too?
Looking at the bios, the ones who aren’t outright political tools and pieces of the machinery (Newsome, SF/born-heir, Dellums, Oakland/Old-School Communist, and Villaraigosa, LA/Tool-dickhead) are small-business owners and boosters – Capitalist succes stories. I’m sure many of them simply signed-on as a self-congratulatory measure, while some are obviously outright gun-bigots – others clearly need some education about lawsuits and sub-rosa third party actions against gun store owners. Besides, California really doesn’t
care what New York does.
I have not checked the list, but I doubt it. The mayor (D) of my town is rumored to have a carry permit and make use of it (supposedly he printed at a town meeting) much to the chagrin of our local paper who has tried and failed to verify via a FOIA. The mayor rightly refuses to verify or deny he is in fact a permit holder. Even still, I intend to work hard to vote him out of office in November. He’s one corrupt SOB.
Fishers doesn’t have a mayor. Our next closest town, Carmel, had their mayor on the list, until he got a bunch of emails and withdrew.
Ronnie,
Bloomberg is my Mayor unfortunately. He regularly beclowns himself, displaying a remarkable level of condescension toward his subjects. The mayor has been unusually quiet, but Ray Kelly did weigh in on the businessman’s side. The police chief does not speak publicly without clearance from the Mayor, so I take as a limp stamp of approval from the administration.
” Others don’t really know what they signed up for – accounts by some former Bloomberg mayors suggest that it is sold as a group that really does focus on crime issues rather than taking positions against concealed carry and leading lawsuits for third party actions against gun store owners. ”
Yeah, but how many of those mayors are simply in CYA mode? The sellouts would sell us out again at the drop of the hat.
Even if they are telling the truth, maybe they should pay a political price for not taking their role as leaders seriously enough when they didn’t properly investigate what they signed up for. Or is that too harsh?
The CYAers, vote ’em out.
The duped, I dunno.
I think you’re being too harsh. If there’s an opportunity to get them out of his group by rejecting his political actions, that helps us. Not to mention, if you approach it in a reasonable way, you might win a longer-term convert who will go to bat for you. Why not at least reach out and try for a win-win situation by hurting Bloomberg and helping our cause first?
I can understand the concern of a mayor who doesn’t know what they were getting into, but my impression of interviews with other mayors who left is that they were honestly sold something completely different. I’ll have more in a future post in the series about reasonable questions to ask to figure out if they are coordinating with Bloomberg, or if they have been conveniently left out of the loop after their names were attached.
There are hundreds of stories about “armed citizens†that completely backs up those of us who support our rights to keep and bear arms. You just don’t read about them in the anti-gun media. Bloomies my Mayor but when they come to take my guns away they wont find them. I finally found a gun safe my wife will let me bring into the house. It looks like a piece of furniture. I stumbled on it at http://www.heirloomsafeandchest.com.
Live Free or Die