Federal leaders might be, but many mayors are more audacious
BY GABRIEL UNGER
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has spent the past few months denying that his recent, highly publicized departure from the Republican Party stemmed from presidential aspirations, claiming that the nation would never elect a “short, divorced Jewish billionaire” into its highest office. Yet whatever drawbacks his stature and marital status may present, they have not held him back from a similarly daunting quest: Taking on the illegal gun trade in America.
In 2006 Bloomberg co-hosted a summit with Boston Mayor Thomas Menino on the issue, founding the Mayors Against Illegal Guns Coalition. The fifteen founding members are now part of an organization that boasts the membership of over 240 mayors across 40 states. As local politicians who witness the consequences of gun violence up close, mayors are frequently inclined to take the issue more seriously than their federal counterparts. Yet the powerful gun lobby, led by the National Rifle Association, has so far slowed the progress of the mayors’ coalition.
A Culture of Fear
The NRA boasts over four million members and is ranked, year after year, as the most powerful lobbying organization by Fortune. “The NRA exploits fear,” Anthony Bragga, a senior research associate in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government told HPR, “and they have created a culture of fear.” The group has been successful in framing many issues surrounding gun control as potential threats to the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding, gun-owning citizens.
When Bloomberg supported a Congressional bill aimed at sharing firearm-tracing data between law enforcement agencies, not only did the attempt end in failure, but the Senate Appropriations Committee went so far as to pass a bill threatening any law enforcement official who shared firearm-tracing data with time in prison. “I think [the Coalition] has been successful in adding much-needed public discourse,” Bragga told HPR, “but not so much in moving things forward.”
Bloomberg’s crusade has not been confined to this legislative fight in the Capitol. Acting beyond what even some of his supporters consider his jurisdiction, the Mayor sent investigators to conduct sting operations in the five Southern states that make up the “Iron Pipeline” of illegal gun traffic. Posing as customers interested in purchasing firearms, the investigators attempted to buy guns illegally. Bloomberg then took the dealers who sold firearms illegally to court, naming them in federal lawsuits and demanding they stop enabling illicit gun sales.
Predictably, the gun lobby responded quickly and forcefully to the lawsuits. In Virginia, the state attorney general wrote a public letter condemning Bloomberg’s efforts. The Virginia legislature also passed a law requiring all gun-sales investigators to be accompanied by a state or federal police officer, and made violation of this rule a felony. Members of Bloomberg’s Coalition see such legislation as pandering to the NRA and its members. “We wish that the Virginia attorney general was as aggressive in enforcing the laws that prevent illegal guns from getting in the hands of criminals as he was in enforcing the laws that protect the gun lobby,” said Jason Post, a spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg, in an interview with HPR.
“Guns Kill People”
The causal connection between illegal guns and gun violence is not a controversial one among think-tanks and academics. “I don’t know why people carry guns. Guns kill people,” Bloomberg has said. About 30,000 Americans are killed every year because of gun violence, and research shows that only one out of six guns in such situations is legally obtained. The remaining guns are illegal and unregistered, and are often obtained through the careless or intentional negligence of legally-established gun dealers.
The lack of meaningful efforts on the part of the federal legislature to stem the street trafficking of illegal guns is a frustrating obstacle for mayors, who are directly confronted with the results of gun violence. The mayors who support gun control efforts are the same ones who must show up at the funerals of their slain constituents and answer tough questions from the relatives in the rows around them. For those in favor of gun control, the Mayors Against Illegal Guns Coalition represents the hope for an end to gun-related violence…
