Bloomberg’s Condescension to Cops
Wherever New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg goes, he is guarded at all times by a team of New York Police Department officers. He may be tucking in at some swank Manhattan restaurant, hobnobbing at a glitzy cocktail party on the Upper East Side, or slumming with the proles out in the wilderness beyond the bridges and tunnels, but anywhere he goes within the five boroughs or beyond, somewhere nearby are two or more cops in plain clothes ready to stand between the mayor and anyone who might seek to harm or even annoy him.
And those same cops of course accompany Mr. Bloomberg as he flits about Manhattan making his many appearances at the media outlets that always seem to be courting his opinions on the evils of salt, trans fats, oversized soda containers, and all of the other Bad Things he would see proscribed in the fair land of Bloomtopia. A question then occurs: If Mr. Bloomberg spends so much time in the company of police officers, has he ever had a conversation with any of them?
I ask this in response to the latest (as of this writing) of the mayor’s curious pronouncements on his puzzlement that things as they are do not conform with the way he would have them be, specifically as to gun control. Appearing on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight program, Mr. Bloomberg and the host were discussing the recent atrocity in Aurora, Colo. “Why do so many Americans,” asked Mr. Morgan (about whom more later), “not feel angry enough to demand further gun control?”
“Well,” said the mayor, “I would take it one step further. I don’t understand why the police officers across this country don’t stand up collectively and say, we’re going to go on strike. We’re not going to protect you. Unless you, the public, through your legislature, do what’s required to keep us safe.”
Set forth in the black and white of the transcript, Mr. Bloomberg’s advice to the nation’s police officers comes across as lordly enough, but to really appreciate the man’s superciliousness you must hear the comments as he spoke them. The clip is available on YouTube here, and if you listen closely, perhaps you can hear the mayor’s bodyguards snickering somewhere off camera.
Mr. Bloomberg went on to explain. “After all,” he said, “police officers want to go home to their families. And we’re doing everything we can to make their job more difficult but, more importantly, more dangerous, by leaving guns in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them, and letting people who have those guns buy things like armor-piercing bullets.”
Well, where does one begin? First of all, the notion that police officers look to legislators to keep them safe is laughable. To suggest that they should do so to the extent that they would refuse to work unless some given bill is enacted is so ridiculous as to be insulting to the very people Mr. Bloomberg purported to speak for.
The mayor walked the comments back a bit the following day, and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly gave him cover by suggesting that Mr. Bloomberg had spoken out of frustration. But it’s hard to believe that the mayor didn’t anticipate that the topic would be raised in the interview and mull over some potential responses as he was chauffeured over to the CNN studio. And this is what he decided to go with? Perhaps he should have run it by one of his bodyguards before he made a fool of himself on national television.
The debate over gun control is one worth having, but if Mayor Bloomberg had consulted with his hired guns he might have learned that most cops recognize the folly of relying on gun control to keep weapons out of the hands of people like the man accused in the Aurora shooting, and they resent being used as props in his wishful thinking. The number of laws the shooter broke would probably number in the dozens. That Mr. Bloomberg thinks the addition of more laws would have prevented the murderous rampage is only evidence of the mayor’s utopian fantasies: If only the right laws were passed, all undesirable outcomes – heart disease, obesity, murder, or what have you – would be avoided.
And Mr. Bloomberg could have found no more of an agreeable interlocutor than Piers Morgan, the effete Brit who, like Mr. Bloomberg himself, observes America and finds so many things not to his liking. Leading up to his question to Mr. Bloomberg about guns, Mr. Morgan lamented the benighted state of the American electorate. “Every time one of these [shootings] happens,” he said, “Gabrielle Giffords last year, this shooting here, there’s an outrage and then very quickly it dissipates. The American people quite quickly go back to their normal lives and they don’t demand action in a way that I would expect them to.”
So we colonials don’t behave in a way Piers Morgan expects us to. He’s no doubt equally baffled as to why Sean Hannity has two to three times his audience every night.
And Mayor Bloomberg is baffled as to why cops don’t demand more gun control. The reason is simple: cops deal with real life and the real consequences of people’s bad decisions. Even if the Aurora shooter had somehow been denied access to the firearms he used, the booby traps he left in his apartment are evidence that he did not need to rely on guns to hurt people. Evil people, especially those as intelligent as the Aurora shooter apparently is, will find a way to commit their crimes no matter what legal obstacles are placed in their way.
What Mayor Bloomberg does not and apparently cannot grasp is that every police officer in America, far from wanting to be “protected” by the addition of a few more pages in the penal code, wishes he were at that movie theater that night so he could have taken action against the shooter. That’s how you deal with homicidal maniacs, Mr. Mayor. You shoot them before they can shoot you. Your bodyguards would have told you that if you had bothered to ask.
Also read: What a Boob: Mayor Bloomberg Now Meddling in New Moms’ Breastfeeding
Homeland Security gives UC-Berkeley an ‘armored counterattack truck’ June 29, 2012
http://washingtonexaminer.com/homeland-security-gives-uc-berkeley-an-armored-counterattack-truck/article/2501042?custom_click=rss
Is it the EM-50 Urban Assault Vehicle????
“That’s the fact, Jack”!
“You shoot them before they can shoot you.”
Sometimes the best thing a wise man can do is state the obvious.
“The debate over gun control is one worth having…”
No, the debate over gun control is NOT worth having.
We have debated gun control for over a hundred years. We have seen what hundreds of years of weapons control have done, and we can see /why/ weapons control was implimented and the peasants and serfs were kept disarmed. It certainly was not to control crime. It was to make them easier to kill when their “betters” thought they were getting uppity.
Well said.
Everything old is new again.
I’m grizzled enough to remember the early nineteen-eighties when it looked like the 2nd Amendment was on the ropes, the Brady gang was anticipating victory and Bernhard Goetz was a household name. Who could have imagined how much things would have turned around? When once liberal politicians thought embracing “gun control” was the cheap-and-easy way of appearing tough on crime, now gun control is an electoral tar baby/flaming-bag-of-poop that Democrats warn each other against approaching.
So far, only safe-seat congresscritters or retiring politicians are seizing this live-wire, for all that the MSM are pumping and fellating it. The fact that Dear Leader has belatedly taken this issue up serves only to spotlight his desperation to keep our attention off the economy and shore up his “base”.
For my own part, I’m having a teenage nostalgia trip hearing all these decades-old tropes and memes dusted off for a new generation. Not to mention the hilarious ignorance placed on proud display by the great and good. The fact that these people, in politics and the media, don’t take five minutes to research the issue before making their idiotic pronouncements only underline the contempt they hold us in. This is yet one more reason they are going to be made to bleed out the backside in November. We are just not as stupid as they like to think.
Nurse Bloomberg’s invocation of “armor-piercing bullets” must bring back old nightmares, Mr. Dunphy. Exactly three decades ago NBC broadcast its special on the “cop-killer” bullets (available to police and military exclusively) that only served to widely publicize the fact that LEO’s wore body armor. The incidence of criminals aiming for the head in police shootouts rose accordingly.
By the way, has anyone asked Bill O’Blowhard his definition of “heavy weapons” yet? Has anyone got around to telling him that machine guns and RPGs are not available to all-and-sundry?
sinanju
I remember the Left being so giddy a number of people were so cocky they let it slip they wanted ALL the guns. At first it was just the hand guns but when the Left let it slip people remembered. Then came the 1990′s gun ban and the rest is history’ If people are serious and they want to do something helpful get rid of ‘Gun Free Zones”
This is last week’s news.
BBHead’s target de jour is BOOBS, or more precisely their inactivity.
As for his ‘armed to the teeth escorts’ they wouldn’t be needed if he put his brain in gear before putting his mouth in overdrive!
NYC’s Sullivan Law was a gold mine for weapoms dealers up and down the East Coast and the strawmen who had a sellers market.
When HE is elected GOD he can change everything back to the Garden of Eden. Until then ‘Get serious!
I’m not sure if Mr. Dunphy is aware of this – although I’d be surprised if he wasn’t – but in Britain, normal police officers are not issued firearms and never have been. British police can, apparently, request assistance from special squads that are armed and trained with firearms but the normal cops don’t have guns themselves. That is presumably why Piers Morgan is surprised by the reaction of Americans to gun incidents.
Thank you Jack, well said.
http://gunowners.org/op0869.htm
Even the police recognize that an active or spree shooter needs to be attacked immediately. The only way to assure that is for someone with a weapon and a willingness to use it to defend themselves or others is present. In the case of spree killers 3 or more people die every minute the police are enroute to the scene.
Any gun laws making ownership or carry more difficult are not about lowering crime. They are about creating unarmed victims for either the government or criminals or both.
Both.
Look at the Townhall story about Holder’s DoJ refusing to follow through with investigations into slave trafficking. Look at the arrangements between big-city Democrat machines and gangs — a little “urban unrest” and the gangs get a cut of the new federal funding to keep things quiet. Look at the government’s attitude towards illegals — they’re given privileges that no law-abiding citizen could ever hope for.
I think Bloomberg has gone a little nuts. Maybe he needs some trans fats or a good steak to set him straight again. Being the health nut that he is will certainly drive a person insane, and he seems to be proving it. Hey Mike, have a 16 oz. Big Gulp and some fries. You’ll fell better if you do and maybe you won’t say so many stupid things.
Pretty soon we’ll be criminalizing new moms who choose not to breast feed. This is how far we’ve evolved. Next, a Bloomberg enforcer will enter your bedroom to evaluate your sexual technique. Is it biodegradable? Is it renewable? Does it preseve our precious bodily essences? We are on the precipice. Time to say this far and no farther.
Does he talk to the police protecting him? One doesn’t socialize with the help.
Bloomberg’s notion that Americans should be “angry enough” to pass legislation just galls me. We are a Republic. Republics are founded on reason and deliberation. Democracy is based on whim and emotion, lurching from one extreme to another on the passions of the moment. Republics are stable. Democracies fall collapse straight into the hands of tyrants.
Two words come to mind that the mayor could seriously benefit from: “Slapped” and “bitch,” firmly in reverse order. It can do wonder for panic attacks.
i would be willing to give quite a bit for an “airplane” like scene involving a long line of people waiting to dish out some good “get it together, man” therapy on all of these leftist do-gooders
Google “Happyland+the Bronx+fire” and you will see why we should be grateful when they only use a gun. 87 dead from a gallon of gasoline in the hands of an angry drunk.
If Bloomberg was serious-he could get lots of guns off the street and find out if it reduces crime
Dis-arm the NYPD and see how things go
Bloomberg is a arrogant jackass who thinks his word and wish should be law, since all the subjec- excuse me, citizens are too stupid to know what’s good for them. And that includes the people who have to guard him.
As to ‘having a conversation on gun control’, I’ll let Lawdog
http://thelawdogfiles.blogspot.com/2010/09/ok-ill-play.html
say it:
Then we compromised with the Lautenberg Act (nibble, nibble), the HUD/Smith and Wesson agreement (nibble, nibble), the Brady Law (NOM NOM NOM), the School Safety and Law Enforcement Improvement Act (sweet tap-dancing Freyja, my finger!)
I’m left holding crumbs of what was once a large and satisfying cake, and you’re standing there with most of MY CAKE, making anime eyes and whining about being “reasonable”, and wondering “why we won’t compromise”.
I’m done with being reasonable, and I’m done with compromise. Nothing about gun control in this country has ever been “reasonable” nor a genuine “compromise”.
Lawdog is one of the most hilarious writers I’ve ever come across.
He’s also a Muslim apologist.
Deneen Borelli moved thousands with a brilliant speech at FreePAC in Dallas on Thursday night. Deneen was among many speakers at the Freedom Works event, hosted by Matt Kibbe, and drawing 15,000 people. Ms. Borelli is the author of Blacklash: How Obama and the Left are Driving Americans to the Government Plantation, and the Director of Outreach with FreedomWorks. The event, barely registered in the mainstream media, but the Freedom Works crowd is used to that.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUwFC2Iusfo&feature=player_embedded
“The number of laws the shooter broke would probably number in the dozens.”
Perhaps so. But non-licensed sellers are not required to do background checks and around 40% of gun sales slip through this loophole. If current laws are ineffective then you need to ask why rather than dismiss all legislative action outright.
“Evil people, especially those as intelligent as the Aurora shooter apparently is, will find a way to commit their crimes no matter what legal obstacles are placed in their way.”
This line of reasoning is often trotted out as an argument for doing nothing. Firstly it is a counsel of despair and basically amounts to saying “it’s all too hard”. You can’t create a totally safe world so let’s not even try to minimise the risks. Secondly it totally ignores the force multiplier effect of high powered weaponry in particular in comparison with other means to do harm.
But he _did_ pass the background checks, so the incident has nothing to do with the issue of 2nd-hand markets. Nor are guns a force-multiplier compared with arson or explosives, it’s just a different option. Banning certain types of guns is like trying to reduce deaths in automobiles by banning Chryslers, on the grounds that “at least we’ll be eliminating the deaths from Chryslers.”
Rather than imposing background checks for gun purchases, it might make more sense to impose annual sanity checks on all members of the population (with the intent of locking in asylums those who fail).
Aussiegirl sez:
non-licensed sellers are not required to do background checks and around 40% of gun sales slip through this loophole
please give source for this “data”, as I am firmly convinced it is false. Have you been reading Bollmberg of late, lovey? HE’s the one most authoritative source of gun information in this nation, you know….
FBI statistics reveal that LESS THAN ONE PERCENT of all crime guns are bought at gun shows. Loophole? The BATF have singlehandedly moved more weapons into Mexico in the past three years than ALL other sources combined. Loophole> How about closing th GOVERNMENT loophole. You call for a background check before I can GIVE my ancient old twelvebore to my Dad….. get real. ALL Holmes’ purchases went through background checks, as did the Virgina Tech shooter, the Arizona/Giffords shooter, the DC snipers, the man who shot up the Amish achool in Western Pennsylvaina, the Fort Hood shooterl the ONE exception to this scenario are the two boys shot up Columbine. Both were underage, it was illegal for ANYONE to transfer those handguns to either of them. They knew this, so they stole those guns.
And you think more background checks would have stopped ANY of these mass shootings? The word “delusional” comes to mind.
Don’t forget, yo live in an utopian land where private citizens can not own handguns, and you have become acculturated to that situation. I have reviewed statistics on various violent crimes in Oz since the gun confiscation travesty.. rapes, muggings, housebreakings, roberies, carjackings, all have increased significantly. WHY? Again, a nuisance FBI statistic: the ONE THING all criminals fear far more than any other is to be confronted by an ARMED putative victim. They fear this four times as often as they fear an encounter with law enforcement. Thus, the BEST deterrent to violent crime, four times as effective as a copper being Bobby on the SPot, is the armed citizen. It WOULD have ended Virgina Tech, Fort Hood, Columbine, the Amish Schoolhouse massacre, and Aurora with a small fraction of the eventual casualties. AND such scenarios would surely put sufficient fear into most such perps so as to greatly reduce future attempts.
Gun control is BEING there, and knowing how to handle your personal defense weapon.
Of course, one change that is desparately needed is: the laws prohibiting felons and mentally unfit from possession of firearms need to be far more stringently enforced, including the meting out of appropriate sentences for violations, a thing that rarely happens due to our pantywaist judicial system.
Shut up,you yeast paste-eating wallaby-humper. If you are an Aussie, a Brit, or member of any other country that does not have a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right of citizens to carry guns, I don’t CARE what your opinion on our second amendment is. In 50 years when you’re serfs on a global plantation,slaves to the U.N.,working for your masters while they starve you to death,and we’re still a free people, let’s see what you have to say then, if the government agents who still have their guns don’t shoot you for saying anything at all.
The heroes who gave us this country gave us the right to carry guns at the same time, the reason they gave them to us is so that people like YOU can’t take away our other rights. If you think I’m STUPID enough to give up freedom to be used like a farm animal while I and my family starve to support a self-appointed aristocracy,then you need to meet some more Americans in person because your media has been carrying the “Americans are stupid” meme way too far for way too long.
Where did you make up, er, find, this statistic?
And why would it matter?
I know for a fact that aussiegirl is making up her statistics.
If conservatives and libertarians want to ensure that the elites get a dose of reality, I think we need a federal law which outlaws the following in states where the right to keep and bear arms (including in public) is regulated to the point of being “generally inaccessible” to the common man.
1. Gated communities.
2. Protection details.
3. Vehicles with safety modifications like bulletproof glass.
4. All body armor.
In other words, the federal government needs to say that if the elites are going to deny basic gun rights to the common man or make getting them too much of a burden, it shall be felonious for the elites to take any measure to protect themselves.
I would include police protection details for elected officials in that. If Bloomberg had to go out in public with no protection detail because Commissioner Kelly couldn’t safely assign officers to protect him due to the threat of them being prosecuted by the US Attorney, that would do wonders to send a chill down these pols’ spines and make them rethink their views on gun rights.
Now you’re talking… I’ll give up my gun, but not until every every one of my betters and his/her bodyguards have been disarmed. Not before.
The Merchant of Venice.
With all of bloomberg’s dictatorial edicts how can anyone give him any credibility regarding his opposition to Americans owning firearms, especially for self protection?
Somehow it is missed in “polite” circles such as the boy who would be king mayor rallies in, but Chicago and NY have the strictest gun laws in the nation.
The result…..Chicago is number one in the atrocious high number of gun related murders and NYC is number 2. Whereas states with right to carry laws have seen crime go down since enactment of those laws.
He needs to stay out of the gun control issue and continue with what he knows best. Control anything he wants through his edicts. In this latest case of breastfeeding he has earned the new moniker, “Nipple Nazi.”
Cigarettes=oral
Big Gulps =oral
Baby Formula=oral
Prognosis=oral fixation or fettish on behalf of the Midget Fuehrer.
I’d be happy to give up my gun, as always all I ask is for government to present to me how it will always be there to protect me. An obvious quit pro quo, right? I’ll keep waiting for that and, in the meantime, continue to refuse to be a good victim.
Making guns difficult for criminals to obtain would be the worst thing for the NYPD.
As things stand now, cops are rarely in danger from armed criminals except when trying to arrest them. If guns were truly difficult for criminals to obtain, cops would be in danger of random assassination 24/7 by criminals coveting their guns for lucrative black-market resale.
Also, when a criminal tries to kill a cop, often the only thing that can save the cop from a subsequent lynching in the media is if the deceased known gang-member was at the time illegally in possession of a firearm. Take that away, and _all_ killings by cops become controversial.
In New York State, the police have no duty to provide police protection to any particular individual. The Courts in New York have held that “generally, a municipality may not be held liable for the failure to provide police protection because the duty to provide such protection is owed to the public at large, rather than to any particular individual” (Conde v. City of New York, 24 AD3d 595, 596 [2005]; see Cuffy v. City of New York, 69 NY2d 255, 260 [1987]).
As the Chair of the Public Safety Committee of Manhattan Community Board 12. I will be holding a Public Hearing in September 2012 on NYS Senate Bill S1427 & S1863 with an emphasis on education & firearm training for women.
PURPOSE: This proposed constitutional amendment would provide within the New York State Constitution for a right of the people to keep and bear arms for traditionally recognized purposes
September 12, 2012 at 6:30 PM is the tentative date & time. If you live in New York State feel free to take a look at the information that I will be presenting as well as sign my on-line petition included at the link below. I hope that you will come out and support me as I support you. Fraternally.
http://cavalierknight.com/documents.html
THE DRONES ARE COMING
http://www.humanevents.com/2012/07/31/rep-ted-poe-the-drones-are-coming/
“if Mayor Bloomberg had consulted with his hired guns” That’s the problem. The Tyrant of New York does not need to consult with anyone. He knows what’s best for everyone and is going to ram it down your throat.
Or, take it away from you if that’s what’s required.
More salt, anyone?
Care for an extra-large soda?
Think you should be able to have a smoking section in your bar?
And now, do new mothers want or need to bottle feed?
Fuggedabawtit!
In New York State, the police have no duty to provide police protection to any particular individual. The Courts in New York have held that “generally, a municipality may not be held liable for the failure to provide police protection because the duty to provide such protection is owed to the public at large, rather than to any particular individual” (Conde v. City of New York, 24 AD3d 595, 596 [2005]; see Cuffy v. City of New York, 69 NY2d 255, 260 [1987]).
As the Chair of the Public Safety Committee of Manhattan Community Board 12. I will be holding a Public Hearing in September 2012 on NYS Senate Bill S1427 & S1863 with an emphasis on self-defense education & firearm training for women.
Bill S1427 PURPOSE: This proposed constitutional amendment would provide within the New York State Constitution for a right of the people to keep and bear arms for traditionally recognized purposes
Bill S1427 PURPOSE: This legislation would remove a gun licensing officer’s ability to deny or restrict the issuance of licenses to law abiding citizens who have successfully undergone the state’s strict application process and appropriate New York State and Federal Bureau of Investigations fingerprint background check required under law. In addition, this bill will conform New York State law to current ATF requirements regarding background checks for firearms transfers.
September 12, 2012 at 6:30 PM at Isabella, 515 Audubon Avenue New York, NY 10040. If you live in New York State feel free to take a look at the information that I will be presenting as well as sign my on-line petition included at the link below. I hope that you will come out and support me as I support you. Fraternally.
http://cavalierknight.com/documents.html