The Bloomberg Conspiracy
And the Death of the NRA
About a month after the US Senate voted down a series of gun control amendments back in April, an article in the New Republic magazine boldly declared “This is How the NRA Ends: A Bigger, Richer, Meaner Gun Control Movement has Arrived.” The article was a long diatribe regurgitating much of the stale tripe and distortion we’ve been hearing from the anti-rights movement for decades, and singing the praises of the movement’s new messiah, Mike Bloomberg, the three-term Mayor of New York City. Alec MacGillis, the author of the article, and a senior editor at the magazine, is, like so many in the media, obviously a true believer in the concept of gun control. His enthusiastic bias oozes from the page as he laments the shameful act of the Senate in rejecting such an eminently fair, reasonable, and common sense, bi-partisan compromise proposal to make it a federal felony to buy a gun from your neighbor without first submitting to government scrutiny and paying a punitive tax for wishing to exercise your constitutional rights – even if you already own a dozen guns and have a state-issued concealed carry license.
His portrait of Bloomberg is one of a dynamic crusader motivated by compassion and imbued with the most powerful of superhero super-powers – money! As one of the wealthiest men in the world, Mike Bloomberg can do just about anything he wants. Bloomberg’s personal wealth is estimated to be something north of $27 billion and growing. At the present rates, Bloomberg could give away or squander well over a billion dollars per year and still be rising in the Forbes 100 list of the world’s wealthiest people. And Bloomberg does indeed give away and squander significant amounts of money each year. Along with mandating various health rules in his city, such as broad restrictions on smoking, bans on restaurants serving trans-fats, and limits on the size of sweetened drinks restaurants can serve, Bloomberg has donated tens of millions of dollars to tobacco control organizations and programs around the world. These efforts have earned him the title “Nanny Bloomberg” in some circles.