Bloomberg to Brooklyn: National Guard Not Allowed with Guns

Anti-Second Amendment New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg refused to allow the National Guard into Brooklyn to help with disaster relief and prevent looting because national guardsmen would have had guns. 

“NYPD is the only people we want on the street with guns,” Bloomberg said.

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz asked for National Guard help especially after rampant looting broke out in areas Hurricane Sandy hit, but Bloomberg, who has even politicized national tragedies like the tragic Aurora shootings to go on his gun control crusades,  denied his request. 

According to The Brooklyn Paper:

“We don’t need it,” Mayor Bloomberg said on Wednesday during a press update on the city’s ongoing Hurricane Sandy cleanup. “The NYPD is the only people we want on the street with guns.”

Markowitz demanded the National Guard’s help just an hour before Bloomberg’s press conference, claiming that the NYPD and FDNY are “brave — but overwhelmed” by all the challenges Sandy brought when it visited the borough on Monday night: flooding, power outages, and looting.

Markowitz believed that “the sight of an armed soldier would deter criminal activity in the still-inaccessible evacuation zones — such as the rash of break-ins that took place in Coney Island hours” — but Bloomberg still refused. 

Bloomberg’s official excuse for not sending the National Guard to Brooklyn was “there are plenty of locations upstate and in surrounding states where they don’t have a police department the size of New York and they can use help” from the National Guard.