Like S.E. Cupp, I am also an NRA member and I couldn’t be more proud of the way she’s stood up for gun owners and the 2nd Amendment. On ABC’s This Week, she said “Mayors Against Illegal Guns has crumbled because [Bloomberg] duped mayors into thinking they were actually going to fight illegal guns. And when they all found out actually they were going after law-abiding gun owners, they said, ‘that’s not what I want to be apart of.’ His efforts are duplicitous and they’re measurably failing.”
Watch here:
Not surprisingly, gun control groups are now going after Cupp on Twitter with the immature hashtag #EmptyCupp. She took to Twitter to respond:
So @MikeBloomberg‘s #Everytown gave me my own hashtag #EmptyCupp. But going after LAW-ABIDING gun owners is par for the course. Bring it.
— S.E. Cupp (@secupp) April 22, 2014
Cupp is exactly right when it comes to Bloomberg and his harem of concerned mommies. Their goal is to publicly shame law-abiding gun owners, not prevent illegal gun ownership. Even the liberal Slate is noticing that Bloomberg is failing in the court of public opinion. From Slate:
Put simply, Bloomberg is sabotaging himself by stepping up as the public face of this effort. Otherwise receptive Americans may recoil at supporting a figure who represents the nanny-state authoritarianism of wealthy New York City elites.
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Put another way, gun rights are crucial for those who support them in a way that isn’t true of people who oppose them. Bloomberg’s task is to heighten the political salience of gun control and turn that into action.
It’s a huge task made more difficult by the fact that Bloomberg is leading the charge. Which is to say that if Bloomberg wants this to stand as a success–and not just as a vanity project–then he should give his money, donate his time, and stay behind the scenes.
Not that it would happen, of course. The kind of guy who calls himself a shoo-in for heaven–“I am telling you if there is a God, when I get to heaven I’m not stopping to be interviewed. I am heading straight in. I have earned my place in heaven. It’s not even close.”–is not the kind of guy who would step away from the spotlight. Even for his favorite cause.”
We already know Bloomberg’s MO when it comes to things he doesn’t like. The goal isn’t reduction, but banning them out of existence. He didn’t want a educational campaign to reduce soda among unhealthy people. He wanted to ban large sodas. And salt. And trans fats. Cupp rightly notes that Bloomberg’s “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” has every intention of going after lawful, responsible gun-owners like you and me.