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Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
C.S. Lewis did not have far left 'Independent' NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg in mind when he made his famous quote, but could it be more applicable? The list of "nanny state" actions by Bloomberg is long indeed. Bloomberg fully believes in his own omnipotence and that he knows how we should live.
Under normal circumstances, I could care less. I don't live in NYC, and at this point I have zero sympathy for the NYC residents that keep reelecting this joker. Let them suck on their 16 ounce sodas while they can't smoke and while they writhe in agony from lack of pain medication. But on the issue of guns, Uber Nanny Bloomberg matters beyond NYC.
New York already has perhaps the strictest gun control laws on the books in our nation, and NYC already goes even one further, effectively banning concealed carry. Yet that is not enough for Bloomberg, who wants far reaching gun control, both in and beyond NYC. You have to love how he justifies gun control in the face of arguments to the contrary:
In recent weeks, we have heard some people say that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” Bloomberg said, echoing NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre. “But the truth is that sometimes the good guys get shot and sometimes they even get killed. . . .Washington is letting the bad guys shoot our police officers, our children, our neighbors. That has to stop right now. And there are immediate steps our legislators can take right now.”
That is a non-sequitur if there ever was one. Moreover, he never addresses the fact that he himself is the beneficiary of round the clock armed guards. Bloomberg apparently, like virtually all on the far left, sees the average person having access to weapons as far more problematic than they being able to protect themselves at the point of a crime.
So why does Bloomberg matter? One, NY and NYC gun laws are a trap for law abiding gun owners merely traveling through NY. For example, how many people have to change planes in NYC? If you are flying with a completely legal and checked weapon in your baggage, there is still the possibility that you might end up being charged as a criminal by Bloomberg's police. Mark Meckler is probably the most outrageous case, but there have been others, mere visitors to NYC who get caught up in NY's anti-gun crusade as they try to do the right thing.
Two, and most importantly, Bloomberg matters because he is on a crusade. The uber nanny wants to export his anti-gun crusade throughout the nation. This from WaPo:
Michael Bloomberg, America’s most prominent and deep-pocketed advocate for gun control, would rather rehabilitate Republicans than oust them.
“Somebody got them the way they are now,” the mayor of New York said in a recent interview as he sat in the bullpen offices of City Hall, surrounded by a buzzing staff, blinking Bloomberg terminals and clocks telling the same time in each of the five boroughs. “Why can’t you change them?”
On Monday, Bloomberg will headline a summit on guns at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, another opportunity for the outspoken mayor to deliver an indictment of Washington’s failure to do anything meaningful on the issue. Although the Democrat-turned-Republican- turned-independent says he practices a “noble and practical” brand of post-partisan politics, when it comes to gun laws, he is more aligned with one party than the other.
Democrats in the White House and in Congress are working closely with his advocacy group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, to enact his gun-control agenda. And Republicans, especially those in the House, don’t seem the least bit interested.
“Oh sure,” Bloomberg said, he would blame Republicans if they blocked new gun-control legislation in the House. “But having said that, I won’t let the Democrats off the hook.” He added that when Democrats “were in power, they didn’t do it,” and President Obama “campaigned on an assault-weapons ban and he didn’t do it, so spare me.”
It’s not clear how much longer the mayor’s idiosyncratic who-needs-political-parties approach will apply when it comes to gun control.
After the massacre of schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn., a collection of progressive groups and Democratic lawmakers, including, most recently, former Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, have aggressively entered the debate. (“And so we’re not going to be the star,” Bloomberg said. “My interest is in having this done. I don’t need to get credit for it.”) That still leaves Bloomberg with a significant distinction: He’s a multibillionaire who can immediately reshape the landscape of gun politics with his money. His hope is that he can break the GOP of what he sees as its National Rifle Association addiction by using his considerable resources to promote gun laws with which many NRA members will agree.
“I’m going to prove a counterweight” to the NRA, said Bloomberg, who spent about $10 million in five congressional and statewide races against NRA- supported candidates last year, winning four of those contests. “It seemed effective, and I’m certainly going to take a good, hard look at next time. . . . You can organize people, I can write checks. . . .
