Bloomberg's Publicity Hounds Howl for Attention Following Ft. Hood Crime

The day after a soldier armed with a handgun murdered three, wounded 16, and killed himself on Ft. Hood, in central Texas, Michael Bloomberg’s two anti-gun groups--Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG) and Moms Demand Action--issued a joint press release admitting, “we don’t know all the details.” This did not stop them, however, from offering “spokespeople available for comment and TV interviews (from NYC, DC and via satellite).”  Knowledge of details—and facts—have never stood as an impediment for anti-gun groups to start prescribing their usual remedies.

If the anti-gunners appeared to be hungry for the media’s attention, it was for a reason. As detailed elsewhere in this Alert, polls conducted by Rasmussen Reports have found that support for gun control has decreased 22 percent since December 2012. Additionally, Bloomberg is no longer mayor of New York City and therefore can no longer use that office’s bully pulpit to lecture America on his tiresome views about gun control.

Furthermore, the mayors’ group has experienced self-inflicted credibility problems over the last year, and that has forced the egotistical Bloomberg to let his “moms” group carry his message while he struggles to rehabilitate his first group’s name. Partly as a result, the Brady Campaign (what remains of it) is again becoming the anti-gun group whose opinions are sought by the media and by President Barack Obama and his White House staff.

Meanwhile, Fox News reports that Wednesday’s crime on Ft. Hood, which follows the mass murder committed on the base by terrorist sympathizer Maj. Nidal Hasan in 2009, has renewed calls for relaxing arbitrary regulations that for many years have denied Americans their right to carry firearms for protection on-post. Fox quoted two survivors of Hasan’s attack as saying, “When our soldiers are unarmed, they will find themselves in a situation like yesterday and in 2009,” and, “If you are allowed to carry a weapon on the base, that’s a deterrent.”

Fox also reports that Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas), chairman of the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee, said, “The problem here, and with Fort Hood, the prior Nidal Hasan case, is that [victims] couldn’t defend themselves because they were not allowed to carry weapons.” If Bloomberg could be forced to respond to that simple fact, we’d almost be happy for the media to take him up on his desperate attempt to stand again in the anti-gunners’ spotlight.