Mayors Against Illegal Guns sets the NRA bullies in its sights

This "Message from Neil Heslin," father of Jesse, is being circulated by Mayors Against Illegal Guns as part of its Demand Action to End Gun Violence campaign.

"For too long, the only voice that has been loud enough to influence Congress has been the Washington gun lobby's -- that's how we've ended up with ineffective gun laws that have fueled our country's gun violence epidemic. Now we're working to make sure that the voices of the more than 900 bipartisan mayors in our coalition -- and the 90 percent of Americans who support commonsense reforms like background checks for all gun sales -- are heard loud and clear. It's time for Congress to take action to save lives and protect our communities."

-- NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg,
co-chair of Mayors Against Illegal Guns

by Ken

As I've had frequent occasion to note, I'm not a wild fan of New York City's Mayor Mike Bloomberg, though I also take the point my friend Peter makes that in the here and now he is coming to represent about the best we can hope for in our public "servants": an independently wealthy person who has enough sense of public obligation as to fight for at least some values that aren't of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.

As he demonstrated as he developed his paramilitary response to the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, he stands as four-square as anyone for the maintenance at just about any cost of the prerogatives of the economic elites. The rest of the country may have gotten a glimpse then of his new strategy of using the NYPD as shock troops and occupation forces for maintenance of the economic and political status quo. What the country may not know is that from the experience developed a now-standard strategy for "managing" demonstrations in the city, so that they may be safely contained and cordoned off from any meaningful engagement with public awareness.

Still, Mayor Mike is very different from your standard-issue plutocrat, who tends to view all issues through an updated version of the old saw that what was good for General Motors was good for the U.S.A.: What's good for the lordly plutocrat is good for the unwashed masses. Mayor Mike actually thinks, for example, that his municipal vision encompasses the best interests of all New Yorkers, and there are at least areas in which it does. His "million trees" initiative, for one, isn't the sort of thing that would ever have found political support with a normal pol in City Hall; there's just too little return for the people who wield decision-making clout in our fair city. But the massive tree-planting program in many areas of the city has already begun to reshape, in a more human direction, the physical makeup of the city.

The issue for which Mayor Mike has undoubtedly made himself most visible at the national level, of course, is his energetic campaign for a new sanity in national gun-regulation policies and enforcement, backing up his strong personal and organization support with the kind that really counts: financial support. Already in 2012 he began targeting visible local contests where an infusion of campaign cash targeted for sane gun policies changed the electoral game.

Today the group he has done so much to foster, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, raised the stakes today, and even commandeered a certain portion of the news cycle -- not an overwhelming portion, but even getting this much attention for advocacy for sane gun policies is a triumph, and very likely a highly upsetting development for the pro-gun-mayhem forces whose principal lobbying group is the National Rifle Association (NRA).

From a symbolic and possibly also practical standpoint, the most striking announcement in today's package is this news:

Mayors Against Illegal Guns to Score Congressional Gun Votes

Mayors Against Illegal Guns announced today that, for the first time, it will score votes and other official activity on firearms policy in the 113th Congress. In a letter that will be sent to all members of Congress today, the coalition states that it will issue a scorecard assigning members a letter grade on their gun policy records. The letter can be found at: www.demandaction.org/score.

Here, in case you're curious, is the letter about the new grading system sent to all U.S. senators and representatives. (You should be able to click on it to enlarge it.)

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