What are New Yorkers supposed to make of Mayor Bloomberg’s claim to be the biggest defender of the Second Amendment? The mayor made the claim in his weekly address. We read about it on the Drudge Report, which links to the New York Observer. “I don’t think there’s anybody that’s defended the Second Amendment as much as I have,” the Observer quoted His Honor as saying in response to a caller. “I think you have a perfect right to buy weapons and keep them for protection or for sport. We have tried to make sure that you have it.”

In fact, that is not true. The mayor has not tried to make sure that New Yorkers have the right to buy weapons and keep them for protection or sport. On the contrary, he and his administration have done everything they can to block New Yorkers from keeping guns at home and carrying them for protection as they go about their daily, lawful business. It is essentially impossible for an ordinary New Yorker to carry a pistol in the city. The penalties for getting caught are enormous, with mandatory jail time. For the mayor to claim otherwise is laughable and dishonest. Not to mention hypocritical.

There is, after all, no jail time for exercising the other freedoms vouchsafed in the Bill of Rights. There is no mandatory jail time for going to church or publishing a newspaper or keeping papers and effects securely in one’s home. One can’t be jailed for refusing to testify against oneself. The right to keep and bear arms is in this sense unique in New York City. It is the only article of the Bill of Rights that the Bloomberg administration seeks to jail New Yorkers for exercising. The fact of the matter is that New York City is a Second Amendment Free Zone.

Just to be clear. We understand that the contours of the Second Amendment — the meaning of the militia clause, the types of weapons covered, the authority of the states and local governments — all are still being litigated. We do not speak here of the kinds of weapons that have lately been implicated in the most terrible of mass shootings. We’re not talking about semi-automatic firearms of the kind that are called “assault rifles.” We’re not even talking about semi-automatic pistols. So thoroughly has the Bloomberg administration infringed on the Second Amendment in New York that a person cannot even carry a .38 revolver or a six-shooter or a single-shot handgun.

It doesn’t matter whether one feels threatened on the street. It doesn’t matter if one is experienced with handguns or not. Even the most sober, responsible, reasonable citizens of the mayor’s city are forbidden to carry a weapon. Our favorite example of this is Craig Whitney, who is a retired foreign correspondent and editor of the New York Times. He carried a .45 in Vietnam for the United States Navy. He is savvy, sober, honest, mature, and responsible. He is not a right-winger. He doesn’t drink large sugared sodas. He doesn’t smoke in restaurants. He cooks his french-fries in rosewater. He is everything Mayor Bloomberg wants in a New Yorker.

Yet Mr. Whitney is so struck by the hypocrisy of the gun laws in America that he has taken the trouble to write an entire book, “Living With Guns: A Liberal’s Case for the Second Amendment.” We quoted Mr. Whitney just the other day, and we’ll no doubt do so again. In the book he writes that he never felt the need to arm himself during the 20 years he’s lived in New York City. But if he did, he writes, “I would have almost no chance of getting a permit to carry a handgun on the street, and little chance of getting one to have only in my apartment.” That is because, he writes, he wouldn’t be able to convince the police that he needs one, and “they have almost complete discretion in deciding who gets a permit.”

Misleading statements of the kind Mr. Bloomberg has just made are a problem in our national debate, where we are in for a new round of hyperbole now that the leader of the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre, has given his press conference. The liberal press is going to call him every name in the book. The fact of the matter is that Mr. LaPierre is, compared to Mayor Bloomberg, a model of logic, moderation, straight-talk, and integrity. There is no doubt that the tragedy at Newtown, Connecticut, has thrown this country into a profound moment. It deserves better than the blunderbuss of Mayor Bloomberg claiming to be a defender of the Second Amendment.