Brooklyn Native Wins ‘Bloomberg Gun Giveaway’
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
ANNANDALE, Va. — More than 200 gun enthusiasts tried their best to tell Mayor Bloomberg that Virginia didn’t want his so-called New York values, but in the end, the winner of the “Bloomberg Gun Giveaway,” was, well, born and raised in Brooklyn.
Jay Minsky, the Department of Defense engineer who won last night’s much hyped gun raffle, may have been born in New York, but he is no fan of the mayor. After his winning ticket was called, Mr. Minsky, who has lived in Fairfax for the last 30 years, was asked what message he wanted to send to Mr. Bloomberg.
He said nothing, but with a demonstrative snap of his elbow, middle finger raised to the sky, he offered a message to the cameras that couldn’t have been clearer.
The capacity crowd, standing in a meeting room at the Mason District Governmental Center, clapped and cheered.
Such was the sentiment all night, as the Virginia Citizens Defense League gave away a pistol and a rifle and rallied supporters against what they see, in New York’s mayor, as a threat to their Second Amendment rights.
The “Bloomberg Gun Giveaway” almost didn’t happen, amid last minute concerns that it violated state laws against gambling.
In the end, organizers were determined to go ahead and alleviated the concerns of state officials by scrapping plans to charge money for raffle tickets.
Earlier in the day in New York, Mr. Bloomberg told reporters what he thought of the event. “I think it’s sick,” he said, repeating the sentiment he expressed in January, when he deemed the organizers “sick people.”
“That’s the nicest way to phrase it,” he said yesterday.
To Philip Van Cleave, head of the Virginia Citizens League, the mayor’s words were a rallying cry.
“If hanging around with you guys makes me sick, then I’m sick!” he told the audience, which erupted in cheers. He then unveiled a cake decorated with a rifle and an image of the mayor. A dialogue bubble had the mayor saying, “These are sick people!”
Mr. Van Cleave took the mayor to task for taking private investigators into Virginia and other states to perform sting operations in local gun shops. Those operations formed the basis of lawsuits that the city later filed.
“Don’t come in here and go around the government and attempt to do what you did,” Mr. Van Cleave said.
