Bloomberg Sees Benefit in Guns Decision
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.
The Supreme Court’s gun ruling is driving a wedge through the ranks of Mayor Bloomberg’s Coalition of Mayors Against Illegal Guns.
As mayors from across the country denounced the decision to overturn the Washington, D.C., ban on handguns, Mr. Bloomberg issued a statement saying it would “benefit” his coalition, and predicted it would have no impact on the city’s regulation of handguns.
His remarks were a sharp departure from those made by mayors Richard Daley of Chicago and Gavin Newsom of San Francisco, both prominent members of the coalition whose cities’ gun laws have been targeted by the National Rifle Association.
Mr. Newsom told The New York Sun yesterday that he is “very concerned about the inevitable assault on our gun restrictions,” and said the decision “opens the door for that attack.”
Mr. Daley called the ruling: “very frightening,” according to the Chicago Tribune.
Mr. Bloomberg, who founded the more than 320-member coalition with Mayor Thomas Menino of Boston, argued that the decision would aid his group’s efforts to crack down on the trafficking and prevalence of guns purchased illegally because it would put to rest the ideological debates that “obscured an obvious fact: Criminals, who have no right to purchase or possess guns, nevertheless have easy access to them.”
He said the coalition’s fight against illegal guns has never had anything to do with the Second Amendment, and said it was encouraging that the Supreme Court recognized the constitutionality of reasonable gun regulations.
A professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Eugene O’Donnell, offered some support for Mr. Bloomberg’s position that the city’s laws would be unaffected by the decision. He said Supreme Court rulings are often overrated in terms of their reach.
A professor at the New York University School of Law, James Jacobs, author of “Can Gun Control Work?” said he thought Mr. Bloomberg was putting some spin on the decision, which he described as a tremendous victory for gun-rights proponents.
It would be hard to interpret the case’s outcome as a positive for people in favor of gun control, he said, adding that he doubted the city’s gun regulations could withstand a constitutional attack based on yesterday’s decision.
“The language of the decision and the spirit of the decision suggests that when the challenge to New York’s law comes, it will be struck down as unconstitutional,” he said.