Bloomberg’s Gun-Limits Coalition Grows, but Finds a Hard Sell in Washington
By ELIZABETH A. HARRIS
“If the leadership won’t come from Congress or come from the White House,” Mr. Bloomberg said, “then it has to come from us.”
Nearly five years later, Mr. Bloomberg has used his political bully pulpit and personal wealth to promote and expand his coalition, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which now claims more than 550 members. And the issue of gun control has helped elevate his national profile.
But despite the coalition’s size, its deep pockets and its muscular public relations operation, Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign has failed to force major strengthening of federal gun control laws.
“You’ve got an alternative voice to the dominant N.R.A. voice, and that adds to the dialogue,” said Douglas Muzzio, a professor at the School of Public Affairs at Baruch College. “The question then becomes: Does the dialogue lead to effective action? And that’s more of an unknown. I have not seen a direct connection between what they’re standing for and any substantive policy change.”
In 2009, Mr. Bloomberg’s group gave the Obama administration a report listing 40 ways it could strengthen federal gun rules without any Congressional action, from increasing enforcement of existing laws to tightening background checks. Only one proposal has been taken up by the White House, a rule, not yet in force, requiring dealers to report to federal officials when they make a sale involving multiple rifles or other long guns.
Opponents of gun control have largely succeeded in blocking Congress from restricting the availability of guns, even after high-profile mass killings, from Columbine to Virginia Tech to Tucson. A national database that is supposed to prevent certain classes of people, including those with a record of mental illness or domestic violence, from having guns is woefully incomplete, gun control advocates say.
After Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts was defeated in the 2004 presidential election — in which gun control was a pivotal issue in several states that the Democrats lost — many Democratic politicians decided that pushing for gun restriction was not worth the political price.
Still, advocates for gun owners do not take Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign lightly. “We have billions of reasons to make sure we take him seriously, looking at the dollars,” said Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association.
As part of its campaign, Mr. Bloomberg’s coalition lobbies Congress and pays for political advertisements. The coalition, which was co-founded by Mayor Thomas M. Menino of Boston, has a full-time staff of about 15 in mayors’ offices around the country and an annual budget of about $6 million in 2011. Mr. Bloomberg has given his own money to the organization and has traveled repeatedly to Washington to lobby lawmakers.
Mr. Bloomberg has also taken the fight to the public, in sometimes dramatic fashion.
On Monday, he marched 34 friends and relatives of victims of gun violence across a stage in City Hall to express their pain and anger over the easy availability of guns.
“Any mayor of a big city, and particularly the mayor of one of largest media markets in the country, can have a big influence,” said Richard M. Aborn, who led Handgun Control, a lobbying group that is now called the Brady Campaign. “He or she can be helpful in building coalitions we need to bring pressure on Washington.”
Despite the frosty climate in Washington to stricter gun regulations, the mayors’ group has had some success, and some say that even incremental change on a difficult issue is noteworthy.
“When I was a legislator, I once put in a bill 13 years before I got it passed,” said Daniel L. Feldman, an associate professor of public management at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former New York State assemblyman, who supports tighter gun laws. “There is a Talmudic line this calls to mind: it is not yours to complete the task, but neither may you desist from it.”
Mr. Bloomberg’s group was part of a successful campaign to defeat an amendment that would have allowed gun owners with a valid concealed-weapon permit from one state to carry a concealed firearm in other states. And the mayors pressured Congress to change federal rules to make it easier for law enforcement agencies to obtain data that allows them to trace guns.
The killing of six people and the wounding of Representative Gabrielle Giffords outside a Tucson supermarket this month have renewed the push for stricter gun control laws, including measures that would limit the sale of high-capacity ammunition magazines and that would require background checks of people who buy guns at gun shows.
Mr. Bloomberg and his mayoral allies have been at the forefront of efforts to turn the Tucson shootings into a major shift in the debate on gun control. But as Mr.
Bloomberg himself has acknowledged, his group’s power in Washington only goes so far.
“Did Gabrielle Giffords change things?” Mr. Feldman said. “I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/nyregion/26arms.html?src=twrhp
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