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Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg And Mayor Of London Boris Johnson Interview

“For the majority of gun owners, being told that their harmless hobby is somehow responsible for the deaths of other people must be deeply unpleasant. Worse still is when they are told it by metropolitan types with more money than them. Michael Bloomberg, for example, New York’s billionaire ex-mayor. Or possibly me. And it makes me wonder whether one of the problems—certainly not the main problem, but one of them—with attempts to control guns is precisely that the people making the loudest case for reform are people like Mr Bloomberg and me.” – D.K. in Shooting guns: It’s rather fun, actually [at economist.com]

Added: Link redirects for some reason. Copy and paste this URL in your browser for the source article:  http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/02/shooting-guns

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79 COMMENTS

  1. It’s not you money, you pompous ass. The biggest problem with you trying to control guns is that you’re trying to control guns.

    • And, people…they are trying to control We The People, which makes you wonder if their end goal is to bring back some new version of feudalism.

      • Exactly, Aristotle said it best: “Both oligarch and tyrant mistrust the people, and therefore deprive them of their arms.” In the case of Michael “Big Gulp” Bloomberg I would say he is both an oligarch and a tyrant.

    • The comments on the actual article are some of the most pompous, arrogant and elitist I have ever read… here is a quote from part of one of the replies to someone quoting a Harvard Study “You can post the same false arguments an goobered studies as many times as you want. Readers of the Economist are smart enough to know better.”

  2. Indeed. Maybe those who have very little or no experience with guns should give it a try before throwing millions of dollars at a “problem” they don’t understand. Spend some time in the gun culture and you will find we want similar outcomes, but with a different approach. We want a common sense approach to controlling the nut jobs that have access to guns without infringing our second amendment rights. Nobody wants another mass shooting or unnecessary death to occur, but taking away all guns is not the solution.

    • You were right up until you said “Nobody wants another mass shooting…” They, the gun grabbers, want one of such tragic proportions that it pushes those on the fence to rally for their gun grabbing cause.

      Keep in mind, human life means little to Bloomie and his cronies; it is power and control that they seek.

    • Scott,

      “… before throwing millions of dollars at a ‘problem’ they don’t understand.”

      Actually, Bloomberg does understand because he stated the problem recently … that urban minority males between the ages of 15 and 25 cause something like 90% of all homicides. And sources such as the United States Justice Department have stated plainly that criminal gangs are responsible for something like 80% of all violent crime.

      And yet people like Bloomberg, Clinton, Feinstein, Cuomo, etc. keep pushing “solutions” that ONLY involve the fine people of this nation who have no criminal record. Why?

      • This question is and always has been the elephant in the room since at least 1968. The answer, of course, is the monumental failure of the “war on poverty” and all the social service programs that have come with it and after it. After billions upon billions of YOUR and MY money was spent, the ‘hood is still the ‘hood. And the urban elites, R and D alike, simply will not admit what everyone knows. If they did not have straw man of “gun control” and all its permutations about magazine size, barrel length, etc., the Emperor would be shown to be naked. There is a related point as well about fear. Having grown up in the city, but having left there long ago, and knowing that the first thing many former city dwellers do when they leave is purchase a firearm, I can say that in the city we all are brought up in fear. Back then the bogeymen were perverts, criminals, and anyone larger and/or darker than you. Don’t look anyone in the eyes, especially on a bus or train. He may be a sex pervert, junkie, or otherwise armed criminal. Always be ready to run, never to resist. Resistance is futile. Now we can add terrorist to the list of urban fears, because no terrorist will attack out in the countryside. Fear is taught day after day in the city — and unless you are a politician or super-rich, you can’t buy protection.

  3. Owning guns is NOT responsible for the deaths of other people and no that absurd argument is not unpleasant to me. These people are about control. Gun ownership is about freedom, a concept that is distinctly unpleasant to Bloomberg and his ilk. These people, and their statist thinking, need to be resisted and marginalized. OUr current administration and its supporters (the biggest danger this country faces) are destroying this country and our freedom. Those supporting freedom are not doing enough to minimize the Obama effect, I call it that to simplify things. The current leadership of the Republican party is not responding to this need. The Democrat Party is, the greatest danger we face, not responding to this need either. The Obama effect, which Bloomberg is riding, is a far greater danger than anyone, or anything, we have faced in the Mideast. If we do not take the country back from the statists we will loose it and the REpublic will dissolve.

    • I think it’s time for the Libertarian Party to field a candidate in 2016 who is NOT mentally ill in some way. Or resurrect the Whigs. Or something…

  4. The problems is not the guns, the problem is criminal control and it’s not going to work releasing them back onto the streets only to commit a more violent crime later.

  5. It must be unpleasant for people with a lot of money, used to their minions agreeing with everything they say, to be told that not only are they wrong in their anti-gun beliefs but that their efforts to disarm people create an environment conducive to the violence that they supposedly abhor.

  6. The Economist link is now inactive, redirecting to a different page. I do not support the RKBA because it is any hobby, no more than I support the right to free speech because I find speech a hobby. They are fundamental rights essential to human freedom. And I don’t take kindly to control-obsessed billionaires who walk around with armed bodyguards and ride in armored cars, who think that just because he built a multibillion-dollar fortune, that this makes him qualified to lord over me and micromanage me and take away my rights.

  7. He also left out the part about soft men like he and bloomy being surrounded by rough, well trained, well armed men willing to dispense said death on their behalf.

  8. Is it me, or did gun-grabbers not make statements like this two years ago … much less 20 years ago?

    I have to wonder if we are actually starting to get through to people — even gun-grabbers. It would certainly be consistent with the fact that over 65% of the nation wants no more gun control.

    • I don’t think that we are actually gaining ground. It only takes a generation for the infringement train to chug down the tracks all over again. We might gain in gun rights today but lose in many other areas (DHS, NDAA, NSA, etc.) Overall, it’s always a net loss for Liberty.

      I watched an early episode of All in the Family in which Archie and Michael were arguing about gun control. I realized that the same arguments are still being made even though they have been long since destroyed. IMHO, the only way to stop this insanity is shall not be infringed and give no quarter.

      (It think the episode was Archie demands equal time.)

  9. “For the majority of gun owners, being told that their harmless hobby is somehow responsible for the deaths of other people must be deeply unpleasant. ” From linked article.

    This incredibly arrogant boob only wishes we found it unpleasant. We know that he and “Mr. Bloomberg” are liars and control freaks, and that our guns and our hobbies are distinctly NOT responsible for the deaths of other people, no matter how loudly they scream it. It is still a lie.

    He asserts without proof or any interest in the truth that the NRA is a nasty organization supported by firearm manufacturers, but apparently hasn’t noticed that it is actually supported by millions of dues paying members, of which he and Mr Bloomberg together have ZERO, an identical number to the number of facts they assert.

    What a loser. The whole tone of the diatribe is apparently his belief that we carry guns with us everywhere because it is harmless fun. Guns are fun. Carrying them is not. He is a blithering idiot.

    • Let’s give him a little credit. He did step outside his liberal comfort zone and give shooting a try. And he was open minded enough to enjoy it. And he wrote a decently positive article about it for the Economist. These are all good things and they support our cause.

      He didn’t spend a day talking to NRA representatives. Nor did he spend a day wading through police reports and statistcs. Every place where he’s not talking about his personal experience at the range, the article falls back into his liberal habits. But where it is good, it’s very good.

      I know it’s not a perfect article, but it’s a win for our side. Let’s try and encourage him to get more experience. It will do him and us some good.

  10. I’m not feeling unpleasantness so much as deep, seething contempt. These people aren’t telling us we smell funny, they’re telling us we’re f@#$ing MURDERERS who should be in prison, and doing everything in their giant checkbooks power to make that happen. It’s a particularly vicious insult to our intelligence, especially when our kids are living right and doing good in school, while theirs are smoking dope and burning down neighborhoods.

  11. In spite of being a arrogant, obnoxious A** hole, at least the actual article demonstrates he did some “research” by going to a gun range to shoot a gun and his conclusion was
    “Perhaps what gun control needs is a few advocates who are a little more visibly familiar with the sheer fun of holding a pistol and pulling the trigger.” Have to agree since vast majority of want to be gun grabbers have never hunted, been to a gun range for target shooting OR been mugged/assaulted, since they don’t even know what they don’t know and what is worse, don’t want to know
    correct link to article
    http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/02/shooting-guns

    • Credit for going to a gun range, ok. Debit far more for the usual lies and misdirections — the NRA is nasty (a purely personal opinion, not a fact), the NRA is funded by the gun industry (a lie), gun suicides are avoidable (by gun, yes, but they will find other means), and that everyone at a gun range is not aware that guns kill (what an arrogant patronizing attitude!).

  12. “being told that their harmless hobby is somehow responsible for the deaths of other people must be deeply unpleasant”
    Exactly as unpleasant as if said multibillionaire suddenly came to you and told you that your automobile is far too dangerous for you to drive(quadruple all gun deaths combined, including suicides) and he had to start a system of regulating when and where, and under what circumstances, you could buy and use your car. And that you must go along with his plan, because; “its for your children”. Also, if you refuse to go along, you are a child hater and probably a wife beater too.
    Now tell me, all you drivers out there, just how would you feel after all of that? Then also realize that driving a car is NOT a right that you are guaranteed by the most basic law of the land you reside in…

    • Quadruple all gun deaths? In 2012 there were 33.5k motor vehicle deaths, and there were roughly the same number of deaths by firearm (including suicide).

      • I took out suicides, as I believe they skew the statistical results. Not included for cars either, but there are very few suicides by automobile.I believe that is obvious. Its Thomas Jefferson’s “my freedom ends where your nose begins”. Since your life is not connected to my nose, and it doesn’t affect me, it becomes not my business, and you have that freedom, even though I don’t think you should suicide. And it certainly shouldn’t count as a black mark against whatever product you might choose to do it with, whether it be car, gun, knife, razor blade, or the nearest handy high object. If its not a bridges fault that I jumped off it, why should it be a gun’s fault that I choose to put it in my mouth and pull the trigger?

  13. He makes a few inaccurate statements, like the meme that the NRA is funded by gun manufacturers and doesn’t represent the will of gun owners without even mentioning the NRA’s 5 million dues paying members. But he was willing to question his own ignorance and find out what he was missing. Perhaps his epiphany (that shooting guns is fun) will start to erode the 60 or so years of indoctrination.

    • Funny, I didn’t see him questioning his own ignorance. The only question i saw him ask was that if was the wrong person to get the message across, not whether the actual message was wrong or not. To me, it came across as, “Perhaps I’m too big of a voice with too much money. This message needs to come from the ranks little people to be effective.”

      • He went to a range to find out what firing guns was like. He recognized his ignorance on the subject and gave it a try and found out to his surprise that shooting guns is a hoot. Most of his ilk believe that there is no reason for owning a gun without mal-intent (at least toward Bambi, if not humans). He now understands that shooting guns as a hobby is a lot of fun. His misinterpretation of our motives has been corrected. That seems like a pretty good first step to me. Your expectations are too high. He’s not going to become a card carrying NRA member overnight.

  14. From the article
    “Some were white, male, middle-aged and somewhat scary-looking. But not all. Across from where I fired my pistol, two black women, one with a small son, were taking turns (the child heavily supervised).”

    I’m not sure, but is he saying only the white, male, middle aged shooters are the scary ones?

    • Yes. They were probably wearing Come Take It From Me T-shirts and that makes them scary. As I noted in another reply — fear is pre-programmed into the urban psyche. It probably has something also to do with overcrowding, which mouse experiments show consistent to be responsible for all sorts of perverse behaviors.

  15. My problem with Bloomberg types is the hypocrisy of them. I believe under the first amendment they have the right to speak what they think. I am fine with that, just like everyone else has that right. But the second amendment provides safety for everyone, not just them. They are NOT against guns. If they were then they wouldn’t let their bodyguards carry. That is not the case. They are against PEOPLE having guns. Which means they think they are more important than everyone else. I believe England had a king and queen that thought they were better than everyone else. Which is the whole reason for the second amendment.

  16. Gun Control Advocates being told that their harmless political campaigns and policies are somehow responsible for the deaths of other people must be deeply unpleasant.

  17. Worse still is when they are told that the serfs should be disarmed by metropolitan types with more money and heavily armed bodyguards than them.

  18. It’s not the only reason, but it’s a good portion of it. People tend to lash out at people who try to tell them how to live, that don’t actually know what they’re talking about. They don’t understand why we enjoy this hobby and so they demonize it. They don’t understand why we have the rights we do, and it frustrates us to no end.

    At least, that goes for the True Believers–the ones that really do believe we’ll be safer without firearms, and really do believe that nobody ever should need a gun. Our strongest ire are those who use the above as a smokescreen for a much darker agenda–the disarmament of American citizens for the purpose of enforcing a totalitarian police state.

  19. It was said “they” would use this tact to get the on the fencers.

    It’s so simple.
    Illegal drugs are illegal. Heroin for decades. Has its illegality stopped its manufacture, distribution, sale, purchase and use?
    Now ODs are the main cause of deaths in our cities. Not in the under class alone but in every class.

    These laws make something for the police to charge you. They don’t prevent use. Think of the huge business for our govt to use our tax dollars to fund helicopters etc to interdict drugs. We could have bought the poppy crop for cost from Afghan farmers but the US doesn’t buy drugs. We have been at war for in every country that is an opium producer. You really think the British companies supported by the queen were that concerned with tea? 🙂

    • ” You really think the British companies supported by the queen were that concerned with tea? :)”
      The only ones who think that have never bothered to learn that the opium wars were about the UK forcing opium INTO China, and not the other way around as we were taught. Funny how the tea being just a ‘backhaul’, while the opium going the other way was the real moneymaker, just accidentally/on purpose got left out of our “educations” isn’t it?

  20. I don’t care how much money you have. If you’re going to attempt to infringe upon my natural rights, and support that effort with logical fallacy such as false premises and specious arguments, I’m going to find such effort “deeply unpleasant.”

  21. FISKING time…

    “Americans are far more likely to murder someone or to kill themselves than people in almost all Western European countries”

    I think someone needs to
    1) Understand the differences between Murder and Suicide.
    2) Understand how these numbers get reported.
    3) Do a little more independent fact checking.
    ————————-
    “That almost 33,000 people are killed with firearms each year in America (including three Muslims in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, earlier this week) is a colossal and largely unnecessary waste of life. That people celebrate these deadly devices and carry them around while shopping , picking up their children from school or working, seems monstrous.”
    If the author notes (in the same paragraph) that people are killed by criminals using firearms, and then can’t understand why a good citizen with a family to protect might want to have an equal means of defense, I’m not sure there is much I can do about that mammoth blind spot.
    ————————-
    “For the majority of gun owners, being told that their harmless hobby is somehow responsible for the deaths of other people must be deeply unpleasant.”

    It certainly is “unpleasant” for them, especially since they haven’t, themselves, actually committed any crimes or violence. Yes, I do actually get a bit upset when being told that I, personally, (ME) am somehow responsible for the actions of the murderous, the criminal, and the suicidal.
    ————————-
    “My evidence for this is this advert, put together by the NRA, in which the viewer is warned that Mr Bloomberg, guarded by armed men (a hypocrite as well as a snob!), wants to take away your safety. The NRA is an extremely nasty organisation.”

    But of course there is nothing “nasty” about the author and Bloomburg campaign to convince the world that ALL gun owners belong in the same category as violent criminals and the suicidal. Personally I find that pretty nasty.
    ————————-
    “bringing about the changes that will make America safer means convincing people who routinely use guns safely that they are not the enemy.”

    Which would probably be easier except that there are THOUSANDS on the anti-rights side who have spent many years eloquently (and not) expressing, that they DO consider gun owners (ALL gun owners) Evil and/or “the Enemy”.

  22. Yes, he did go to a gun range and he does admit that shooting is fun. So what? Throughout the article, he isn’t one speck different from the gun grabbing bureaucrats, plutocrats and Democrats whom he suggests simply need a better messenger, not a different message.

    He still frames our affinity for firearms in the simplistic, insulting context of a mere “hobby”; paying no respect to the history-shaping bulwark of against tyranny that is our keeping and bearing of arms. He still calls the NRA a nasty organization. He still accuses the NRA of subverting democracy by forcing politicians to bend to their will and betray the will of the people, lest they incur the NRA media wrath in the next election. He still regards the NRA of callously and for its own benefit convincing its supposedly stupid, unwashed masses of membership that liberal elites are coming for their firearms and their “hobby.” (There it is again, that sneering, haughty disdain of the 2A.) Well.

    Dismissing firearms owners’ freedoms of speech, of the press, and of assembly, as well as our freedom to petition the government for redress of grievances, reveals that this overeducated dolt is as ignorant of the First Amendment and the Enlightenment principles it enshrines, as he is of the Second Amendment and the tragedies of tyranny it prevents.

    • “He still frames our affinity for firearms in the simplistic, insulting context of a mere “hobby”

      Actually he frames it as “Monstrous” – 2’nd paragraph and I quote…
      “That people celebrate these deadly devices and carry them around while shopping , picking up their children from school or working, seems monstrous .”

  23. Money isn’t a problem when you mind your own business, being a know it all and using his money to throw his weight around is via elections in other states.

  24. Close, but what is implied is wrong on both counts.

    It is unpleasant that these idiots are telling me that my harmless hobby is responsible for the deaths of criminals and bystanders in their cities because they are blaming me instead of themselves. Most legal guns become illegal guns through straw buying and this straw buying is done by the friends, family, and associates of the criminals doing the killing. So more of you metropolitan types. About the people doing the killing, how many have a rap sheet and have plea bargained in your court system and avoided the jail time they should have received? So more of you metropolitan types, putting the criminal with intent out in society, and that very same society arms him. Damn straight it’s unpleasant when me and my hobby in my low crime area get blamed for the tragic circus of obvious assclownery occurring 300 miles away.

    Then you have the tens of thousands of NICS denials. You got what you wanted with that system. I’m doing my part filling out a stupid form with the same information over and over. “Still not a drug abusing terrorist or straw buyer”, I choose to homestly self report. But you don’t hold up your end of the bargain, government and billionaire lobbiests! For a lot of these denials it is a felony for the person to even try to buy a gun. ATF is so busy caring about the 2″ between 16″ and 14″, if guns stay a few dB louder, and what the Young’s modulus of a material needs to be before an arm brace becomes a stock. No wonder they only have time to investigate and prosecute a few tens of these few tens of thousands of red flagging criminals serving themselves up on a silver platter.

    As for your money, I don’t envy that. The curse of your wealth is you clearly feel you have no purpose. This is why you scramble to create a purpose for yourself by pontificating in the pages of newspapers, and funding the development of little cults of similarly useless people struggling to find purpose. You mind a lot of other people’s business and your own is a mess.

    Your wealth forms a bubble around you that isolates you from achieving an authentic and meaningful perspective on the world. Do your friends like you for your money or for you? How about your partners? When people affirm your views and opinions is it because you are right or is it because saying “yes” gets them a piece of the action? It must be terrifying to never be able to trust your own views and whatever the people around you espouse!

    At the end of the week I know exactly what I did and exactly what it helped. My friends and my partner were with me since my poor college days before I proved anything to anyone in the professional world. I have everything I need and want and nothing I don’t. I rest easily knowing I’ve never screwed, lied, or tricked anyone to get what I have now. You wear your billions like an albatross you have failed to transcend and you don’t even realize it. I pity you Mr billionaire. I don’t resent wealth. I resent pathetic busybodies who are isolated from a real world perspective mucking around with my life and hobbies when they are floundering in spite of their advantages at trying to achieve a purpose, and when their own back yards are a mess. So good luck with that!

    • Don!

      You nailed it, sir.

      I’m picturing some Smithersian sycophant nervously approaching Mayor Mike with a printout of your post, murmuring, “Um, sir? I don’t think those gun nuts are the toothless simpletons we’ve been portraying them as….”

      Bravo. Bravo.

    • Well said sir. Our betters in the metropolitan areas are simply shifting the costs of their unwillingness to control the savages to the rest of America. Rather than deal with those that do the most killing, as that would bring some uncomfortable facts to the fore, they seek to restrict the rights of the rest of the country.

  25. This guy misses the entire point. Most people carry a gun in case they have to protect their lives or those of others. Only an idiot carries for fun.

  26. Oh man I don’t want to read this twaddle on a Sunday morning. I wish I was the scary white man I used to be too…maybe everybody is scary when you’re a midget…

  27. I wonder if The Economist would publish an article in which I walk a mile in Mr. Bloomberg’s size 6 Gucci loafers, protected by a phalanx of armed centurions.

    Would I come to the conclusion that using my billions to control the world and demand conformity with my personal views is “a fun and harmless hobby”?

  28. ATF are enforcing the laws enacted and tolerated by we the people. We can thank our great grandparents for the ATF. We can thank our parents and grandparents for the 1968 laws. Our children can thank us for laws today. If is 100% our fault that we tolerate it.

  29. Another attempt by an anti-gun writer to reframe the same old gun confiscation dogma while deceptively placing culpability on innocent law abiding gun owners for the actions of deviant violent offenders who happened to resort to *gun* violence when they acted out.

  30. Hizzhoner’s opinions might mean something if he didn’t have armed security watching over him and he lived among the unwashed masses instead of a fortress.

    His current FUBAR in regarding deaths, gun ownership and minorities goes to his RHIP (rank (or money) has its privileges) mentality. Guess he forgot to look at part of Congressional intent behind the 14th Amendment.

  31. Perfect gun control example just on 60 Minutes. Interview of three criminal types in France where they said it was no problem to get a Kalashnikov, you just need the money. In order to match the bad guys you are forced to become a bad guy to acquire a equally effective defense gun.

  32. I know Daniel Knowles, the author of the Economist piece as an extremely bright, somewhat green journalist. Think Voltaire’s Candide. Unfortunately he has probably cooked his own goose with this piece. He will not be welcomed back in Jolly Ol’. Doubt the gun control boilerplate added will save him.

    Economist has a NYT style limited use paywall. Clear your cookies with CCleaner and you will not have any problem linking.

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