Bloomberg To Spend $50M To Fight NRA

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced that he will spend $50M to back candidates that support gun control.

Mr. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York, said gun control advocates need to learn from the N.R.A. and punish those politicians who fail to support their agenda — even Democrats whose positions otherwise align with his own. “They say, ‘We don’t care. We’re going to go after you,’ ” he said of the N.R.A." ‘If you don’t vote with us we’re going to go after your kids and your grandkids and your great-grandkids. And we’re never going to stop.’" He added: “We’ve got to make them afraid of us.” The considerable advantages that gun rights advocates enjoy — in intensity, organization and political clout — will not be easy to overcome. Indeed, Mr. Bloomberg has already spent millions of dollars trying to persuade members of Congress to support enhanced background check laws with virtually nothing to show for it.

The NRA declined to comment on Bloomberg's announcement, but Gun Owners Of America head Larry Pratt taunted Bloomberg to go ahead and "waste" his money. Bloomberg's campaign will target specific states.

The group will zero in on 15 target states, from places like Colorado and Washington State, where gun control initiatives have advanced recently, to territory that is likely to be more hostile like Texas, Montana and Indiana. They have set a goal of signing up one million new supporters this year on top of the 1.5 million they already have. Previous efforts by Mr. Bloomberg to push gun control have touched off tensions with national Democratic leaders, because he has run negative ads against incumbent Democrats whom he views as insufficiently supportive of gun control. The Democratic leaders argue that Mr. Bloomberg threatens to hand control of the Senate to Republicans, which they say would doom any hope of passing gun control legislation. Mr. Bloomberg dismissed those fears, saying he was concerned only with the long term. “You can tell me all you want that the Republicans would be worse in the Senate than the Democrats,” he said. “Maybe they would. But that’s not what we’re talking about here.”

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