Mayor Bloomberg Telling It As It Is on Gun Control

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A little confession: I’ve never been a big fan of Mayor Bloomberg. Perhaps my views are out of date, but I don’t like billionaires buying public offices. I don’t like the way he continues to control a big media business while in City Hall. (Sure, he gave up the C.E.O.’s job, but everybody at Bloomberg L.P. knows that, ultimately, he still makes the big strategic decisions.) I don’t like the pretense that he’s just a businessman with no ideology. (The cult of business efficiency is innately ideological.) And I don’t like the way he’s used his generous donations to the arts to seduce the city’s liberal and artistic elite.

But when it comes to gun control, and particularly his response to the Newtown massacre, I’m here to say, Good on you, Mr. Mayor! More than anybody else on the political scene, Bloomberg has been saying what is crying out to be said: The U.S. gun laws, bought and paid for by the N.R.A., are a disgrace to the nation, an affront to the values it claims to represent, and a travesty of the Democratic process.

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