The billionaire who will soon be New York’s former mayor has a post-retirement vocation ready and waiting for him: making real progress in getting rid of America’s guns.
Seven years ago, Mike Bloomberg co-founded Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which grew from 15 to 1,000 mayors in 46 states, including Republicans, Democrats, and Independents around the country.
When he completes a dozen admirable years of managing the nation’s largest unruly city, Bloomberg at 71, the seventh richest American, can cap his business and political career by not only pursuing that political and public-relations fight against deadly weapons but opening a second front against gun madness by funding and fronting an effort to reverse perversion of the Second Amendment by George W. Bush’s Supreme Court.
In the face of NRA insanity, Congress and the public forget it was only five years ago in 2008 that Antonin Scalia’s deciding vote turned the Second Amendment on its head, ending almost a century of legal interpretation that the “right to bear arms” was not meant for individuals.
Since then, no one has challenged that radical revision of the Constitution. Even Barack Obama, in feeble and futile efforts to limit rampant gun ownership, has accepted that view.
Why should a bleeding nation wait for more changes in the Court to keep challenging that decision and the helplessness it has produced to stem the damage?
Even in 2008, Scalia himself showed some restraint.
MORE.