Gun Control Advocates Will Inquire Views Of Federal Candidates. Scary!

Bloomberg Group Plans To Question Every Federal Candidate On Gun Views

July 8, 2014 by Ben Bullard 

 12 12

 

 1 45

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s gun control group – currently operating under the new name Everytown for Gun Safety – has announced it intends to survey every candidate running for a Federal seat in this year’s midterm elections to suss out their stance on – what else? – gun control.

The effort represents Everytown’s response strategy to its vastly more powerful and more popular ideological arch-nemisis: the National Rifle Association (NRA). The NRA grades legislators on the familiar A-F scale to convey to voters a sense of candidates’ commitment to the 2^nd Amendment.

Everytown has decided to go the questionnaire route, although the questions the group is posing – “Do you agree: we can both do more to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people and protect the rights of responsible, law-abiding people?” – are so fraught with leading assumptions they might as well answer themselves.

Some of these questions get lengthy, but here’s a sample – a question about expanding the State’s confiscatory powers:

Federal law prohibits anyone from having firearms if they have been convicted of abusing their spouses, or if they are the subjects of active restraining orders taken out by their spouses, but not if they have been convicted of stalking or have been convicted of abusing their dating partners. The share of intimate partner violence that occurs in dating relationships has been steadily growing – and as of 2008, more domestic violence homicides were committed by dating partners than by spouses. Do you support a law that would prohibit gun possession by convicted stalkers and people convicted of – or, who after due process, are actively restrained from – abusing a dating partner?

You can see a more concise version of the questionnaire, which you can also take for yourself (fun!), here.

The NRA told The Washington Post that Everytown, which expects to spend $40 million of Bloomberg’s money per year on gun control lobbying and PR, is wasting money – and time.

“Money cannot buy the hearts and minds of the American people when it comes to the Second Amendment,” said NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam. “Michael Bloomberg is just the latest incarnation of a long line of anti-freedom billionaires who’ve tried to take on the National Rifle Association.”

On the paper version of the questionnaire, Everytown is giving candidates a space to clarify their views on gun control, in their own words. We’re holding out to see whether 2^ndAmendment stalwarts like Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) take the boring path simply by choosing not to respond to the questionnaire, or whether they’ll make things interesting (and grab some free publicity in the process) by getting creative with their answers.