In order to ramp up support for Senator Amy Klobucher’s (D-Minn.) gun-control bill, Michael Bloomberg, former New York City mayor and now the founder and prime funder of his latest anti-gun group, Everytown for Gun Safety, paid for a video that has gone viral. Unfortunately for the former mayor, for all the wrong reasons.
When Laura Bassett at Huffington Post viewed it, she didn’t see the irony in it, and played it straight:
The ad … features a man trying to break into his ex’s house with a gun as she frantically calls the police. The man kicks the door in, grabs the woman’s crying baby and points the gun at the woman’s head.
The gunshot can be heard as the video cuts out and directs viewers to text a number for information about stopping violence against women.
The ad ran in three states — New Hampshire, Arizona and Nevada — as well as in Washington, D.C. just as the Senate was holding hearings on domestic violence. The ad urged viewers to sign a petition, specifically urging Republican Senators Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), Jeff Flack (Ariz.), and Dean Heller (Nev.) to support a bill sponsored by Klobuchar, SB 1290, titled “Protecting Domestic Violence and Stalking Victims Act of 2013.”
MyFox News viewed it and saw the irony: Any reasonably sane individual with his wits about him would see it as an invitation for the woman at risk to own a gun to protect herself. Writing that the video gives a “mixed message,” MyFox added,
Everytown for Gun Safety wants to encourage people to contact their legislators about the need for tougher gun laws. It just might send people to the gun store instead.
A close reading of Klobuchar’s bill will also likely cause people to urge their senators to vote against the bill instead, as it expands definitions and prohibitions far beyond those already provided in the Brady law. It expands the definition of “intimate partner” to include a “dating partner and any other person similarly situated to a spouse.” It prohibits “the sale … of a firearm or ammunition to any person knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that such a person has been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of stalking.”
Feedback from viewers of the video ranged from hilarious to serious. Stephen Driscoll commented: “A great video showing the need to have a gun in the home — when seconds count the police are just minutes away.” On the other hand, Valerie Wynn, founder of the Mary Parrish Center for Victims of Domestic and Sexual Violence in Nashville, Tennessee, a supporter of the bill and one who didn’t perceive the irony that Driscoll did, told her own story of domestic violence:
On the day I told my abuser I did not want to see him any longer, he tried to kill me. I know that the reason he wasn’t successful in ending my life that day was because there were no weapons in my apartment at the time of the assault. If he had been able to access a gun, I am certain I wouldn’t be here to write this.
Wynn doesn’t get it, either. If she had access to a gun (and the training, and the discipline, and the understanding of gun laws in Tennessee), her “abuser” might have gotten the message that day and left her alone. Time after time the mere presence of a firearm defuses an incident such as hers.
But some people don’t have common sense or a sense of irony. Please watch the clip that more than 300,000 people have already viewed and then consider whether this helps or hinders Bloomberg’s agenda.
Photo at top: screen-grab from the ad
A graduate of Cornell University and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at www.LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].
