Tipsheet

Bloomberg After Colorado: More Gun Control Now

In an effort to exploit the Colorado shooting, New York City Mayor Bloomberg has already issued more calls for gun control, less than 24 hours after the shooting occured.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, one of the nation’s highest-profile supporters of gun control, said Friday that “soothing words are nice ” but demanded that the presidential candidates “stand up and tell us what they’re going to do about” preventing mass shootings.

Asked about the shootings at an Aurora, Colo., movie theater showing “The Dark Knight Rises” that killed at least 12 people, Bloomberg said President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney need to offer specific policy proposals, in addition to prayers and sympathy.

“Soothing words are nice,” Bloomberg said during a regularly scheduled appearance on WOR 710 AM in New York. “But maybe it’s time the two people who want to be president of the United States stand up and tell us what they’re going to do about it, because this is obviously a problem across the country. And everybody always says, ‘Isn’t it tragic?’”

“I mean, there’s so many murders with guns every day,” Bloomberg continued. “It’s just gotta stop. And instead of these two people, President [Barack] Obama and Governor [Mitt] Romney talking in broad things about, they want to make the world a better place. OK, tell us how. And this is a problem. No matter where you stand on the Second Amendment, no matter where you stand on guns, we have a right to hear from both of them, concretely, not just in generalities, specifically, what are they going to do about guns?”