Democratic presidential hopeful Mike Bloomberg was caught in a moment of hypocrisy Monday night when an audience member at a town hall asked him to explain why his security detail was armed with the kind of weapons he wants to take away from citizens.
The exchange comes at about 12:50 in this video:
“How do you justify pushing for more gun control when you have an armed security detail that’s likely equipped with the same firearms and magazines that you seek to ban the common citizen from owning?” the man asked at a Fox News town hall in Manassas, Virginia. “Does your life matter more than mine or my family’s or these peoples’?”
The question was from Clark Chitty of Bristow, Virginia.
The Daily Caller reported the audience member called out Bloomberg for “pushing for more gun control” while he travels regularly with “an armed security detail.”
“Look, I probably get 40 or 50 threats every week, OK, and some of them are real,” Bloomberg replied. “That just happens when you are the mayor of New York City or you are very wealthy, and if you are campaigning for president of the United States you get lots of threats.
“The Second Amendment gives you the right to bear arms,” he continued. “Nobody suggests that we’re gonna change the Constitution, even if you wanted to I don’t think you’d get it done, so nobody’s gonna take your right to bear arms. The Supreme Court said you can have reasonable restrictions. The only restrictions which I’m in favor of is to prevent us from selling guns to people with psychiatric problems, criminals or people that are minors.”
Joe Saunders, in a commentary at the Western Journal, called it “the kind of moment that showed why Mike Bloomberg should avoid the public.”
Virginia, he noted, “values its Second Amendment rights more than many,” and Bloomberg should have expected such a question.
Saunders interpreted Bloomberg’s response: “In other words: Whatever problems you might have don’t amount to requiring armed protection, cretin. Mine do.”
Bloomberg, in fact, wants to ban so-called “assault weapons” and require purchasers of firearms to obtain a federal permit.
“His answer Monday night proved not only that he has no respect for the Second Amendment, he doesn’t even view his fellow Americans as requiring — or apparently deserving of — the same kind of protection he and his fellow wealthy gun-grabbers enjoy as a matter of routine,” Saunders wrote.
