Gun Laws & Legislation

Bloomberg: Police should consider strike until public demands gun control

Jeff Poor Media Reporter
Font Size:

On CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight” on Monday, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg said that law enforcement officers should consider going on strike until new gun control regulations are passed.

“I don’t understand,” Bloomberg told his fellow gun control advocate and host Piers Morgan, “why the police officers across this country don’t stand up collectively and say, ‘We’re going to go on strike. We’re not going to protect you unless you, the public, through your legislature, do what’s required to keep us safe.’”

“After all, police officers want to go home to their families. And we’re doing everything we can to make their job more difficult but, more importantly, more dangerous, by leaving guns in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them, and letting people who have those guns buy things like armor-piercing bullets.”

“The only reason to have an armor-piercing bullet is to go through a bullet-resistant vest,” Bloomberg continued. “The only people that wear bullet-resistant vest are our police officers. And that’s true across this whole country. So we should — at some point we have to understand this as our children or our grandchildren or us. But for the police officers, it’s much more immediate. Because when you or I hear shots, we run away. They run towards it.”

Bloomberg, who has long advocated stricter gun control laws, was one of the first and loudest voices to call for more regulations on firearms in the wake of Friday’s massacre in Aurora, Co. Since then he has been roundly criticized by conservatives who say feel his comments helped politicize the tragedy.

UPDATE: New York Magazine’s Dan Amira points out that Bloomberg’s comments may have come close to violating the Taylor Law, which forbids public employees from encouraging strikes.

Follow Jeff on Twitter