An audience member called out former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg for “pushing for more gun control” when he has “an armed security detail.”
“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 Monday evening Fox News town hall in Manassas, Virginia. “Does your life matter more than mine or my family’s or these peoples’?”
The audience applauded before Bloomberg’s answer.
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“Look, I probably get 40 or 50 threats every week, ok, and some of them are real,” Bloomberg responded.”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.”
Insisting he pays for his security detail, the Democratic presidential candidate stressed that they are “all retired police officers who are very well trained in firearms.”
“Let me talk about firearms for a second,” he continued. “The Second Amendment gives you the right to bear arms. 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.” (RELATED: Gun Control’s Godfather Is In)
Bloomberg went on to explain why he believes federal law should apply to gun shows. “And what I tried to do is to just to get every state, because the federal government doesn’t seem to want to do it, to just check before they sell anybody a gun to make sure they are not in one of those categories …”
Fox News broke to commercial when several protesters interrupted Bloomberg as he finished his response.