Examiner – by Dave WorkmanFollowing weekend revelations that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG) website is registered to a New York City government server and apparently administered by city employees, a Bellevue-based gun rights group wants New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to investigate.
CBS News, Politico and others learned about the MAIG website registration and Monday morning, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms called on Schneiderman to determine whether any laws have been broken. Gottlieb told Examiner that using taxpayer-owned computer servers to host a website for a politically-motivated gun control group is “pretty tacky.”
In a press release, Gottlieb observed, “On top of everything else that has been revealed in recent days about Bloomberg’s MAIG group padding lists of so-called ‘gun victims’ with the names of criminals and a terrorist bombing suspect, this new discovery is an outrage that demands a criminal investigation.”
He was alluding to MAIG’s inclusion last week of the names of dead murder and terrorism suspects, including alleged Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, to a list of “gun crime victims” that is being read during a 25-state, 100-day bus tour launched by the group. MAIG has apologized, but not before having to wipe political egg from its face.
Bloomberg’s bus tour is carefully avoiding Washington and Oregon so far, but there was a strong indication when the Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility launched its campaign for Initiative 594 that the anti-gun billionaire mayor would support the measure.
“With each day there appears to be something else questionable about the mayor and his anti-gun organization,” Gottlieb said in his statement to the press.
He asserted that it is “no wonder” that Larry Morrissey, mayor of Rockford, Ill., dropped out of MAIG and told a public gathering on Saturday in his community that it was because the group “strayed from its original mission and became too focused” on pushing for ban on so-called “assault weapons.”
Morrissey’s defection is just the latest from the group, but his remarks were indicative of the disappointment others have had when it appeared MAIG seemed more interested in disarming law-abiding citizens instead of criminals.
Gottlieb was careful to draw a distinction between MAIG’s somewhat fraudulent and definitely padded list of “gun violence” victims and licensing MAIG’s website via a city-owned server.
“While it was deceptive to include the names of criminals killed by police and law-abiding citizens on a list of alleged ‘gun victims’,” Gottlieb said, “that’s just being politically dishonest. But operating an anti-gun political website on the city server, apparently with city employees doing the work; if that’s true, that may be a crime and it should be investigated.”
It’s not likely Schneiderman would launch a probe just on CCRKBA’s suggestion, but the fact that CBS News is paying attention indicates there is more than just partisan curiosity at work.
http://www.examiner.com/article/bellevue-group-wants-bloomberg-investigated-by-nyag