Bloomberg proposes sweeping gun agenda
Michael Bloomberg proposed a sweeping array of federal gun control measures Thursday, calling for a national gun licensing system and stricter background checks, hundreds of millions of dollars in new enforcement spending and the passage of a federal red flag law that would allow courts to temporarily confiscate firearms from people deemed dangerous.
Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City and the most recent entrant in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, paired the policy announcement with a visit to Aurora, Colorado, the site of a 2012 massacre at a movie theater that left a dozen people dead and many more injured. He was to appear with state Rep. Tom Sullivan of Colorado, whose son was killed in the Aurora shooting. Sullivan, a Democrat, was elected to the Legislature in 2018, unseating an incumbent Republican.
Sullivan said in an interview that he was endorsing Bloomberg for president because he trusted him above all the other candidates to wage a fight for stricter gun laws. Bloomberg called him the day before Thanksgiving, Sullivan said, to seek a meeting and ask for his support — the first presidential candidate to do so.
The plan Bloomberg unveiled Thursday represents, in some respects, a shift leftward even for him. Where his advisers have in the past expressed some skepticism about the idea of a national gun licensing requirement, he is now embracing the idea.
The policy paper drafted by Bloomberg’s campaign said that he would seek to require all wouldbe gun buyers to obtain a license, either from the Department of Justice or from a state-level authority, before the purchase could go through. The paper also calls for the creation of a “central system” for tracking illegal guns and people who have been barred by courts or other authorities from possessing guns.
Bloomberg’s endorsement of a federal licensing policy is likely to ripple widely in the world of gun control advocacy, where many groups, including those funded by Bloomberg, have focused chiefly on tightening background checks. The idea of a national licensing requirement, which would be more restrictive, gained wide traction in the presidential race after Sen. Cory Booker, D-N. J., proposed one in May.