Bloomberg Rejects Funding Proposal for Communities Overwhelmed by Gun Violence
It’s the guns, stupid.
This is basically Mayor Bloomberg’s response to a proposal by state Senator Eric Adams and Assemblyman Karim Camara to add $50 million in funding for community outreach programs in the neighborhoods that have been most troubled by gun violence.
The New York Post reports that the mayor doesn’t think that those funds would serve any constructive purpose. Bloomberg said, “You know, feel-good organizations are great and do some good. That’s not our problem. Our problem is guns on the streets, people that those kinds of programs would probably never reach.”
He’s right. Feel-good organizations are great! Things that “feel-good” by definition are pretty great in our experience.
So why don’t they work at building the kind of cohesive communities that might not experience the levels of violent discord that we’ve been hearing so much about lately?
Well, for Bloomberg it’s simple. And he kind of thinks we’re all idiots for not understanding this. He says, “There are more and more guns on the street. That doesn’t stop. We’ve just got to get guns out of the hands of people.”
Which, okay. Of course we need to get the guns out of the hands of the individuals who will indiscriminately riddle a crowd of people—including two-year-old children—with bullets. But how is that exclusive to designating money to needy neighborhoods that could probably benefit from well-funded community centers and programs? Especially when those areas that are already so under-served are losing places, like the Brownsville Community Center, for up to two years for repairs?
No, instead Bloomberg has this to say about the policy of community outreach, ““If you look at cities that approach it that way rather than tough enforcement — getting guns off the streets — the crime rate is so high you couldn’t walk the streets. We’re not going to do it.”
He failed to name those cities, but he’s never, ever wrong. That’s why we voted him in for life, remember?
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