A former member of Michael Bloomberg’s gun control group claimed this week that the group’s objectives are far more radical than it has let on.
John Tkazyik, the mayor of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., said he quit the former New York City mayor’s group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, after he realized its objective was outright confiscation of firearms from law-abiding citizens.
"Under the guise of helping mayors facing a crime and drug epidemic, MAIG intend[s] to promote confiscation of guns from law-abiding citizens," Tkazyik wrote in a Wednesday column in the Poughkeepsie Journal.
I’m the mayor of one of the largest cities in the Hudson Valley, just 90 minutes north of New York City. I’m a life member of the National Rifle Association and a former member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, or MAIG, started by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2006.
I’m no longer a member of MAIG. Why? Just as Ronald Reagan said of the Democratic Party, it left me. And I’m not alone: Nearly 50 pro-Second Amendment mayors have left the organization. They left for the same reason I did. MAIG became a vehicle for Bloomberg to promote his personal gun-control agenda — violating the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens and taking resources away from initiatives that could actually work to protect our neighborhoods and save precious lives. […]
It did not take long to realize that MAIG’s agenda was much more than ridding felons of illegal guns; that under the guise of helping mayors facing a crime and drug epidemic, MAIG intended to promote confiscation of guns from law-abiding citizens. I don’t believe, never have believed and never will believe that public safety is enhanced by encroaching on our right to bear arms, and I will not be a part of any organization that does.