-By Warner Todd Huston
Living up to his promise to attack even Democrats that he deems insufficiently anti-gun, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has announced an ad buy to criticize Arkansas’ Democrat Senator Mark Pryor.
Pryor, who will be running for a third term in 2014, recently voted against the Toomey-Manchin anti-gun bill drawing the ire of Bloomberg and his Mayors Against Illegal Guns group.
Bloomberg’s group has announced a $350 thousand buy for a two-week campaign.
The video ad features former Democratic staffer Angela Bradford-Barnes mourning the loss of Democrat Party chairman Bill Gwatney who was shot to death in 2008 as he worked at party headquarters in Little Rock.
No motive for the shooting was ever determined by police.
In the anti-Pryor ad, Angela Bradford-Barnes mentions Gwatney’s murder and then says that she was “disappointed when Mark Pryor voted against comprehensive background checks.”
Once the ad debuted, Senator Pryor issued a statement criticizing Bloomberg for “politicizing” Gwatney’s murder.
“He was my friend and he was killed by someone with severe mental health issues. The Mayor’s bill would have done nothing to prevent his death because it fails to adequately address the real issue and common thread in all of these shootings–mental health,” Pryor said n his statement.
“Mayor Bloomberg’s attack ad politicizes the death of my friend by misleading people into thinking that his bill would have prevented Bill Gwatney’s tragic death. The fact is it wouldn’t have, which makes Mayor Bloomberg’s ad even more disgusting.”
Pryor is generally a liberal on most votes–he has an 18% life time rating from the American Conservative Union–and voted for and sponsored a variety of anti-gun bills when he was in the Arkansas legislature. Still, Pryor voted against Senator Dianne Feinstein’s assault weapons ban earlier this year.
Transcrpit
When my dear, innocent friend was shot to death, I didn’t blame guns. I blamed a system that makes it so terribly easy for criminals or the dangerous mentally ill to buy guns.
That’s why I was so disappointed when Mark Pryor voted against comprehensive background checks. On that vote, he let us down.
Tell Mark Pryor to take another look at background checks because we’re tired of being disappointed.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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