portland riots molotov mostly peacefulportland riots
A mostly peaceful rioter tosses a Molotov cocktail in Portland, Oregon. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

By Larry Keane

Sorry, Mayors Against Illegal Guns. We didn’t know you were still here.

Mea culpa. It’s just that no one has heard from this Bloomberg-created and funded group in, well…years. Imagine the surprise when a letter signed by 10 mayors with a bone to pick with the Trump administration was published because Americans weren’t rolling over to the looters, rioters and criminals attacking police and citizens.

What was most surprising about the letter, however, is the complete and utter ignorance of the lawlessness and criminal activity being committed while these same mayors are calling the riots “mostly peaceful.”

The list of mayors and cities is a “who’s who” of failed municipal leadership looking to deflect blame for allowing crime to run rampant in their communities. Now, these same mayors are up in arms that the “peaceful protestors” are being intimidated by Americans who choose to exercise their Second Amendment rights. Of course, the mayors describe the riots and looting as a “disagreement or a scuffle” and citizens bearing arms as “vigilantism.”

Very Tolerant Mayors

  • Mayor Rosalyn Bliss of Grand Rapids, Mich., signed first. However, she didn’t raise concerns about the June riots that cost her city $2.4 million in property damage.
  • Seattle’s Mayor Jenny Durkan signed the letter, even after she tolerated the city’s infamous Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP) Zone that forced police from a precinct, where six criminal shootings occurred, killing two. A self-declared “Warlord” illegally passed out rifles from the trunk of a car. That didn’t bother Mayor Durkan. It was only after protesters marched on her house that she acted to end the standoff.
  • Albuquerque’s Mayor Tim Keller who just lost a bid to force his city to create its own gun control laws signed on too. That was after his city experienced protests morphing into riots and the city council backed Mayor Keller’s call to ban guns on city properties, including public parks. Riots, though, were not banned.
  • Pittsburgh’s Mayor William Peduto signed on. This is the same mayor who is again taking his state to court so he can enact his own gun bans and strip citizens of their ability to defend themselves. He’s concerned about intimidation of rioters even after federal authorities stepped in to charge rioters there with “throwing IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and bricks at police…” according to federal prosecutors.
  • Madison, Wis., Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway doesn’t see the irony in the fact that she was forced to impose a curfew after riots broke out in her city and state Democratic Sen. Tim Carpenter was attacked and injured. This is also the city where “peaceful protestors” threw a statue of abolitionist Hans Christian Heg into a lake a half mile from where it stood at the capitol.
  • Mayor Levar Stoney of Richmond, Va., offered his signature. He just banned guns on city properties. Richmond was also the site of more than 20,000 pro-gun rights protestors last January that saw no disturbances and protestors actually picked up their own trash. Clearly, law-abiding gun owners aren’t the problem there.
  • Portland, Ore., Mayor Ted Wheeler also signed the letter. His city has seen over 100 consecutive days of rioting, attacks on federal, state and local police and burning of municipal buildings. The mayor was heckled from the streets and his home was threatened with arson, forcing him to move. Mayor Wheeler thinks law-abiding gun owners are the problem.

Who Embraces Extremism?

The “peaceful protests” that see businesses looted and destroyed, patrons intimidated and police cars burned isn’t intimidation or problematic for these mayors. But Mayors Against Illegal Guns has always had a problem with the truth.

The last time anyone heard from them was when they rolled the branded bus into Concord, New Hampshire and read off a list of names of crime victims, placing the blame on the gun. That list included the Boston Marathon bomber’s name, Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

His brother is still in a federal prison appealing his death sentence for his part in killing three and injuring 264 with pressure cooker bombs and the elder brother murdered cops in a shootout before he was killed. And, let’s not forget the long list of MAIG members who have been convicted of crimes earning the group the name Mayors for Illegal Guns.

The letter is a good reminder, though. It tells everyone where these mayors stand. Maybe Mike Bloomberg should put them back in mothballs.

 

Larry Keane is SVP for Government and Public Affairs, Assistant Secretary and General Counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

 

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53 COMMENTS

  1. Mini Mike Bloomberg’s Gun Control Mayors are against guns whether the guns are legal or not. The only exceptions are for Gun Control Zealots and their 24/7 armed security.

    • No gun is illegal, at least not according to the United States Constitution. What “illegal guns” really means in this context is “gun owners we would like to make criminals.” Can’t have a leftist revolution when people can still defend themselves, after all.

    • Dumb. Even Trump’s own FBI director is out today saying there is no such movement going on.

      Let’s see how long he lasts now that he slipped up on the official Trump Un-Reality Doctrine.

      • Democrats are the communists. It isn’t republicans out there rioting. It isn’t republicans who have been encouraging the riots since they started. Trump’s poll numbers tanked initially since they pretended that the president was responsible for black criminals being killed by the local police. Democrats didn’t care that people were dying, including innocent children. They didn’t care that people were assaulted and property was vandalized and looted. We only started to hear a little push back on the mob violence from Lobotomy Joe after his handlers told him he should pretend to care since Trump’s numbers were improving.

      • “No such movement going on…”

        And yet I’ve read their theories, history, manifestos, and after-action reports. I’ve seen the organization they display in creating chaos night after night in Portland and how they export it to places like Kenosha, Rochester, and more.

        Who are you going to believe, the director of the FBI or your own lying eyes?

        • Now are the illegal mayors in on it? Not actively. But they all wink at the violence, and a few of them are actively aiding the insurgents (e.g., in Portland and Seattle). Democrats by and large may not be communists or even socialists, but they sure as hell are on board that bus.

      • You’ve been gone for a minute. You were pretty resoundingly laughed out of this forum the lines of which I’ve seen happen to Vlad and miner.

        Do you think your delicate liberal mind can handle that again?

    • Correct,it’s been the Marxist’s goal and wet dream for over the last hundred years and is necessary for them destroy the Constitution and the republic.

      Happy Constitution Day !

  3. What if… just what if a patriots’ list began circulating on the internet? And, on this list would be the names of those to be held responsible for starting our country’s 2nd civil war, if it comes to that? And, what if this list was to be used in that eventuality to find those responsible and punish them (let’s just say like the military and the old west cowboys used to do it), and the leftist media and elites discovered such a list? Do you think they would get it then?

  4. “Why Do Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns Continue to Embrace Extremist Violence?”

    Why? Simple –

    Violence intimidates the timid, and bullies them. For a Leftist, that’s a very useful ‘arrow in the quiver’.

    “Fortune favors the Bold”…

    • “Why Do Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns Continue to Embrace Extremist Violence?”

      Violence intimidates the timid, and bullies them.

      SO they oppose guns owned by law-abiding citizens because an armed man (or woman) is DAMNED hard to intimidate, or bully.

      Look at the picture of the woman dining in D.D. How long do you think that intimidation would have continued if she had pulled a Glock 19 out of her purse?

      • I pictured an optimal usage of 30′ pepper spray. Much more fun than waving a gun around harmlessly. I bet with one pass of about 140 degrees you could have put 40-50 on the ground. Trying to keep that fist in the air.

  5. ferns law:
    democrats dont actually believe in *anything* that they preach to you about
    if they did they would hate:
    hollywood…muslims…gangs…illegal immigration…abortion…the welfare state…environmentalism…offshoring of US jobs…palestinians…communism…iran…china…
    i could go on…

  6. I wonder . . . if someone with a 17-round mag shot only once at one one those mayors, wouldn’t that be “mostly peaceful?”

    I’m just trying to understand Leftalk. I know that it resembles English, like the daily blundering of Hidin’ Biden, but the resemblance is superficial.

  7. Like him one day unlike him the next day. Nonetheless I donated to Lindsay Graham’s Campaign for his re-election and his sicko democRat opponent was also a motivator.
    While searching for Lindsay’s HQ I ran across a site selling “Leningrad Lindsay” T-shirts. The only thing Lindsay Graham has in common with Leningrad is the letter L.
    This t-shirt is the kind of slander based propaganda used to fill the empty heads of useful idiots with manure. Then the useful idiots go running around doing things in the streets that can be very hazardous to their health. These are not human beings these are what amounts to dumb animals that belong in cages.
    Any fool prone to purchase such a t-BS-shirt needs to investigate the Leningrad Marxists that they are clearly in camp with.

    • You Trump supporters are clueless, and willfully ignore the evidence.

      Not only is Lindsay a paid pawn of the Russians, he’s involved with the Chinese virus program as well:

      “Len Blavatnik is a Russian oligarch with US and UK citizenship who donated to Sen. Graham’s 2016 presidential campaign. Blavatnik made many of his billions off Russian oil. He is also long-term business partner of Kremlin-linked Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska at RuSal, the aluminum giant in which he is a major investor, as well as Viktor Vekselberg, who is entangled with Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen through his U.S. family office Columbus Nova.
      Sen. Graham’s political action committee received a total of $800,000 from Blavatnik via his company, Access Industries. He received $500,000 in May 2015 just before Donald Trump declared and another $300,000 in October 2015, long after it was publicly apparent Graham’s campaign had no traction in the polls. The Blavatnik family, including Len, donated another $57,000 to Graham’s campaign directly, but the Senator’s campaign later returned $13,500.
      Senator Graham abandoned his 2016 campaign for president on December 21, 2015. Blavatnik gave $7.35 million to PACs working for high-ranking Republicans, including both the Speaker of the House and Senate Majority Leader, during the 2015–16 federal campaign cycle. Special Counsel Robert Mueller was probing donor Blavatnik for his ties to Donald Trump and specifically a million dollar inaugural donation.
      Forbes amply documented Blavatnik’s source funds from the Kremlin in 2013 by exhibiting a copy of the wire transfer itself in a story entitled “The Four Horsemen of Russia’s Economic Collapse.” It described his sale of a private Russian oil company to state-controlled Rosneft.
      This report also indicates that a Ukrainian food industry executive — who used to work for the sanctioned Russian bank, Sberbank — and his family, who are based in New Jersey, were also significant donors to Graham’s presidential campaign, who had excessive donations returned.
      Lastly, the report notes that Sen. Graham received illegal campaign donations from a Chinese-American virologist.
      The person who arranged the illegal campaign donations scheme was a biotech company CEO named Dr. Jian-Yun Dong aka Dr. John Dong and his wife Dahner Wang. Eventually, Dong was convicted for arranging illegal foreign campaign contributions to Graham and was sentenced to 18 months in jail for that charge. He received an additional 70-month federal jail sentence in his second trial on federal corruption charges, for converting research funds into a lobbying slush fund and a source of funds for real estate improvements.
      Sen. Graham helped Dr. Dong obtain earmarks totaling $19.6 million in federal grants from NIH and the military. His wife Wang turned on him, cooperating with prosecutors and leading to the scientist’s conviction and imprisonment.
      Lindsey Graham was not charged in the criminal case against Dr. Dong, because prosecutors “found no evidence” he knew of multiple illegal schemes by his political donor.”

      The republican party is the real party of communists.

      • Blah blah blah blah blah everyone’s a putin pawn blah blah blah racism blah blah blah sexism.

        Biden is a rapist. Get over it.

      • I wouldn’t trust Lindsey Graham as far as I could spit him. He’s a performer just like most people in politics. The ultimate priority is always getting campaign money and getting reelected. That said, he’s much better than the democrat alternative.

        • The Russians have paid Lindsey Graham hundreds of thousands of dollars, isn’t it interesting that Russians are involved in our American elections?

          “Sen. Graham’s political action committee received a total of $800,000 from Blavatnik via his company, Access Industries. He received $500,000 in May 2015 just before Donald Trump declared and another $300,000 in October 2015, long after it was publicly apparent Graham’s campaign had no traction in the polls.”

          $1.3 million from just one group of Russians, I wonder what they got for their money?

          Please share with me what Russian political contributions have been made to the democrat candidate.

          Of course, you know Putin is laughing at you and the rest of your Trump supporting friends, I think the term is useful idiot. Or in Lindsey Graham’s case, fellow traveler.

        • Yes yes… I have fooled the entire world and soon I will own America through the power of magical Russian hypnotism. Soon miner you will love me, and you will then love Russia. I am in fact a Romanov. The New Dynasty begins soon!

        • @miner49er: Are you just going to ignore the entire Obama administrations and Clinton ties to Uranium One and Skolkovo ? Ever hear of the Clinton Global Initiative and the money that passed from Russia to members of the Democratic Party? Surely you are familiar with Fusion GPS?

          The Russians have one hand in the pockets of the Democrats and the other hand shoved inside their mouth pieces, controlling everything. Russia is a socialist (failed communist) country. What benefits Russia more; a like minded socialist party (Democrats) or a freedom loving, anti-socialist party (Republicans)? A rational mind can see through the smoke.

        • First of all, the Trump-Russia scare is nothing more than fear mongering. Here we are nearly four years after Trump was elected. In that time, we have imposed MORE strict sanctions on Russia. We even killed Russian mercenaries on the battlefield for the first time in how long? Russia is actually less of a threat now than when Obama was in office.

          We could undermine them even more if Germany would stop buying Russia’s natural gas. I guess Germany isn’t too concerned about a Russian threat.

          Miner: “Please share with me what Russian political contributions have been made to the democrat candidate.”

          Are you familiar with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton? You were with Her, right?

          https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5009373/FBI-surprised-Bill-Clinton-took-500-000-Russia.html
          “FBI agents were ‘surprised by the timing and size,’ the Hill wrote, of Bill Clinton’s half-million dollar speech, which has raised conflict-of-interest questions about Hillary Clinton, as the transaction occurred around the same time she was being asked to sign off on a uranium deal, which gave Russia 20 percent of the U.S.’s deposits.”

          https://freebeacon.com/politics/bill-clinton-paid-500000-speak-russia-hillary-opposed-state-dept-sanctions/
          “Hillary Clinton sought to tamp down reports about her opposition to Russia sanctions that coincided with a speech her husband gave in Moscow that landed him half a million dollars.”

          This story did not receive much attention while President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were pursuing their Russian “reset,” but Hillary Clinton’s campaign took pains to prevent the story of Bill’s speech from getting out. In 2015, campaign operatives were able to prevent a mainstream media outlet from reporting on it.

          “With the help of the research team, we killed a Bloomberg story trying to link HRC’s opposition to the Magnitsky bill a $500,000 speech that WJC gave in Moscow,” Jesse Lehrich, who was part of Hillary For America’s Rapid Response Communications team, said on May 21, 2015.

      • Miner, Has any of your fiction been published?

        Folks, try to recall that Russia’s GDP approximates Italy’s. Worry about China.

  8. Unsurprisingly, bloomie’s group of pedocrat mayors have a few felons in their ranks, many for child molestation.
    stopillegalmayors. Com

  9. This is a coordinated effort to take our country apart.
    There will be more violence from the Democrats and their leftist friends.
    Get ready!

  10. Ephesians 6:12

    For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

  11. The mayors embrace the money that Bloomberg gave them and promises to give. They don’t embrace the violence, they don’t care about the violence, they care about Bloombergs money. The man is evil.

    • How about we pass a law (!!) which taxes Bloomberg (by name) 150% of his net worth every year for the next 20 years?

  12. HELL NEEDS TO BUILD ON CUZ OVER 100 MILLION OF THESE TERRORIST ARE GOING TO THE DEEPEST PART OF IT!!

  13. I’m reminded that the Ku Klux Klan was mostly peaceful. Only a minority of Klansman had a hand in lighting crosses and even fewer actually personally laid hands on ropes and people to lynch them with. The vast majority of Klansman peacefully carried torches and occasionally chanted about the evils of black people, Catholics, and Jews.

    </sarcasm>

    • This is actually the plain truth.

      Also true is that the Klan was (is?) not a force for goodness or peace and is rightly reviled. The mostly peaceful BLM is the Klan with better marketing and the colors reversed.

      Racism and bigotry are despicable in all ways and from all directions.

  14. Because totalitarians need their shock troops.

    Besides, the misbehavior of their pet criminals gives them an excuse to ratchet down more restrictions on the public and disarm all the people whose rights the illegal mayors find inconvenient.

  15. It’s already happening in Seattle where business owners have filed suit against the mayor and governor for allowing their businesses to burn down. Mark my words, this will occur in all these leftist cities who refused to do their jobs and protect property. But, remember, these idiot liberal politicians were elected by the good citizens, and the citizens get what they deserve. Hopefully the upcoming election will end the liberals. If not, like I said, they will get what they deserve. And you know these liberal cities will demand WE pay to rebuild the damage they allowed to be destroyed. I hope Trump sticks to his guns and refuses 1 dime.
    And yea, I’m back. took a long time but I finally figured out why I wasn’t receiving TTAG. It turns out the articles were going to my spam, but not on the computer, only to my phone, which I’ve never looked at. Glad to be back.

  16. The Democrats want to physically destroy America. But as long as you legalize drugs and butt sex, That’s all most city residence care about. They say “live an let live”. But they have never really believed it. They lied. It just “Bread and Circuses”. I like the police. But it seems the police in major cities where millions of Americans live, the cops are only there for the pay check.

    It seems they are paid to just stand there, as a city is reduced to rubble? They’re totally ok with it. As long as they get paid to do just nothing.

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