During an August 4 appearance on C-SPAN’s Newsmakers, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said gun control failed in April and “has no chance of passage now” because of “some on the left like the mayor of New York City.”
As reported by Andrew Johnson at National Review, Leahy said, “[NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg] actually turned some people off that we actually might have gotten for supporters.”
He said that Bloomberg’s ads were especially detrimental to the gun control push and he took issue with the rabid nature in which Bloomberg approached the issue. Earlier in the summer, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) also said that Bloomberg’s ads were “not going to be effective” in the gun control push.
Nevertheless, Leahy hedged his bets by adding that gun control ultimately failed because the “far Right” believes “the Second Amendment allows [them] to have anything.”
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