NEWS RELEASE

Citizens Committee for the
Right to Keep and Bear Arms
12500 N.E. Tenth Place
Bellevue, WA  98005

BLOOMY’S ANTI-GUN HYSTERIA PERPETUATES SOCIAL BIGOTRY AGAINST FIREARMS, OWNERS

For Immediate Release: October 31, 2007

BELLEVUE, WA – A new series of anti-gun posters now showing up around New York City are an affront to law-abiding gun owners, while also serving as an attempt to scare younger people from pursuing legal gun ownership, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

The signs have two messages: “Guns Open Doors for Young People...Prison Doors” and the other says “JAIL” in capitol letters, with the “L” being the image of a Beretta semiautomatic pistol. Only when one gets close to the sign to read the small print is it apparent that the posters carry what might constitute as a “disclaimer” by noting, “Get Caught Carrying an Illegal Gun, Get 3 1/2 Years in Prison.” The posters were sponsored by the Citizens Crime Commission of New York City, headed by Richard Aborn, past president of Handgun Control, Inc.

“If New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg had his way,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “all guns would be illegal. In his Utopian fantasy world, signs like that would not be confined to the Big Apple, they would also show up in places like Lander, Wyoming or Ft. Collins, Colorado.

“Now it appears Mayor Bloomberg has teamed with one of the most virulently anti-gun extremists in the nation,” he continued. “If Bloomberg truly wanted to do something about criminal misuse of firearms, instead of teaming with Aborn to pander social bigotry against guns and the people who own them, then these posters would carry a different message so that the average person, looking at the poster from a distance, would not be left with the impression that guns in general are bad.

“If Bloomberg wants us to believe he really isn’t trying to take guns from everyone, heshould revise those signs so people can tell the difference,” Gottlieb challenged, “and if he doesn’t change the wording, then he is showing his true colors. As it now stands, Bloomberg is frightening people into giving up their firearms, or never buying a firearm in the first place. He is demonizing inanimate objects in the furtherance of his anti-gun agenda, and planting the subliminal message that anyone who owns a gun is a criminal who belongs behind bars.

“What is the Citizens Crime Commission,” Gottlieb asked. “It’s not about reducing crime, it’s about attacking gun ownership. And Mayor Bloomberg is in bed with this bunch. He should publicly apologize to people who legally own and carry firearms every day in every corner of this country. Right now, he is holding up guns and their owners to public scorn and ridicule.”

With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is one of the nation's premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States. The Citizens Committee can be reached by phone at (425) 454-4911, on the internet at www.ccrkba.org or by email to InformationRequest@ccrkba.org.

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