BELLEVUE, WA – Yesterday’s primary defeat of career anti-gunner Richard Aborn in his race to become Manhattan’s District Attorney shows that even residents of a city with some of the strictest gun laws in the nation reject the gun control philosophy espoused by Aborn and those who supported him, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said Wednesday.

Aborn, a former president of Handgun Control Inc. – now known as The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence – ran primarily on his gun control record. He collected only 26 percent of the vote.

“Keeping guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens may appeal to demagogues like New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy,” noted CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “but it doesn’t play well with average citizens who are tired of being victimized, not only by criminals, but by the very laws that people of Aborn’s ilk have forced on them.

“Richard Aborn had the endorsement of the Brady Campaign, Million Mom March, New Yorkers Against Gun Violence and other anti-gun-rights organizations,” he added. “We hope that his rejection sends a message to other gun control extremists that voters have had enough rhetoric and are fed up with restrictions on their gun rights.”

Gottlieb said Aborn’s last-place finish in the three-way race, which was won by attorney Cy Vance, is a repudiation of the gun prohibitionist philosophy he has represented over the past 17 years. 

“Aborn’s defeat should be a signal to other politicians that an endorsement from the Brady Campaign or any other anti-gun group is a political kiss of death,” Gottlieb observed. “This defeat shows that there is no room in politics, especially in a prosecutor’s office, for anyone harboring the kind of extremist opinions about gun rights and gun ownership that Richard Aborn has wanted to enforce as public policy.”