BELLEVUE, WA – The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today applauded the decision of Idaho Falls, ID Mayor Jared Fuhriman to quit an anti-gun mayors’ coalition created last year by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg as “a reasonable first step that other mayors should follow.”

CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb encouraged other mayors who may have been coerced or lulled into joining Bloomberg’s rogue alliance to also drop out. Bloomberg created “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” in the wake of his vigilante-style gun shop sting last year that may have seriously jeopardized official federal law enforcement efforts.

“According to one published report, Mayor Fuhriman left Bloomberg’s coalition because he sensed the group has an agenda aimed at stripping away the gun rights of law-abiding citizens,” Gottlieb stated. “It is not surprising that a mayor from a city in Idaho, where common sense still trumps political correctness, was able to figure this out while so many others have been bamboozled.”

Bloomberg spokesman John Feinblatt lamented that “some in the gun lobby have misrepresented the mission of Mayors Against Illegal Guns.”

“Nobody in the gun rights community has misrepresented anything about this rogue coalition, and Feinblatt knows it,” Gottlieb stated. “From the outset, the mission of this group under Bloomberg’s control has been to attack the rights of honest citizens, and file harassment lawsuits against small gun shop owners in an attempt to deflect public attention away from the fact that Bloomberg and other mayors can’t control rising crime in their own cities.

“Mayor Fuhriman has not only demonstrated common sense, but also the kind of political courage one still finds in places like Idaho,” Gottlieb observed. “We suspect other mayors who joined the coalition, hoping it might actually accomplish some good, are now coming to the same realization Mr. Fuhriman reached, but they may be reluctant to act out of fear of bad press coverage.

“Mayor Fuhriman is a leader whose example more mayors should follow,” Gottlieb concluded. “Now that he has demonstrated that someone can walk away from this kind of political lynch mob, others can join him. Mayor Fuhriman has properly determined that the rights of his friends, neighbors and constituents far outweigh the political desires of demagogues like Bloomberg.”