New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said "It's hard to understand the management of the NRA" and called its new gun ad "dumb" in an interview with co-hosts Charlie Rose and Norah O'Donnell that was broadcast live today, Jan. 17, 2013, on CBS THIS MORNING on the CBS Television Network (7:00 AM – 9:00 AM). Watch the interview in full below!
Below are excerpts from the interview:
ROSE: We had the president from the NRA on earlier this morning.
BLOOMBERG: Yep.
ROSE: How are you going to overcome the opposition that has derailed all gun control legislation in the past?
BLOOMBERG: Well, what you have to do is you have to convince the Congress that this is the right thing to do. You can't force them do it, you shouldn't force them to do it. It's democracy. And you can make good arguments. I think you can show that you can have your second amendment rights to bear arms, for sport, for target practice, for hunting, for defense. But also-
ROSE: But people are out buying guns because they fear that you're wanting to come take their guns out of their hands.
BLOOMBERG: It's true and it's a great visual, Charlie, for your show to show people lined up at one store. Keep in mind there's 330 million people in America and most aren't at gun stores. So there's always going to be and somebody said, "Oh, well, nobody's going to enforce the law or there will be an occasional gun dealer that will go around the law." That's true. But you know, we have speed limits, they save lives. That doesn't mean somebody doesn't speed occasionally. The bottom line is there are too many guns, and the guns are getting in the hands of our youngsters, in the hands of criminals, in the hands of people with substance abuse, and the people with psychiatric problems. There are federal laws against it. But the laws aren't broad enough. When the laws were written everybody bought their guns at gun stores. Today 40% of them come from the Internet or come from gun shows. In the olden days, people bought pistols and rifles with a bolt, a single action. Today you can buy something where if you keep pulling the trigger it keeps firing, firing, firing. And it fires bullets in some cases that are armor-piercing bullets, which are only designed to kill cops. We just don't need assault weapons out there. There's nothing sporting about it. If you can't shoot the deer with two shots, you shouldn't be out there shooting.
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