Bloomberg Blasts Senators Who Opposed Broader Background Checks for Gun Buyers

Jennifer S. Altman for The New York Times Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, during a news conference on Thursday at Rockefeller University, harshly criticized lawmakers who voted against gun control legislation.

A day after the Senate defeated a gun control measure that would have expanded background checks for gun buyers, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Thursday sharply criticized the lawmakers who voted against it.

“Children lost, they’re going to die, and the criminals won â€" I think that’s the only ways to phrase it,” Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference at Rockefeller University. “This is a disgrace.”

Mr. Bloomberg had personally spent $12 million on an advertising campaign aimed in support of the background check measure, which was part of a package of legislation pushed by the White House in the wake of the December shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

“This year 12,000 people will get murdered with handguns,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “Nineteen thousand will commit suicide with handguns. Add those two numbers together and just think of the number of families that will be grieving and the tragedy of losing all those people.”

He lashed out at those senators who voted against the background check bill, saying they had acted out of political self-interest, and he predicted they would ultimately find their calculation to have been wrong.

“You wait until the next November, a year from now, when people who run against them will say, ‘Look at how many more people died since they voted to stop sensible rules that would simply keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill,’” he said. “That’s all this legislation would have done, but it would have made an enormous difference.”

Mr. Bloomberg also ridiculed senators who had raised objections to the bill.

“Condone murder or don’t, it’s not any more complex than that,” he said.

“All of these little things â€" they say, ‘Well, I didn’t like this particular thing or that particular thing.’ Get serious. The founding fathers certainly didn’t mean to leave guns in the hands of criminals and people with psychiatric problems. Ninety percent of the public doesn’t believe that, and if a handful of senators do believe that, maybe they should go back and read the Constitution, and read a little bit of history about how the Constitution was made.”

Mr. Bloomberg, however, suggested that he was not all that surprised that the measure and the other gun control efforts had been defeated.

“I think the general public believed that there would be reform,” he said. “I’m a little bit more skeptical and cynical.”

He said he would use his wealth to support senators who had voted for the background check measure, but he chafed slightly at reporters’ efforts to get him to say what he would do to defeat the senators who had voted against it.

“I’m going to support those who did the right thing, and if there’s an election between somebody who didn’t and somebody who wants to, of course I’m going to do that â€" and I would hope you would do that, too,” he told one reporter. “Just because you’re a reporter doesn’t mean you don’t have the same obligation that I do to try to do something.”

Then, when a New York Post reporter announced that he was switching to a different topic after several questions about guns, Mr. Bloomberg muttered sarcastically, “I’m shocked.”