WASHINGTON, January 4 (RIA Novosti) – New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an outspoken proponent of new gun-control laws in the United States, blasted US media for paying attention to gun-related deaths only after mass shootings like the Dec. 14 massacre at a Connecticut elementary school that left 26 people dead.
“This was a crazy person with an assault weapon. But there’s 33 people killed in America with guns every single day of the year and nobody seems to care. It only catches the press’ attention when it’s young kids concentrated. And it was terribly tragic, but there are kids killed every day all across this country,” Bloomberg said in an interview Thursday with NBC talk show host Jimmy Fallon.
“There’s just too many guns in the world and certainly in this country, and we’ve just got to do something about it,” Bloomberg added.
Since the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Bloomberg has urged US President Barack Obama to make gun control a top priority in his second term.
“There’s certainly a whole bunch of people who should not get guns. We could stop it, we just don’t seem to have the courage to do it,” Bloomberg said.
Bloomberg said he is not trying to ban guns. “If you are responsible and you are adult and you don’t have a criminal record, there’s nothing wrong with you having a gun,” he said.
Bloomberg also discussed his meeting Wednesday with former US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head and critically injured during a mass shooting in Arizona two years ago.
Giffords on Friday was set to meet with families of victims of the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.
And in one of the most violent nights for the New York Police Department in years, three police officers were shot Thursday night in two separate incidents within an hour, including one on a subway car. The officers are expected to recover.
