BELLEVUE, WA — The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today challenged anti-gun New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to stop allowing Empire State criminals to export crime to other states, rather than blaming his city’s crime problem on out-of-state gun laws.

“How many crimes have been committed in other states by people from New York,” queried CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “Instead of complaining about guns imported into his city, by Big Apple criminals, he should be concentrating on the crime that those thugs export to other states. The problem is not out of state guns, the problem is in-state criminals, and he knows it.”

Bloomberg has been campaigning for other states to abolish their strong self-defense laws, yet he has done nothing to stop criminals from attacking the very citizens who need those laws and the protections they include.

“Mayor Bloomberg’s policies are all one-dimensional and his agenda is directed toward the wrong people,” Gottlieb stated. “He has constantly harped about gun dealers and gun shows in other states, but he has not said a word about the people in his own front yard who are providing a market for illegal guns; the people who go to other states, commit illegal transactions there, and occasionally victimize local residents while they’re at it.

“At best,” he observed, “Bloomberg is being disingenuous and most assuredly is a hypocrite. His constant harangues about gun laws in other states is a smoke screen to distract public attention away from the real source of the trouble: Criminals in his own element.

“If Mayor Bloomberg could just keep his own criminal element under control,” Gottlieb said, “he will find that the rest of the country can get along just fine without his interference. He is the mayor of New York, not the emperor of the United States.”