CCRKBA Launches Counter-Attack to Bloomberg's Anti-Gun Campaign

BELLEVUE, Wash., Feb. 23, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today announced the launch of a national effort to counter billionaire New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's campaign of fear against firearms and their owners.

Bloomberg has teamed up with Mayors Against Illegal Guns to send a moving billboard truck around the country claiming that 34 Americans are "murdered with guns every day." CCRKBA Chairman Alan M. Gottlieb said Bloomberg's campaign "tells less than half of a story, so we're setting the record straight."

"We're answering Bloomberg's flash with genuine substance," Gottlieb stated. "We plan to have a truck of our own in several major cities to tell people what Bloomberg isn't telling them. Guns are legally used between 800,000 and 2.5 million times annually in self-defense situations. That's 2,100 to 6,800 people every day who successfully use firearms to defend themselves, or prevent a criminal attack. In the majority of those incidents, no shots are fired, so nobody is injured or killed. In some cases where shots are fired by armed citizens, several lives are saved."

CCRKBA is teaming up with the Second Amendment Foundation, which will produce educational materials on firearms rights, the number of lives saved and the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

"While Bloomberg is shooting blanks," Gottlieb explained, "CCRKBA will be hitting the bull's eye with information Americans need to protect their civil rights.

"Bloomberg's campaign is a smokescreen," he continued. "America needs to look behind the facade to see that his ultimate goal is to convince Congress to implement New York-style gun control laws, ban most semiautomatic firearms, stretch background checks out to between six and nine months, and to put gun shows out of business.

"No mayor, regardless how wealthy he is, should dictate to Congress or the people the terms of their civil rights," Gottlieb said. "Michael Bloomberg wants to spread hysteria about gun rights. We're going to spread the truth."

With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (www.ccrkba.org) is one of the nation's premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States.

SOURCE Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms