By Dave Workman | Senior Editor
Billionaire presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg has taken some heat for the content of his $11 million Super Bowl advertisement that focused on his gun control efforts, with allegations of misinformation being at the core of the spot.
advertisement, discussed in this space a few days ago, featuring the mother of a shooting victim killed in an altercation back in 2013. According to Newsweek, the advertisement’s assertion that “2,900 children die from gun violence every year” is taking heat from fact checkers for being “misleading or outright false.”
The Washington Examiner published an opinion piece alleging Bloomberg’s advertisement was “fake news.” The story said Bloomberg got the number from “an anti-gun group’s misleading study that counted 18- and 19-year-olds as ‘children.’” Eliminate those older teens from the survey and the number of homicides involving “children” shrinks by half. That was the assessment by Stephen Gutowski with the Washington Free Beacon in a series of tweets about the advertisement.
The number comes from a study done by Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety, which tallied up the number of deaths among “children and teens.” But the Bloomberg ad only refers to children, the reporter observed.
Newsweek noted that teens aged 18 or 19 would be considered adults in most places.
Running as a Democrat, Bloomberg apparently has many Democrats fuming over his late entry into the race, which leaves him as somewhat an unknown because he has not been involved in candidates’ debates so far. He is also financing his own campaign, and the Democratic National Committee is taking heat for changing the rules to qualify for the Feb. 19 debate in Nevada, opening the door for the anti-gun billionaire to participate.
Following the Iowa Caucus, which is being roundly criticized as a “debacle” because of poor reporting of results, there are suspicions the DNC is anxious to allow Bloomberg into the debates by changing the rules, following what appears to have been a strong showing by Sen. Bernie Sanders, and a less-than-stellar performance by former Vice President Joe Biden.
Even filmmaker Michael Moore weighed in, intimating the DNC rules kept Sen. Cory Booker and Julian Castro off the debate stage “but they are going to allow Mike Bloomberg on the stage? Because he has a billion f—ing dollars!”
Bloomberg has spent an estimated $200 million on his presidential campaign, and Everytown’s Action Fund will reportedly be spending at least $60 million to support pro-gun-control candidates in 2020. His entry into the presidential race has alarmed many in the firearms community. If he were to become president, there is little doubt among gun owners that the Second Amendment would be under immediate and unrelenting attack.
According to CNN, “In order to qualify for the February 19 debate, a candidate either needs: 10% in four qualifying national, Nevada or South Carolina polls; or 12% in two qualifying polls from Nevada or South Carolina.”
