Bloomberg to Survey Congressional and Senate Candidates on Gun Control

The Washington Post and other news outlets are reporting that Bloomberg plans to put all candidates for Congress and the U.S. Senate on record regarding their position on restricting our firearm freedoms.

The survey intends to make candidates state their positions on the record for the first time. Everytown plans to use their answers — as well as an analysis of any past legislative votes and public statements — to rally voters for or against them in key Senate and House races this fall, similar to how the NRA uses its ratings system to motivate pro-gun-rights voters.

It's basically a ten question survey that asks questions like:

• Under federal law, anyone who buys a gun from a federally licensed dealer must pass a criminal background check, but the same person can end-run this requirement by buying a gun from an unlicensed seller, including from a stranger that the buyer met online or at a gun show. This loophole enables felons, domestic abusers, and other prohibited purchasers to buy guns with no questions asked. In the states that require background checks on all handgun sales, there are 38% fewer women shot to death by their intimate partners and 39% fewer law enforcement officers killed with handguns. Do you support requiring background checks for all gun sales (with reasonable exceptions such as for transfers between close family members and temporary transfers for hunting and self-defense)?

Interesting how they word that first question about so-called "universal background checks" because the only "exceptions" that the Manchin/Schumer/Toomey background check amendment made was fore "close" family members. There were no exceptions for "hunting and self-defense."

Here's another interesting question:

• People listed on the federal government’s terror watch lists are prohibited from boarding airplanes—but current federal law does not bar them from buying guns or explosives. Indeed, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office, people on terror watch lists bought firearms or explosives from licensed dealers 1,321 times between 2004 and 2010. 4 Do you support legislation—drafted by the George W. Bush administration—that would close this "terror gap" by giving the FBI the discretion to block these people from buying guns?

Note that reference to President Bush as if that makes the proposal okay. Here is what is wrong with that proposal:

It will be interesting to see how Virginia Senator Mark Warner will respond to this survey as Bloomberg promises to make it public.