Policy & Issues newsletter

Billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg 's Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG ) apologized yesterday for including the name of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev on a list of "gun victims" read earlier this week, but the Bellevue-based Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms hopes it will be a long time before the group wipes the egg off its face.

According to ABC News , MAIG - the same group that hinted it would financially support a gun control initiative campaign in Washington state - got a list of names of people "killed by guns since Newtown" from Slate.com, and Tsarnaev's name was on the list.

In a statement to the press, CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb was brutal, a reaction shared by columnist Michelle Malkin .

"This is so far beyond insulting, I'm not sure there's a word in the dictionary to describe it," Gottlieb said. "It clearly demonstrates that Michael Bloomberg's gun prohibition effort will exploit even the names of dead terror suspects to further his anti-gun agenda. That's a new low that I didn't think was possible."

Gottlieb is currently battling the MAIG-supported effort by the Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility (WAGR) to push a 15-page gun control initiative. CCRKBA confirmed yesterday that it is part of a coalition of grassroots gun rights groups pushing an alternative - and simpler - measure, I-591, which says background checks should be done in accordance with a "uniform national standard." As this column reported, WAGR issued an anguished response late yesterday, blaming opposition to their big money measure on "local gun lobbyists."

When an MAIG event organizer read Tsarnaev's name during a "No More Names" bus stop in Concord, N.H. the other day, people in the crowd began yelling , "He's a terrorist!"

CCRKBA said this "shows just how morally bankrupt Michael Bloomberg's anti-gun "No More Names" bus tour really is."

"If Bloomberg and his Mayors Against Illegal Guns are willing to make a martyr of a terror suspect to push their agenda," Gottlieb said, "it raises questions about the legitimacy of their campaign to disarm America, one legislative step at a time. Next thing you know, they'll be calling Osama bin Laden a victim of gun violence, too."

The "No More Names" bus tour will be visiting 25 states over 100 days, but Washington is apparently not one of the campaign's stops, and neither is Oregon. The closest the bus is supposed to come is Montana.

MAIG issued an apology for the gaffe, insisting that Tsarnaev "was absolutely not a victim."

"His name should have been deleted before the list was provided to a family member for reading and his name should never have been read," the MAIG statement said, according to ABC News.