Bloomberg: Assault Weapons Ban Not DOA

Michael Bloomberg was today busily putting his mouth where his money will be tomorrow, Politico reports, when he kicks off a $12 million ad blitz targeting 13 senators considered vulnerable on gun control. Appearing on Meet the Press, the New York City mayor said "we are going to win" measures supporting heightened background checks, and dismissed Harry Reid's abandonment of an assault weapons ban, saying, "I don't think we should give up on" it. He did, however, concede that "people have different views about assault weapons than they do about background checks." Bloomberg's rhetoric, meanwhile, has the NRA's Wayne LaPierre seeing red, calling his comments "reckless," "ridiculous," and "insane." Americans "don't want him in their restaurants, (and) they sure don't want him telling them what self-defense firearms to own. And he can't buy America," LaPierre fumed. Elsewhere on the Sunday dial, as per Politico:

• More LaPierre: "We're looking to get better enforcement [of] the federal gun laws. We're looking at laws that beef up the penalties on straw purchases and illegal trafficking, which we want prosecuted."
• Karl Rove: "Let's be clear about this. This is prompted by the Sandy Hook murders. Those guns were legally purchased with a background check. Let's be very careful before trampling on the rights of people. If you want to get something done, then stop scaring people."
• California AG Kamala Harris: "The folks in DC have to reject a false choice that suggests that you're either in favor of the Second Amendment or that you're in favor of reasonable and common sense gun laws. You can be both. I as a career prosecutor have personally seen cases of both police officers and innocent babies being killed by assault weapons. There is no reasonable basis for having those on our streets."
• Mike Rogers on Syria's chemical weapons: It's "abundantly clear that red line has been crossed. Now is the time." Yet, "if Assad goes next week, this is mass chaos."
• Bloomberg on President Obama's Israel trip: "I think this is going to go down in history as one of the few trips that an American president has made to Israel where there really were deliverables. He got Israel and Turkey talking to each other and restoring diplomatic relations. And I think that's crucial for the security of that whole area."
• Rand Paul on 2016: "The country is suffering, 12 million people out of work. So I want to be part of the answers to it. Whether or not that actually is me specifically running for president, I don't know that yet."

(More Sunday morning talk shows stories.)