Taxpayer-funded gun control

Gun rights advocates recently discovered that the gun control group Mayors Against Illegal Guns has burrowed its "gun violence prevention coordinators" (read "anti-gun lobbyists") into city payrolls from Augusta, Maine to Seattle, Washington, at taxpayer expense.

MAIG is the brainchild of New York City's zealous anti-gun billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who formed the group at a 2006 gun control summit held in Gracie Mansion and co-hosted by Boston Mayor Thomas Menino. MAIG touts an agenda of "commonsense reforms" that gun rights advocates see as being somewhere on the far side of repealing the Second Amendment.

With a membership that started at 15 and now approaches 600 mayors, MAIG's agenda has expanded from tracking "illegal" guns used in crimes to promoting outright gun bans in Congress. But the tactic of slipping anti-gun operatives into municipal governments looks like something new.

Florida blogger Sean Caranna stumbled upon these gun control termites about a month ago while researching another project. The Orlando city council's website showed a contract renewal notice for a city employee with the job title, "Mayors Against Illegal Guns regional coordinator."

Caranna was stunned by the job description: to "play an integral role in the coordination and planning of gun crime prevention and illegal gun-related initiatives, events and media opportunities in the city and in the region." In the real world, that meant holding city-sponsored meetings to recruit anti-gun constituencies to undermine Second Amendment rights. Their slogans blared "gun crime" and "gun violence," misdirecting attention away from the real problem of gang violence.

Orlando taxpayers footed $24,000 of the job's $60,000 annual salary, prompting Caranna to look further. He turned up about a dozen other cities with a similar position and a similar burden on the city's general fund -- including Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Seattle. ...