Mayor Bloomberg yesterday used the national fury over the verdict in the Trayvon Martin shooting to push his anti-gun agenda.

“One fact has long been crystal clear: ‘Shoot first’ laws, like those in Florida, can inspire dangerous vigilantism and protect those who act recklessly with guns,” Hizzoner said in a statement that avoided mention of race in the controversial case.



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“Such laws, drafted by gun-lobby extremists in Washington, encourage deadly confrontations by enabling people to shoot first and argue ‘justifiable homicide’ later,” Bloomberg said.

“The tragic death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed child attempting to walk home from the store, will continue to drive our efforts” to change those laws, he said.

City comptroller candidates Eliot Spitzer and Scott Stringer also blasted the Florida verdict that cleared neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman in the unarmed teen’s death.

Stringer, at a Union Square rally denouncing the verdict, called the jury’s decision “madness.”

“It was sickening,” he said. “Being black and walking down the street is not a crime.”

Spitzer, the former governor and attorney general, called the verdict “a failure of justice.”

“An innocent young man was walking down a street, was confronted by a stranger with a gun, and that innocent, young man was shot. The criminal-justice system should be able to deal with situations like that. It didn’t,” Spitzer said on ABC’s “This Week.”

The city’s mayoral candidates also made the rounds at churches to denounce the decision.

Bill Thompson, the only African-American candidate, told reporters: “It’s not just Trayvon as a teenager. That could’ve been anybody who was black, anybody who was Latino.”

Bill de Blasio, the public advocate, whose children are biracial, said the Justice Department should bring a civil case against Zimmerman.

“This is such a slap in the face to justice,” he said during the Union Square protest.