Last Friday former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke at the Aspen Institute. He had some incredibly controversial things to say about marijuana legalization and gun violence. The former mayor called Colorado’s legalization of marijuana “stupid” and said cities need to get guns out of the hands of fifteen to twenty-five-year-old minorities.

The Aspen Times reported Bloomberg’s comments regarding Colorado’s decision to legalize marijuana:

When an audience member asked the 72-year-old Bloomberg about Colorado marijuana, he responded that it was a terrible idea, one that is hurting the developing minds of children. Though he admitted to smoking a joint in the 1960s, he said the drug is more accessible and more damaging today. “What are we going to say in 10 years when we see all these kids whose IQs are 5 and 10 points lower than they would have been?” he asked. “I couldn’t feel more strongly about it, and my girlfriend says it’s no different than alcohol. It is different than alcohol. This is one of the stupider things that’s happening across our country.”

Bloomberg’s disdain for individual rights is not secret. He falls squarely in the camp that feels coercive governments should have the right to choose what individuals put into their bodies. After all, this is the man that tried to place a limit on the size of soda a store is allowed to sell.

Michael Bloomberg’s $36 Billion net worth implies that he must be a smart man or at least intelligent enough to understand that prohibiting the trade of a good or a service has unintended consequences. You would think that a former three-term mayor of New York City would at least recognize the correlation between drug prohibition and inner city violence.

In typical Bloomberg fashion, rather than recognizing that the war on drugs increases inner city violence, he proposes further intrusions upon individual rights as a remedy to the problem.

From The Aspen Times:

Bloomberg claimed that 95 percent of murders fall into a specific category: male, minority and between the ages of 15 and 25. Cities need to get guns out of this group’s hands and keep them alive, he said. “These kids think they’re going to get killed anyway because all their friends are getting killed,” Bloomberg said. “They just don’t have any long-term focus or anything. It’s a joke to have a gun. It’s a joke to pull a trigger.” At one point, the former mayor brought up New York City’s stop-and-frisk practices, which gained national attention in 2011. Bloomberg said that during his last year in office, a minister at a Baptist church in Harlem invited him to speak. “While I’m sitting there waiting for him to introduce me, he said to his congregation, ‘You know, if every one of you stopped and frisked your kid before they went out at night, the mayor wouldn’t have to do it,’” Bloomberg said. “And so I knew I was going to be okay with that audience.”

Bloomberg truly is the poster boy for the nanny state. First he blasts Colorado’s legalization of marijuana, citing that using marijuana lowers the IQ of the user. Of course, he neglects to provide any evidence to back up this claim. Then he basically calls for minorities between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five to lose their Second Amendment right to bear arms, in order to reduce violence. Not only do his solutions infringe upon individual rights, but they are also vehemently racist!

It is incredibly insensitive of Bloomberg to paint an entire generation of minorities as having no respect for human life and therefore not being worthy of firearm ownership. If we lived in a rational society this man would be shunned for making such incredibly generalized and racist comments. But alas, we don’t live in a rational society, so the elites in media and government will continue to give Michael Bloomberg face to time to spout his unsubstantiated claims and his incendiary hate speech.

Liberty Links!

The Libertarian Republic reports that NYPD Police Commissioner William Bratton wants resisting arrest to be a felony.

The Telegraph reports that new data shows that the “vanishing” of polar ice is not the result of runaway global warming.

Is Uber cheaper than owning a car? Business Insider has the breakdown.

NYPD is using social media to track down criminals and to break-up loud parties. (via Gizmodo)

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