Mayor Bloomberg Gives Millions to Five Other Cities

Hamptons resident and New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg announced the expansion of his Financial Empowerment Initiative last week—and his plan to give millions of dollars to Nashville, Denver, Philadelphia, San Antonio and Lansing, Michigan to help residents of those cities learn how to manage money. “There’s an awful lot of people who have no knowledge of finance and savings and bank accounts,” Bloomberg said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Tuesday, January 8.

During that same interview, the mayor also his anti-gun organization Mayors Against Illegal Guns. He had been very outspoken in his support for stricter gun laws and reinstatement of the 1994 assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004. Bloomberg must be ecstatic on Tuesday, January 15 when New York became the first state to pass a package of new gun control measures in response to the Sandy Hook school shootings.

The new law expands the ban on assault weapons and the definition of what defines a gun as an assault weapon. It also limits to allowable size of gun magazines to seven rounds instead of 10. Other provisions were added to keep guns away from the mentally ill and grant stiffer penalties for those who use guns in a crime.