There’s something bitterly ironic about the fact that Joe Biden is giving the Presidential Medal of Freedom Award to a New York billionaire who’s spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to take away our freedom to keep and bear arms. Michael Bloomberg, the godfather of the modern gun control movement, is one of 19 people to be awarded the medal by Biden today; alongside other Democrat stalwarts like Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Al Gore, and Rep. Jim Clyburn. 

The partisan slate of recipients for what is supposed to be a non-partisan award is impossible to ignore, even for slanted media outlets like NPR, which noted “an unusually large contingent of high-profile Democrats” among today’s honorees. The real issue, at least for me, is that Michael Bloomberg has hardly advanced the cause of freedom and liberty in the United States. In fact, he’s made it his mission to deprive Americans of one of their fundamental civil liberties. 

Bloomberg has touted throwing young minorities “up against the wall” to frisk them for firearms, suggested that there’d be no issue with restricting magazine capacity to three rounds, called parents owning guns “dumb”, and even claimed that his efforts to prevent people from exercising their Second Amendment rights have earned him a place in heaven. He managed to get a law passed in New York requiring mandatory prison sentences for anyone caught possessing a gun without a license, which has sent thousands of defendants to prison for something that’s not even a crime in more than half the country. As New York public defenders wrote in their amicus brief supporting the plaintiffs in the Bruen case:

The consequences for our clients are brutal. NewYork police have stopped, questioned, and frisked our clients on the streets. They have invaded our clients’homes with guns drawn, terrifying them, their families, and their children. They have forcibly removed our clients from their homes and communities and abandoned them in dirty and violent jails and prisons for days, weeks, months, and years. They have deprived our clients of their jobs, children, livelihoods, and ability to live in this country. And they have branded our clients as “criminals” and “violent felons”for life. They have done all of this only because our clients exercised a constitutional right.

And now Bloomberg’s getting a medal from Joe Biden for all his “good” work. 

@MikeBloomberg has always had a hope, vision, and plan for ending our country’s gun violence crisis. @Everytown would not be the powerhouse movement we are today without his leadership, and we are all so proud to see him receive this honor. https://t.co/dGQBiM0gQl

— Angela Ferrell-Zabala (she/her) (@FerrellZabala) May 3, 2024

Yeah, his plan is to make it impossible for folks to exercise a fundamental civil right without the distinct possibility of incarceration. 

It’s also true that Everytown for Gun Safety wouldn’t be the 800 lb gorilla of the gun control lobby were it not for his leadership… and more importantly, his money. Joe Biden’s a true-blue believer in gun control, so I don’t think Bloomberg’s ability to donate huge sums of money to Democratic politicians, either directly or through PAC spending, is the sole reason why he’s getting the Presidential Medal of Freedom, but it certainly didn’t hurt his chances either. Joe Biden needs the gun control lobby’s support as he desperately tries to drum up support and enthusiasm among the Democrats’ base, and draping a medal around Bloomberg’s neck is an easy way to keep the president on the billionaire’s good side. 

Still, “gun control is freedom” is right up there with other Orwellian phrases like “war is peace”, “ignorance is strength”, and “freedom is slavery”. Over the years, Michael Bloomberg has tried to dictate everything from the guns we own to the soda we drink. If he had his way we’d be far less free than we are today, and Joe Biden has made a mockery of the medal by awarding it to the patron saint of the Nanny State.