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I suspect what Bloomberg and his fellow wannabee dictators are attempting to do is in the nature of a preemptive strike.
McDonald vs. Chicago is coming up for oral arguments next February with the ruling to be issued probably at the end of the Supreme Court's 2009-2010 term. All the evidence is on the pro-gun side. The conservatives are still a majority on the Court; the replacement of the colorless Souter by the not-so-wise-Latina Sotomayor has no impact on the ideological makeup of the nine Justices. The chances we gun owners will get a ruling that confirms the Second Amendment applies not merely to federal lands but also to all states and municipalities are very good indeed, and Bloomberg knows that.
The "coalition" Bloomberg has tried to assemble is like cotton candy - it looks impressive to someone who doesn't know it, but there's no substance to it. As we know, Obama is more impressed with style than substance. If Bloomberg can get the false messiah to issue an executive order that reinforces Hizzoner's position (which I don't think Obama would dare do; at the very least such an action would play into the paranoids on the right's view of Obama as an anti-American dictator who uses the Constitution as toilet paper) that the big cities need their own rules to be paramount regardless of what the Supreme Court and the Constitution say, it would give the big cities grounds to delay and obfuscate having to comply with both the precedents of Heller and what we hope will come out of McDonald.
Think it through. If McDonald confirms that the Second Amendment applies at all governmental levels in the land and not just the federal, the day after McDonald's precedent becomes law the NRA and the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association will be in court challenging the Sullivan Law which for practical purposes disarms the honest citizens of New York City. If Bloomberg wanted to fight it, he'd have to pay for it himself; NYC hasn't got the money. More likely what would happen is Hizzoner would announce that NYC will comply with McDonald and then pull a DC, stringing the compliance process out as long as possible and erecting as many barriers under the "reasonable restrictions" ruling in Heller as possible, with an eye toward maintaining the status quo of as little private gun ownership in NYC as possible.
The same thing would happen in NYC that is happening in DC: the pro-gun people would have to sue NYC in court to get them to comply with the law, while simultaneously attempting to prove that the existing and proposed regulations are not reasonable under Heller. They would also have to attack the arrogant rule that states New York City gun permits are the only gun permits valid in New York City. Sodom-on-Hudson does not recognize New York State permits from outside the Five Boroughs, never mind from out of state! The case might, as it did in DC, wind up back in front of the Supremes, though I doubt that. Heller II in the matter of DC's noncompliance is already being considered for hearing by the Supreme Court, though they haven't said yet if they will hear it.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. First, we need a favorable ruling in McDonald vs. Chicago. Then we can worry about how to compel the big city mayors to comply with that ruling. One fight at a time.
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