Metro

Mike’s ad targets Bam & Mitt on guns

'Forty-eight thousand Americans will be murdered with guns during the next president’s term. That’sthree Aurora shootings everyday.' —Ad paid for by Mayor Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns

‘Forty-eight thousand Americans will be murdered with guns during the next president’s term. That’sthree Aurora shootings everyday.’ —Ad paid for by Mayor Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns (
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Mayor Bloomberg is using a new national TV advertisement to demand that both presidential candidates lay out specific plans about combating illegal guns.

In a chilling TV spot, aired during the Olympics and morning political talk shows yesterday, two victims wounded in the 2011 Tucson, Ariz., shootings warned that more than 48,000 Americans will be killed by guns during the next president’s term.

That figure totals “three Aurora shootings every day,” the ad says, referring to last month’s Colorado movie-theater massacre, in which 12 people were killed and 58 were injured during a midnight showing of “The Dark Knight Rises.”

The ad debuted just hours before the fatal multiple shooting at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis.

The six-figure ad buy was financed by Bloomberg’s nationwide Mayors Against Illegal Guns and is a way of letting the presidential contenders know that the politically independent billionaire mayor is making the issue one of his top priorities.

Bloomberg has yet to make an endorsement in the race.

The Tucson survivors, Bill Badger and Pam Simon, start off the 44-second ad introducing themselves as a veteran and a mother before demanding action on the scourge of illegal guns.

The ad also features Patricia Maisch, a teacher, who was not shot but who helped disarm gunman Jared Lee Loughner by grabbing his second magazine clip after he was tackled.

Over somber music and a clip of a candlelight vigil in Tucson, Simon says, “Our leaders gave us a moment of silence then.”

The ad then shows a clip of President Obama and Mitt Romney bowing their heads.

“But they haven’t given us a plan,” Badger says.

Simon responds, “We demand a plan.”

The image that follows is the number 48,000 spelled out in candles, which are then blown out.

“Because 48,000 Americans will be murdered with guns during the next president’s term,” Simon says.

“That’s three Aurora shootings every day,” Badger adds.

The campaign itself is titled Demand a Plan and is accompanied by an online petition with a letter to Obama and Romney asking for “a substantive plan to end gun violence.”

Bloomberg’s aides said more than 125,000 people have already signed the petition.

Badger is a retired Army colonel who was shot twice in the back of the head, and Simon was shot in the chest and hand. Simon worked for Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head and nearly killed in the massacre.

The coalition’s demands include closing the so-called gun-show loophole, which allows convicted felons to purchase arms at gun shows without background checks.

“The Tucson survivors have waited nearly 600 days for Washington to take action to end gun violence. They are still waiting, and we are all waiting,” Bloomberg said in a statement.