Megyn Kelly to Bill De Blasio on Blacklisting Gun Companies: 'You're Using Gov't Authority to Impose Your Viewpoints on Law-Abiding Citizens'

Rahm Emanuel has sent letters asking mutual funds to ‘blacklist’ any gun manufacturers who don’t support President Obama’s gun control policies.

Earlier this week in New York City, mayoral candidate Bill De Blasio began a similar campaign by pressuring investment firms to retract funding from gun companies. De Blasio joined Megyn Kelly Wednesday on America Live to explain his position.

“We can’t accept business as usual” in the fight to protect children and families “so we’re going to use every tool at our disposal to public officials to tell the gun industry we’re not going on like this.”

Megyn Kelly pressed him, asking, “Why go to a law-abiding

company that employs thousands of American citizens and say, ‘You’re blacklisted, you’re done, no relations should be had with you because I don’t happen to like the right that you’re exercising’?”

De Blasio argued that he is, in fact, exercising his First Amendment rights. De Blasio said that public investments are “propping up an industry that is helping to lead to these kind of deaths, these kind of massacres, and is funding the NRA.”

Megyn Kelly interjected that De Blasio has "power that [citizens] don't have," to which he quickly responded that he uses that power to "change a status quo that is killing our children, it's as simple as that."

"The NRA is the reason we don't have change on things in this country on things where there's a huge majority of approval," he said.

Kelly challenged De Blasio on the controversy around using public position against a private citizen. “What if you had a politician who was targeting legal abortions and tried to say to their landlords, ‘You’re allowed to rent to them, but they had abortions. We really strongly discourage you from renting to a woman who had an abortion'?”

“There’s no parallel, and I’ll tell you why. We're talking about an industry, a huge powerful industry," he said, adding, "...the single most powerful lobby in this country is the NRA ... the industry and the NRA are inseparable ... if I don't use my power to break that log-jam, there's something wrong with me."

Kelly pressed him further, however, asking if a Republican mayor couldn't similarly say, if he or she is pro-life, that "'I'm just doing what I can to protect those unborn babies'?" You see the danger, you see the slippery slope that you're putting us down? That you're using the blanket of government authority to sort of impose your viewpoints on law abiding citizens?"

"I appreciate your attempt at a parallel, but I don't agree with it, and I'll tell you why," he retorted. "When you have a situation that is out of control, where young people are dying because of an industry that will not rein itself in, we're going to use the power of government to make them change their ways."