Thank heavens, then, for the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, founder of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, who has fought for 13 years now against this twisting of the spirit of American law…

It is by these actions and others like it that the United States will triumph over the fanatical gun lobby and its criminal insanity.

It is through a mass uprising of conscience that the country may now be able, as it has always done at critical moments in its history, to reconnect with its values and come to its senses.

May President Obama hear and heed this great cry rising from the depths of the nation’s soul and make his second term an occasion for the intellectual, moral, and political reform demanded by America’s citizens, a reform that the president implicitly promised, with tears in his eyes, on the day of the Newtown massacre. That, on the threshold of a new year, is the fervent wish of a friend, not only of the United States, but of the ideals of liberty that it has always embodied better than any other country.