Last Tuesday, as police searched for the men involved in the recent shooting of two New York City police officers, the bipartisan Mayors Against Illegal Guns coalition, along with law enforcement officials and lawmakers, stood on Capitol Hill urging the repeal of legislation Mayor Bloomberg has called “the most anti-cop, soft-on-crime law Congress has passed in years.” Two days later, the House Appropriations Committee dealt a major blow to Bloomberg, the coalition’s co-chair and a fierce gun control advocate, when it voted to extend the legislation—a federal spending provision known as the Tiahrt Amendment for the Kansas congressman who sponsored it—which limits police department access to regional gun-tracing data. Bloomberg had spent more than a year spreading his anti-gun message and lobbying Congress to put an end to the Tiahrt Amendment, which, according to gun control proponents, hinders the tracking of firearms that end up in the hands of criminals, such as the gun that delivered two fatal bullets to 23-year-old Officer Russel Timoshenko on July 9.