Bloomberg’s Anti-Rights Lobbying Conglomerate
By Jeff Knox
(May 11, 2016) In 2014, Mike Bloomberg combined his Mayors Against Illegal Guns and his recently acquired Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, into an umbrella corporation called Everytown for Gun Safety, which he pledged to fund to the tune of $50 million dollars. The primary focus of the conglomerate has been criminalizing unapproved private firearm transfers under the misleading banner “universal background checks,” with a secondary effort run by the Demanding Moms trying to force various companies to ban guns on their premises.
Later that year Bloomberg, through Everytown, spent over $10 million dollars to pass a firearm transfer ban initiative in Washington State, and began collecting signatures for a similar initiative in Nevada. He hired lobbyists in Oregon who successfully pushed a transfer ban through the legislature there, and opened offices in Maine, Arizona, Vermont, and other states.
Local groups in Arizona banded together in support of a state compact that would make federal minimum firearm transfer standards the maximum standards in states that joined the compact, but Bloomberg’s lobbyists successfully blocked that effort in 2015. That same year, grass roots groups in Vermont and Rhode Island successfully stopped the Bloomberg machine in their states, but Bloomberg’s money is still flowing and the bills have been resurrected.
The Bloomies have garnered enough signatures to get their initiatives on the ballot in Nevada and Maine this year, so that fight is hot. Meanwhile the Arizona compact bill was reintroduced and passed through the legislature, only to be vetoed by the state’s Republican governor a few days later. Governor Doug Ducey said the compact was unnecessary because he trusts the legislature to do the right thing – so he demonstrated that trust by vetoing their action…
One of the hallmarks of Bloomberg’s anti-rights corporation is their pretense of being a grassroots movement, when in fact they are neither grassroots, nor a movement. To bolster their false image, they find some small, often dormant, anti-rights group in a state, revive it with an infusion of cash, technical assistance, and professional staff, then use the “local” group as the face of their efforts in the state, while in reality Bloomberg’s political mercenaries are calling the shots. And they do this while painting rights activists as “the corporate gun lobby.”
And it’s not just local anti-rights groups that Bloomberg is buying. He’s also buying media. His existing business news network has long demonstrated a heavy anti-rights bias, but, not satisfied with that, he created an entirely new “news” service called The Trace, which is wholly dedicated to promoting bogus, anti-rights research, putting an anti-rights spin on political news, and promoting Bloomberg’s various front organizations, while putting out stories critical of NRA and other rights groups. Last year Everytown, sponsored a workshop for reporters to teach them how to “effectively” report on guns, gun violence, and gun control. The program was ostensibly a project of the prestigious Columbia University School of Journalism, but it was wholly funded by Everytown. The speakers’ panel only included two rights supporters and they were only included after the school was publicly ridiculed for the blatant bias of the program.
The media’s portrayal of rights advocates as “the corporate gun lobby,” shilling for the firearms industry, is particularly ironic when compared to the Bloomberg enterprises. Gun-rights organizations are all member-driven and funded primarily by member dues and small contributions, while the Bloomberg corporate model is funded almost exclusively by Bloomberg himself, with a little help from his billionaire buddies and foundations that are funded in part by Bloomberg and George Soros. His “groups” have very few actual members or donors, and the members they do have are merely window dressing, with no vote on policy or leadership.
The NRA on the other hand, has some five million members, over two million of whom are either Life Members or have been members for at least five years and are eligible to vote for Association officers. Every state has NRA affiliates with thousands of members, and almost every state also has at least one, all volunteer organization that takes a harder line stance than NRA and also has thousands of dues-paying members.
Unfortunately the well-funded anti-rights mercenaries are good at their jobs, and the anti-rights lobbying corporation continues to chip away at individual rights one state at a time.
Right now the folks in Nevada and Maine need all the help they can get. The group spearheading rights efforts in Nevada is Nevadans for State Gun Rights. The primary group in Maine is Gun Owners of Maine. Please go to their sites, spread their messages, and pitch in a few bucks if you can. The rights movement doesn’t have a billionaire sugar daddy like Bloomberg, and while the NRA is well-funded, it does much more than lobbying and elections, and those efforts are spread thin across all 50 states.
The Second Amendment has not faced such serious threats in over twenty years. Find your local real grassroots rights group. Volunteer and contribute what you can. Your freedom – and your kids’ freedom – depends on it.