By Larry Keane
Everytown for Gun Safety, the gun control group bankrolled by billionaire presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg, is treading lightly with their benefactor.
Everytown distanced itself from Bloomberg’s recently surfaced comments about his “stop and frisk” program he supervised as the New York City mayor. He said at a 2015 Aspen Institute appearance, “Ninety-five percent of your murders and murderers and murder victims fit one M.O. You can just take the description and Xerox it and pass it out to all the cops. They are male minorities 15 to 25.”
Bloomberg added, “That’s true in New York. That’s true in virtually every city in America. And that’s where the real crime is. You’ve got to get the guns out of the hands of the people that are getting killed.”
That leak got Bloomberg all sorts of news coverage, and not the kind he wanted. He’s under fire in news media and #Bloombergisracist was trending on Twitter. It’s also got Everytown sidestepping the guy who foots the bill. Everytown told media it is independent of Bloomberg. But that’s hardly true.
Money Buys Friends
Bloomberg founded the group. He sits on the board. He’s the national chair. He started the group with $50 million in seed money and has since opened the spigot to an unending cash flow that the group admits still provides nearly a third of its $35 million annual operating budget. He combined his Moms Demand Action and failed Mayors Against Illegal Guns into the burgeoning gun control machine. Bloomberg’s money paid for Everytown’s $2.5 million money dump into Virginia to flip the General Assembly blue for gun control. The Commonwealth’s politicians are mostly delivering on the down payment by passing unprecedented gun control. He was only stymied when the state Senate Judiciary Committee voted down HB 961, which would have banned a wide swath of modern sporting rifles, shotguns and handguns and criminalized the possession of standard capacity magazines.
SEE ALSO: Delaware Senator Refuses to Apologize for Saying Gun Control Could Cause Another Holocaust
Bloomberg’s hardly been covert about his goals. He spent more than $100 million for Democrats to take control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections. He’s spent $268 million on his three campaigns, where he got New York City to change laws to give him a third term and made $23 million in campaign contributions to others. Last year, he pledged $500 million to unseat President Donald Trump.
2020 Gun Control Buy
Less than a month ago, Everytown pledged $60 million of Bloomberg’s cash targeting congressional and gubernatorial races in Colorado, North Carolina and Arizona, among other states. Moms Demand Action, a gun control companion organization also founded and funded by Bloomberg, refused to say what portion of those funds would be directed by former New York City mayor himself. Everytown pledged $250,000 each for gun control in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, North Carolina and Iowa.
Bloomberg dropped a cool $10 million for a gun control ad during the Superbowl, that drew on misleading statistics from Everytown to further his gun grabbing agenda. He’s promised to spend $1 billion dollars to defeat President Trump and he’s already spent almost $400 million on his effort to buy the Democratic nomination for president.
Turning a back to that kind of money is turning out to be a tough decision for Everytown. Bloomberg’s $62 billion fortune is too much for Everytown to walk away.
Larry Keane is Senior Vice President of Government and Public Affairs and General Counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearms industry trade association.
Something has to be done once and for all of us to motionpoint the continually try Pickaway and our constitutional rights. What the hell can be. To protect our freedoms?!?! I think it’s because we just don’t stick together.
Why is it that some people (Everytown in this instance) will only accept statistics if they support their political agenda? They will even make them up and repeatedly quote them until the sheep populace start to believe them. If the statistics re the majority of un-necessary deaths indicate a specific demographic then those that insist on ignoring that statistic will never be able to address the reality but will only be seen(correctly) as having an unspoken agenda (enforcing their will )
I am NOT a fan of Michael Blowhard but even a blind pig occasionally finds a mushroom.
Not that MB has the slightest idea of how to correctly address the issue but most of the time correctly recognizing the problem is the first step to a solution. You never know, maybe someday his ilk will actually take the next step and actually address the real issues of dissolution of family values and over dependence on social services that they perpetuate, and stop trying to lay blame on an inanimate object that, to continue perpetuating their own power, they want to be in sole possession of.
“Why is it that some people (Everytown in this instance) will only accept statistics if they support their political agenda?”
I think that goes for both sides. Trump refuses to believe his intelligence agency when they tell him Russians are interfering with U.S. elections. It seems like people in bubbles only want to believe what they want to believe.
Generally speaking, I get your point and agree. That being said however, this has everything to do SPECIFICALLY with gun-control. Michael Bloomberg is single-handedly the worst thing to happen to the 2nd amendment in modern history. While Trump may not be the 2A supporter that some gun-owners and gun-rights advocates desire, his personal disdain for the “intelligence” community has no bearing on the issue. As for Russian (Chinese, DPRK, etc.) interference in our elections, here’s a novel idea: people need to stop believing everything they read on the internet. Or maybe Bloomberg should use his billions to find some worthwhile REAL problem to solve, because it isn’t guns. Something like free universal (or mandatory) birth control and the prevention of fucking idiots.
You mean the prevention of idiots fucking? (Which leads to more idiots being born) Yeah that would help. Or we could stop shutting down all the abortion clinics, so dimwitted mothers who don’t know how to raise a child or don’t want to, can save us all the trouble of dealing with their idiot spawn! I’m a centrist, I try to see the silver lining in everything, even if it’s macabre. 🤪
Bought and paid for by your new nazi commandant. Zieg heil Mike. That’s what they want? He should be prosecuted for treason.
Bloomberg;s money will not buy him us gun owners votes, that;s for sure.
If he was able to fund better ways to prevent crime and make our streets safer,
without infringing on the Constitution, he would have what he wanted.
Principles are the friends of the mankind. Not your insistent hatred for firearms and
people of lesser financial means. It’s a flawed strategy.