Billionaire Michael Bloomberg boosted the finances of the gun control lobby by giving and/or spending over $50 million toward Second Amendment restrictions in 2014 alone.
According to Slate, a portion of Bloomberg’s gifts to the gun control lobby consisted of a $36 million donation to Everytown for Gun Safety. This is money which Everytown then uses to accomplish Bloomberg’s bidding in states like Washington, where universal background checks were pushed via a ballot initiative in 2014, and Nevada and Maine, both of which witnessed universal background check initiatives in 2016.
And Everytown does not just push gun control at the state level but at the federal level too. They rally behind bills for universal background checks in the wake of mass public attacks, even when background checks have nothing to do with the attack (or even though a given attacker passed checks to acquire his or her guns). A well-funded Everytown also fights against pro-Second Amendment bills like campus carry, permitless carry, etc.
In addition to the $36 million for Everytown, Bloomberg spend $16.7 million to “[support] governors who favor tighter gun laws.” That represents a total contribution of $52.7 million to the gun control lobby in 2014 alone.
This may come as news to readers who are accustomed to hearing Bloomberg associates like Shannon Watts criticize “the extreme positions of well-financed gun industry lobbyists.” After all, such criticize gives the impression that pro-Second Amendment groups are awash in cash while the gun control lobby is struggling just to get by.
Two days after the attack on Las Vegas, Watts wrote a column for the Guardian in which she used a straw man argument against the NRA’s “deep pockets” as way to rally gun control lobby members to push for more gun laws. She framed pro-Second Amendment supporters as friends of the “gun lobby” while describing gun control proponents as “volunteers.” This is linguistic slight of hand gives the impression that Second Amendment advocates are throwing money around like its nothing while gun controllers are simple citizens fighting the big machine in hopes of doing what they think is right. Ho Chi Minh could not have framed it better.
Yet all the while, Bloomberg alone dumped $52.7 million into the gun control lobby in 2014.
And Bloomberg has been dumping money into the gun control lobby for a long time. He did not start giving and/or spending for gun control in 2014.
For example, in 2012, then-New York City Mayor Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino (D-Boston) shot a Super Bowl ad pushing the gun control lobby’s message. Although the ad was paid for by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the New York Times made clear that Bloomberg was one of the group’s financial contributors.
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com