Bloomberg has opened the money floodgates, and has almost nothing to show for it.
If it wasn’t for Michael Bloomberg’s billions, there wouldn’t be much of a gun-control movement…
… he gives $50 million a year to Everytown for Gun Safety to push for regulations – 21/2 times the amount spent by the National Rifle Association on political activities. Gun-control advocates also receive a lot of free, favorable news coverage…
Funding also goes to candidates. From 2013 to 2016, Bloomberg donated a total of $48 million to candidates running for federal office. The NRA contributed a measly $2.1 million…
It is hard to keep track of donations for state and local races across the country, but Bloomberg has clearly devoted resources that the NRA can’t even dream of. In 2015, Bloomberg spent $2.2 million on just two Virginia state Senate races. That is vastly more than the NRA was able to spend on any race for the U.S. Congress. In 2014, Bloomberg spent $150,000 in an unsuccessful attempt to unseat Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke, an outspoken opponent of gun control. This is more than Clarke and his opponent spent on their own campaigns.
In Minnesota this year, Bloomberg spent what the local media describes as “loads of money” to give Democrats control of the state House so that they could push for background checks on private transfers. Instead, Republicans actually picked up a seat.
Research funding is even more lopsided. Here Bloomberg is joined by fellow billionaire George Soros, a couple dozen large health-care foundations, and even the Obama-led federal government. Together, they have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into funding gun-control research that supports their positions. Newly released Bloomberg studies garner massive, uncritical news coverage. NRA-funded research would be scoffed at, which is why the NRA doesn’t even try to fund opposing studies.
Bloomberg is trying to influence the debate in still other ways. He has worked with the Columbia University Journalism School to instruct reporters on how to properly cover the gun-control issue. Of course, Columbia would never work with the NRA to create a similar program…
If it’s correct, as gun-control proponents often claim, that political leaders don’t have the courage to stand up to the gun lobby because of its massive resources, then it seems fair to ask how lawmakers and voters are apparently able to withstand the dramatically greater resources of Michael Bloomberg and his fellow advocates. How can Bloomberg spend so much and have so little to show for it?
You cannot fight the tides of r and K. If resources are flowing freely, everyone is awash in pleasure and ease, and r-selection is on the march, the public’s attitudes toward guns will be, “Who would even want to own such a dangerous device, let alone carry it with them?” No matter how few people are killed by legal guns, no matter the principled, commonsense arguments for responsible gun ownership, as a K-strategist, you will be a lone voice in the wilderness, as the populace tries to eliminate the big scary threat they instinctually fear encountering in the fantasy world of their mind.
Once resources restrict, amygdalae adapt, and things turn K-selected, then it is our turn. No matter how many dead bodies are strewn about your daily commute, K-selected people will instinctually want the ability to defend thesmelves, and recognize the reasonableness of that desire in others.
Bloomberg can throw all the money in the world at the issue, and he will just be shouting into the gale of a tornado.
Of greater import, for the last eight years we have had zero advance of gun control, while a very anti-gun President has occupied the White House and billionaires have opened their checkbooks to try and disarm the peasants. Now we have a very pro-gun President, combined with a very pro-gun populace.
Expect to be very well armed in the Apocalypse.
[…] Bloomberg Spends Millions On Gun Control, With Almost Nothing To Show For It […]
I hope that asshole spends himself into penury tilting at his windmills.
Notice how the NRA is the only conservative organization that has actually succeeded in “conserving” anything, and only by making it clear that if liberals try to take our guns, there will be civil war, and they will lose. Liberals aren’t afraid of our votes — they can always bus around nonwhite moochers to outvote us — but they are afraid of our bullets.
Insightful.
$50 mil a year spent just on gun control? That’s so crazy it’s made me curious as to the breadth of things the man allows his money to be spent on outside of his business.
I bet he’s got a bolt-hole or two, lavishly equiped.