Anti-Gun Lobby Gets More Sophisticated
After failing to leave any kind of substantial legacy in three terms as mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg is seeking to have a substantial impact on the anti-2nd Amendment lobby in the United States. The gun-grabber with the biggest bank account is hoping he can get a host of his frothing minions elected to office.
The gun-control group Everytown for Gun Safety plans to spend $3 million to recruit and train its volunteers to run for office, with a goal of having 200 enter races in the next election cycle.
The program is the latest step in a yearslong effort by groups that support stricter gun laws to become politically competitive with the National Rifle Association, which has kept a powerful hold on American politics as mass shootings have multiplied.
That dynamic has begun to shift, with the N.R.A. losing influence among moderate Democrats and more gun restrictions being passed by state legislatures. But even proposals with broad bipartisan support among voters, like universal background checks and red-flag laws, have languished in Congress.
Everytown is Bloomberg’s baby, of course, and he has enough money to give the group much more political clout. The new initiative hopes to weaponize (pun most definitely intended) Moms Demand Action, a group of rabid 2nd Amendment haters headed by a thoroughly unhinged woman named Shannon Watts.
American “journalists” love to “report” that there is all kinds of bipartisan support for the gun control lobby’s pet legislative goals. They cherry-pick highly skewed polls and then tell the public that they are simply trying to achieve what everyone really wants. Why then do so many gun control initiatives fail?
Writing about this over at our sister site Bearing Arms, my friend Cam Edwards explains that the anti-gun people aren’t as in sync with public opinion as they fancy themselves to be:
Given the disproportionate impact that Everytown’s gun control laws have on Black and Hispanic Americans, support for more restrictive laws may not prove as popular as advocates believe. The Supreme Court will also be weighing in on New York’s subjective and restrictive “may issue” carry permits during next year’s campaigning, forcing Everytown’s candidates to side with the handful of states that still claim the authority to deprive the average citizen of their right to keep and bear arms unless they can demonstrate some sort of “good cause” or “justifiable need” to do so.
The gun control lobby has also come down squarely on the side of nuking the filibuster and packing the Supreme Court full of anti-gun justices, a position held by only 30-percent of Democrats, according to one recent poll. That puts Everytown’s candidates in a tough spot; either endorse an unpopular position or publicly rebuke the gun control lobby that’s providing the lion’s share of the candidate’s support and resources.
The fatal flaw in the thinking of almost all coastal liberal power players like Bloomberg is that they think they’re in touch with what most of America feels. One of the reasons that federal gun control fails so often is that a lot of Democrats in flyover country are not just gun owners, but gun and hunting enthusiasts as well. The four people atop the present Democratic hierarchy (Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer) are from two East Coast states and one West Coast state. These people couldn’t find Nebraska if you dropped them off in Omaha. There’s no way that they understand how regular America thinks.
Related: No, the Second Amendment Isn’t Racist
As Cam points out in his article, Bloomberg found out last year in a very harsh fashion that money can’t always buy political success. He’s worth almost $60 billion. That kind of money does buy staying power. He might be able to stick around just long enough to buy some luck for Everytown.
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