Is Bloomberg Funding the Whole Gun Control Movement?

Dave Hardy has some excellent reporting on how Bloomberg may be secretly funneling money into the gun control movement. Dave mentions a reason for this could be so that Bloomberg can fund other more radical projects, but continue to appear to be moderate on the issue. Dave posits that the reason Joyce hasn’t donated much to the Brady Campaign is because they are too moderate. If that is indeed the case, it might explain why they’ve been turning up the crazy lately. It could be the Joyce mothership, and Bloomberg, not only dig the crazy, but benefit from it. Dave also notes that the Brady organization has been hemorrhaging money. This has been going on for a while now, actually, and I’m surprised they can still function. Not only function, but they felt they had the money to hire a new President, rather than just continuing with Dennis Henigan. It’ll be interesting to see if all the crazy talk coming out Brady these days is intended to signal to mama Joyce that they’re as serious about lunacy as all the other gun control groups.

And if Joyce is really looking for crazy, why? It’s a reasonable question to ask, so put yourself in Bloomberg’s shoes. He has his Mayor’s organization. They are the moderate face of gun control, when their members aren’t busy getting arrested, indicted or sent to prison. They are the ones proposing serious policies and trying to move the middle. But moving the middle is tough, because you run into the problem of the NRA, and people who are active in the gun rights community. In fact, if there’s one thing Media Matters and CSGV have in common it’s an attempt to discredit the National Rifle Association, and harass and intimidate those who support them. The CSGV outing of gun bloggers, along with taking our quotes out of context and spinning them as racist, lunatic, or worse, may actually be part of a coordinated strategy funded largely out of Bloomberg’s pockets. This way he has the lunatic groups, who have no bearing on the policy debate anymore, do his dirty work for him. If he were to do this directly with the MAIG organization, we’d use it to attack his mayors, and destroy his credibility when he tries to move the policy debate, and he knows that.

I could be far off base here, and giving the gun control groups way too much credit, and the lunacy we’ve witnessed the past few years might only be anger and resentment as they slip farther and farther into irrelevancy. But I don’t think Bloomberg is to be underestimated. I could easily see a cohesive strategy here at work that would make perfect sense. Bloomberg can’t move the issue without discrediting NRA, and too a much lesser degree other parts of the new media and horizontal interpretive communities established in the gun rights movement. MAIG will do that (with the help of Frank Luntz) on the up-and-up, and the Joyce grantees, funded indirectly with Bloomberg money and with no credibility left to risk, get to do the dirty work.

17 thoughts on “Is Bloomberg Funding the Whole Gun Control Movement?”

    1. Well, the re-normalizing of guns in US society has made any gun-grabbing effort low-ROI, but Bloomberg’s nanny state ambitions would seem to be endless (look at the recent NYC hospital actions and the sugared drink size restrictions).

  1. Joyce has handed IMAG another half million in this fiscal year. Soro’s Tide’s Foundation’s financials remind me of a river delta but it appears Tides and its subsidiaries are in for at least two million. And then there are the others on the “usual suspects” list. MacArthur for one. Running the funders is going a bit slowly since I still have a day job.

    Stranger

  2. Sebastian has long posited that Bloomberg is the bigger threat than the ne’er do wells at the Brady Campaign. I think he is correct and this Machiavellian move by Bloomberg shows just slick he can be.

    Bloomberg may be an odious nanny-stater but he ain’t dumb.

  3. Hmmm. I think you’re on to something. Think of this: Soros is getting Very Old, and won’t be around much longer. Bloomberg is (supposedly) Term Limited, and soon has to go back to Private Life. Could Mickey become Soros’ “Heir Apparent?” I can see a Merger happening pretty soon.

    I mean, does anyone think that Mickey will just stay home and clip coupons?

  4. I don’t believe Bloomberg is trying to hide anything. When pushing legislation he likes, Bloomberg will call up legislators and tell them the issue is very personal to him and that he needs their support. There’s no backdoor lobbying. It’s all about him.

    1. Newspapers all running the same story angles at the same time in coordinated fashion…television reporters asking questions on esoteric subjects they cannot comprehend, yet amazingly have a set of “answers” prepared in advance…

      There is plenty that is hidden. Other than the Dem Party, Bloomberg is the only one with the juice to do it. And I don’t think it’s the national party. Even they are not that dumb.

      He’s doing what we do: run a multi-prong approach. The difference is we are transparent about our goals and our process. We don’t hide our true intent. He does.

      I agree this about him and his “vision” of governance. But from what we see him doing in public on guns or even general liberty (choose a super-size soda in NYC and see how that goes for you), Bloomberg is a nightmare to free people. And keep in mind, this is only what we know his views to be. God help us if his private dreams come true.

      If it weren’t for his money and the ability to buy sympathetic coverage, everyone else would be laughing at loud at him. Instead, we got the Washington Post playing lapdog to his pet project: pass new gun-control in places like Maryland.

  5. You are not crazy. We see Bloomberg pushing stuff in Maryland, and they think it’s hidden. It is not. We are seeing things. Their “friends” in the statehouse and elsewhere are talking. The know how this game ends in a few years, and they don’t want to be on the flip side of a civil right. Especially a right that many worry will become dear to several large Democratic constituencies that have traditionally backed gun control. Surprise: people won’t always agree with the “associations” that claim to represent them.

    That said, no intelligence is 100%. That means the stuff we see is not everything. This coming legislative session is going to be a hum-dinger. Regardless of outcome, I promise that all votes will be public and all outcomes will be credited to the appropriate parties. It won’t just be “gun people”. In two years, it will be the same demographic groups backing the Dems who will be upset.

    On that, I promise.

    1. He is a true independent. He takes a mish mash of ideas from the left and the right, but then tries to force his beliefs on everyone else. He says government has no business telling people what to do with their body in regards to abortion, but then takes the opposite stance on drugs and fatty foods. I guess it is directional for him: coming out of the body- no business. Going in- “we’re going to force you to understand”.

  6. What is really scary is this guy has $25 Billion. He could fund them for a lifetime (and combined with Soros that is $45 Billion). I am guessing the Bradys have financial problems only because he would like to see his own organization become the dominant name in gun rights prevention. Otherwise he could throw some spare change at them and they’d be back to their heyday. This guy gave $220 million to make people stop smoking, so $2 million to Joyce seems unbalanced considering how much energy he personally spends talking about gun control versus pushing his anti-smoking or anti-soft drink will on people.

  7. I wouldn’t call what MAIG does on the up & up since their whole approach to gun control is based on a fallacy about “illegal guns”–which don’t actually exist in most of the cities where Bloomberg’s legions of Mini-Me Mayors talk up his party line in exchange for campaign donations and other political support. The guns move and in through the system completely legally until a felon obtains one, but even then the gun isn’t illegal it’s the action of the felon who unlawfully possesses it that is the problem. Bloomberg’s emphasis on making his lobbying pitches based on personal favors to him, e.g. “I really need this one, Bob,” is disconcerting but also shows the weakness of the organization he’s built with MAIG–without him at the helm, it’s nothing.

  8. For this to be reasonable, either Bloomberg is personally funding the anti-gun groups, or is channeling money to the anti-gun groups.

    If he is channeling money, it isn’t coming from regular people.

    Bloomberg may be anti-gun because he is crazy, but if some group is paying for anti-gun propaganda, it is because they want more violence and more poor people in jail (the direct and practical outcomes of anti-gun laws and attitudes).

    The only groups willing to secretly pay that type of money would be lawyer associations, prison guard unions, and urban ‘community organizer’ hate groups that aggregate political power.

  9. Bloomberg realizes he’ll never become president – for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is his gun-control stance. So he’d rather be the puppet-master, as it were, pulling the strings of a president hostile to the Second Amendment. I say, he, Soros and Hollywood are the biggest bankrollers of the anti-gun movement right now, with the MSM being their messengers.

    I will say this, however: MAIG has more staying power than I gave it credit for. After SCOTUS’ ruling in McDonald v. Chicago, which incorporated the Second Amendment against every state, county, parish, borough, city and town in the U.S., I thought MAIG would wane in influence, as all of these mayors presided over cities where the Second Amendment now applied, in a de jure sense – even as they were restricted de facto.

    Bloomberg’s third term as NYC mayor will (mercifully) end in January 2014, and I don’t think he’ll be that influential once he leaves the public stage – unless he decides to run for governor of New York. Scary.

    There’s another alternative: his respiratory functions will cease between now and then.

  10. The term “Well Regulated” in the Second Amendment meant “Well Manned and Equipped ” in 1791 as was determined in the 1939 United States v. Miller case after referencing the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. The concept of Government Regulation, as we understand it today, did not exist at the time. United States v. Miller also determined that the term “Arms” refers to “Ordinary Military Weapons”. American Citizens have the right to Keep and Bear, which means Own and Carry, any weapons that a soldier carries into battle. That includes past, present and future weapons. The American people still have some work to do with regard to taking back their rights.

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