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May 11, 2021
Gun Control Spends Bigly. What Are They Buying?
Gun control groups are spending not just big, but “bigly.”
Open Secrets’ Krystal Hur reported, “Spending on gun control lobbying surged about 21 percent from January through March, compared with the same period in 2020, to $630,000. Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit largely funded and co-launched by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, topped the list of industry lobbyist spenders for the 10th year in a row with $380,000. Gun control group Giffords came in second with $150,000.”
That’s on top of the nearly $25 million Open Secrets reported gun control groups spent to get their favorite politicians elected in 2020. Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety topped that list with $17 million.
Paid Actors
The coincidental spending by gun control groups and the insistence on restrictive laws by gun control politicians is too obvious. The U.S. House of Representatives passed two gun control bills within days of Congress convening – one to require so-called “universal background checks” (a necessary pre-cursor to national gun registration) and the other to endlessly delay background check determinations. They were passed on near-party lines and with no committee debate. Both bills went straight to the House floor and were rubber stamped and sent to the U.S. Senate.
President Joe Biden recently took to the White House Rose Garden to demand Congress pass gun control measures. He spewed half-truths and complete fabrications about the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) and background checks for gun sales at gun shows. At the same event President Biden announced he would propose rules to change the definition of what is a firearm, to allow government control of nearly every aspect of selling firearm parts and another proposal to reclassify AR pistols as short-barrel rifles and regulate them under the 1934 National Firearms Act.
Then there is the litany of gun control bills that have been introduced. They cover the spectrum, from national gun registration to outright bans on commonly owned firearms. The political spending in the first quarter, however, raises serious questions as to what the gun control groups are trying to buy? If those groups already got the White House and Congress in their pockets, what more do they want?
Fire Sale
They’re looking to buy a directorship. They need their guy at the helm of the bureau that regulates the gun industry. That guy is President Biden’s nominee David Chipman. He’s literally a paid gun control lobbyist who is still collecting a check from Giffords gun control group and serving on an advisory board to Everytown. He’s been nominated to be the Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
Follow the money, as the saying goes. Gun control made large campaign contributions to elect candidates to Congress and to put their guy in The White House. They grabbed both chambers of Congress, but not by the margins they needed to enact their gun control agenda. President Biden ordered the Department of Justice (DOJ) to rework the definition of a firearm, giving the ATF, the regulatory bureau for firearms and ammunition, greater latitude in deciding what can and cannot be sold.
That’s what an extra $630,000 gets you. It’s an insurance policy on the $25 million “investment” already made to make sure it pays off.
It’s costing them pennies on the dollar, but it may cost Americans their Constitutional rights.
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