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February 26, 2025
Shocker: Bloomberg-Funded Gun Control Center Prescribes More Gun Control
A recent Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health report came out with several recommendations to reduce “gun violence.” The five-point plan, constructed by the school’s “Consortium for Risk-Based Firearm Policy,” promotes the idea that gun ownership would be better treated as a privilege and not as a right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution for all law-abiding citizens.
That consortium is part of Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, which views “gun violence” as a “public health emergency.” That’s the same sort of language that foisted disproven mask mandates and vaccinations to prevent COVID-19, which were later revealed to do nothing to stop the pandemic’s spread and the vaccine regimen didn’t actually vaccinate at all. NSSF has said it before. Criminal misuse of firearms isn’t a disease. It’s a crime issue. Treating crime as a public health crisis that can be “cured” is, and will always be, ineffective. Stopping crime means enforcing criminal laws against criminals that commit crimes.
This is the same “gun control in a lab coat” approach that former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy took in the waning days of the Biden administration, after he promised Congress he wouldn’t. Of course, the Johns Hopkins consortium report doesn’t recommend locking up criminals that break the law. It recommends new restrictive gun licensing laws that only create barriers to lawful firearm ownership by those who don’t break the law.
Call it Crime
It shouldn’t take a doctorate degree to understand that criminals, by the very definition, don’t follow the law. Layering on new laws won’t make criminals stop committing crimes. What does stop them is putting them behind bars.
Nevertheless, the “smart” people at Johns Hopkins came up with their five-point plan for gun licensing they claim would bring down the rates of “gun violence.” That plan recommends that in order for law-abiding citizens to purchase guns, states adopt proof of firearm safety training, fingerprint every prospective gun purchaser, conduct in-person interviews to obtain a permit-to-purchase a firearm, endure a “comprehensive” background check and be subject to waiting periods before taking possession of a firearm even after having passed a “comprehensive” background check.
These recommendations are fraught with problems. First among them are questions of whether these would intrude on rights protected by the Second Amendment. The “smart” people at Johns Hopkins pitch their permit-to-purchase idea as “ensuring that only eligible and responsible people can legally purchase firearms.”
That begs the question, though, that if the problem isn’t with law-abiding gun owners, how would this prevent prohibited individuals from obtaining firearms? Those are individuals who have been convicted of a felony, been involuntarily committed to a mental health facility or aren’t of legal age.
The consortium’s report admits that those who are ineligible or would illegally straw purchase a firearm for someone who can’t buy one on their own, wouldn’t be deterred. However, they fail to mention that criminals convicted of their crimes involving firearms admitted that they obtained their gun illegally. A Bureau of Justice Statistics survey showed that in 2016, 90 percent of criminals convicted of a crime involving a firearm admitted to obtaining it illegally. Most of them got the gun they used in a crime through the black market. The FBI warns that firearm theft is a growing concern as a source of criminally-obtained firearms.
Rejected Policy
Another of the consortium’s recommendations is a gun control policy masquerading as a “public health emergency.” The policy they want states to adopt is “universal background checks,” which necessitates a national firearm registry to work. That idea was rejected by Congress because it would put every law-abiding American on a government watch list, simply for exercising their rights to keep and bear arms.
Recent history has shown that states are irresponsible with gun owners’ private information. It’s been conveniently “leaked” by states perennially pushing more gun control. The private data of over 190,000 Californians with concealed carry permits was “leaked” and downloaded about 2,734 times. The names and addresses of handgun permit holders in two New York counties were published on an interactive map, jeopardizing their safety and creating a criminals’ Christmas list of where they know they could try to steal guns.
The consortium says none of this should be of legal concern. Their report notes that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down New York’s “may issue” concealed carry licensing law over the proper cause requirement. However, they argue that lower courts are grappling with whether those same standards should apply to state permits-to-purchase, even going as far as saying those permit restrictions, which would include an in-person interview to justify a purchase, would be constitutional under the Second Amendment.
They cited Illinois’s Firearm Owner Identification (FOID) card. That state law required an individual to obtain a state permission slip to buy a gun or ammunition. The report fails to mention that the requirement was just ruled unconstitutional for an individual possessing a firearm in their own home. When it comes to the consortium’s recommendation for a mandatory waiting period for lawful firearm purchases, a federal court in Maine just enjoined the state’s 72-hour waiting period law violates Second Amendment rights.
Same Players, Old Ideas
These aren’t novel ideas. They’ve been rinsed and repeated by gun control groups, policy think tanks and medical professionals for decades in the hopes of instituting gun control under the guise of a “public health emergency.” It’s easy to trace the agenda when someone traces the money. The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Center for Gun Violence Solutions is funded by none other than antigun billionaire Michael Bloomberg. He’s the same gun control fat cat that bankrolls Everytown for Gun Safety and March for Our Lives gun control groups, as well as The Trace. He drops tens of millions into Congressional and presidential races to advance his gun control vision. He even flirted with his own presidential run before flaming out after admitting guns were fine for him but not every other law-abiding American.
The consortium’s report was also funded by The Joyce Foundation, which regularly partners with universities to propel their gun control agenda. The Joyce Foundation “financed scholarships for law schools to promote a legal theory that the Second Amendment does not protect an individual’s right to bear arms, claiming the amendment guaranteed a state government’s right to arm an organized militia,” according to InfluenceWatch.org. When the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the individual right to keep and bear arms under Heller, The Joyce Foundation switched tactics, labeling gun control as a “public health” issue.
The Joyce Foundation also gave “tens of millions of dollars to fund more than 100 antigun grants to researchers at Harvard University, the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence, International Association of Chiefs of Police, Freedom States Alliance, Iowans for the Prevention of Gun Violence, the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence, and Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort. In past years, the organization has devoted 10 percent of its outlays to gun control grants,” according to InfluenceWatch.org.
The board of directors and day-to-day leadership include gun control advocates, and even former President Barack Obama was on the board from 1994-2002.
These smart people at universities should know by now that their attempts to wrap a political agenda in a white lab coat isn’t the prescription that will work. The American public deserves better than gun control disguised as a cure.
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