Whatever Happened to Michael Bloomberg’s Anti-Gun Crusade?

[flamin lib]

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2016/07/everytown_for_gun_safety_michael_bloomberg_s_anti_gun_group_is_taking_on.html

It still exists—and it’s starting to work

In the spring of 2014, Michael Bloomberg, then three months removed from his final term as mayor of New York City, declared his intention to wrest control of gun policy away from the National Rifle Association. He would do so by setting aside $50 million of his personal fortune to create an ambitious new advocacy organization called Everytown for Gun Safety. For the first time since the NRA became a force for hardline gun policies in the late 1970s, the group would have a formidable, well-funded opponent—one that would systematically work against the NRA’s longstanding efforts to intimidate lawmakers into supporting its absolutist agenda. “We’ve got to make them afraid of us,” Bloomberg told the New York Times.
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“I think to many observers, it looks like a signal of failure—like, wow, the Newtown shooting happened, and there are just as many states that are weakening gun laws as there are states that are strengthening gun laws,” Gerney said. “But I think the right thing to compare it to is what was happening in the 10 years before Newtown. If it’s basically a 50–50 fight at the state level now, it was a bloodbath, legislatively, in the decade or two decades before, when the count of weaker gun laws versus stronger gun laws was 9 to 1, or 10 to 1, or 20 to 1.”
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To put this shift in perspective, it helps to appreciate just how much bigger and more entrenched the NRA is than Everytown or any of the other major organizations fighting alongside it—like Americans for Responsible Solutions, co-founded by former Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords, and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. As the Washington Post has noted, Everytown spent $37 million in 2014; the NRA spent about ten times that amount. (According to Howard Wolfson, a longtime Bloomberg associate, Bloomberg donated $36 million to Everytown in 2014 and spent a total of $16.7 million supporting governors who favor tighter gun laws and SuperPACs, including his own, that aid pro–gun control candidates.)

So what chance does the gun control movement have, given this ongoing imbalance in resources? The answer lies in public opinion, said political scientist Robert Spitzer, who teaches at the State University of New York in Cortland and is the author of a book on the politics of gun control. “The demographics are against the NRA, and they’re surely aware of this,” he said. “In the 1960s, one home in two had at least one gun. Today, it’s about 30 percent. There are short-term ups and downs, and sometimes you hear about people running out to buy guns after Obama was elected or after a mass shooting. But, by and large, the people buying guns today are people who already own guns and are just adding to their collection.”

Have heart my friends, things are happening and the relatively conservative philosophy of Everytown is chipping away at the Goliath that is the gun lobby. Numbers are on our side, we just need the enthusiasm and the guts to become single issue voters.

[billh58]

1. This bears repeating:

“In the 1960s, one home in two had at least one gun. Today, it’s about 30 percent. There are short-term ups and downs, and sometimes you hear about people running out to buy guns after Obama was elected or after a mass shooting. But, by and large, the people buying guns today are people who already own guns and are just adding to their collection.”

As much as the right-wing gun lobby tries to convince themselves that the gun-buying population is growing, it is not. Increasingly, new generations of Americans are recognizing guns for what they are best designed for: killing living things, including humans.

Support Democratic candidates at all levels of government who are not afraid of the gun lobby, and have the courage to sponsor and enact gun control legislation.