Days of our Trailers has done a good job of covering this last week, first with some of the local Illinois groups also merging, and consolidating under umbrella groups, like we saw with CeaseFire New Jersey merging under a peace group umbrella. Also, he’s found that Joyce is cutting VPC’s funding by a fairly significant amount.
It’s going to be painful days ahead for the gun control movement, as their funding dries up. This does not mean the gun control movement is going away, or that we can declare “Machine guns for everyone!” and wrap this whole thing up in a few years. The gun control movement is reinventing itself, as it has many times throughout its history. Expect more groups appearing under the MAIG model. Not necessarily with mayors, but in terms of rebranding their same gun control proposals as a crusade against “illegal guns” and “illegal gun trafficking.” Will it be any more successful than the current banner they march under? Who knows. We can’t take any chances, however. I will say this, MAIG has shown themselves to be smart enough that when the pendulum swings back, it’s going to swing hard. Our job is to make sure it never swings back.
IMHO, while the “MAIG model” has proven effective, I’m not so sure the it can be completely re-implemented elsewhere. Other groups that try it will need one primary component which is in short supply: a rich benefactor to fund them. As an organization, MAIG has a blue sky budget courtesy of Bloomberg to hire staffers and strategists of high quality. Groups without such resources must resort to asking for volunteers, which usually doesn’t turn out quality as often or consistent as the hiring process.
There’s a good bit of truth in that, I think. It’ll be curious to see whether you could fundraise effectively under an anti-illegal-gun anti-trafficking banner. That’s typically something people feel like they already pay taxes for.
Could we be looking at a gun control future funded almost exclusively by foundation money and rich assholes? I think we may.
If so, that will be significantly harder for the enemies of freedom.
How would that make it harder for them? There’s not a shortage of leftist foundations or rich assholes. Hollywood’s got lots, especially of the latter.
expect more groups appearing under the MAIG model.
I doubt it, they may try and emulate the model, but the MAIG model relies to heavily on a single guy with a gigantic pile of money to function, and gun control benefactors are drying up. I think the more likely scenario is these groups will either glom onto other organizations like Ceasefire NJ is (possibly in the hopes of not being absorbed by MAIG), be absorbed by MAIG or try and ingratiate themselves to MAIG with the hope of being absorbed. MAIG is probably only going to take on people and operations that are useful to them, my guess is a lot of the deadweight in those organizations are gonna be looking to save their cushy lobby job, so I expect to see more consolidation like NJ Ceasefire.
I’m also curious to see what happens when the funding really starts to dry up. There is virtually NO grassroots anti-gun activism, it appears to be almost exclusively paid shills working for groups that survive on large donations from a handful of wealthy donors (and how long will they keep pitching their bread down that well?) and some large foundations like Joyce.
I question if people like Paul Helmke, Josh Sugarmann, and Joe Rosenthall et al even truly care about the issue. As in if they paychecks dry up, or they can make a lot more money with their time doing other jobs, will they even bother with the cause anymore?
I’m not saying these guys will join the NRA and start shooting action pistol and advertising concealment holsters…but when the VAST majority of people who are shilling the anti-gun crap are getting paid to do JUST THAT, I wonder how devastating this money crunch will be.
Especially when so many of us are fighting them for free.
No matter how rich the individual, lack of grassroots will significantly hamper any organization. One of the reasons MAIG is so dangerous is that, by operating at the town level, they can at least counterfeit grassroots…