Looks like they’ve brought on some new staff to fight National Reciprocity. They are planning to play defense at the federal level and go on offense in the states.
Everytown for Gun Safety, founded and funded by the billionaire former New York City mayor, is hiring several new top staffers and turning much of its attention to state legislatures, while moving to a defensive posture in Washington as it tries to stop what’s known as “concealed carry reciprocity†from becoming law. That will include starting to score congressional votes, like the National Rifle Association does, to guide spending decisions more directly.
Who the hell cares if Everytown scores votes? How many dues paying members do they have? The answer is none. You can find in their Form 990 they don’t have any members except the Board of Directors. The big question every reporter should ask Everytown: what percentage of your organization is funded by Michael Bloomberg? The Form 990 also largely answers this question: Everytown spends almost nothing on fundraising. In 2013, they engaged two fundraising organizations which raised $100,000. That’s a drop compared to Everytown’s approximately 36 million dollar budget. Compare that with the Brady Center which raised 1.7 million in donations via fundraising for about 5 million in money raised overall. Why doesn’t Everytown need to spend more on fundraising? Because you don’t need to when you have one donor who can sign multi-million dollar checks.
The biggest thing they have going for them is that I don’t think the GOP really wants to pass this. Certainly, it is not a priority for them.
One of the funny things about scoring is that certain States and Representatives might take certain scores as a badge of honor, and wear them with pride. I know that Utah, for example, is happy to be consistently scored an “F” by the Brady Campaign, even though I’m disappointed that we don’t do more to earn that F. (Lack of Constitutional Carry, in particular, is a big disappointment to me.)
Certain Representatives are going to be happy to say “I’m rated A by the NRA *and* F by Everytown!” and the only people who are going to care are the gun rights voters…
But yeah, National Reciprocity is the big National Disappointment for me. (We *did* get Gorsuch, which is a hopefully a win, but only time will tell…)
Well, allegedly Peruta is going ot conference shortly (days); if they grant cert (and I don’t expect it), that time could be now.
A semantic quibble occurred to me, which is, what Bloomberg is fighting is legal concealed carry; as our urban rates of street shootings illustrate, no one has yet figured out what to do about concealed carry, per se.
It’s only us middle class, suburbanite types who get hung up on metaphysical concepts like “legality.” But then, having something to lose will do that to you. Our property is the medium through which we are owned.
Note that “Everytown” is basically composed of a board of directors and does no fundraising to get the money for their $36M budget.
It’s a creature purely for the amusement of Bloomberg, who puts in every dollar.
The sham of being a national gun-control operation is so abject, even Slate exposed it (see story above).