Blooming Dishonesty
By Claire Wolfe, April 20th 2014
JPFO writer contributor, © 2014.
When Michael Bloomberg announced he was putting $50 million into a "grassroots" gun-control group, he surely intended to send chills of dread down gun owners' spines.
Instead, we laughed.
He didn't help his cause by announcing complacently that he was sure he'd get into heaven without even "being interviewed" because he's such a fabulous human being. But even sans such lunatic ego, his announcement was the funniest joke to come out of the anti-gun movement since ... well, since anything else Bloomy has come up with.
I mean, seriously.
Michael Bloomberg and PR "Mom" Shannon Watts
trying to look like members of the grassroots.
- A "grassroots" group launched by a billionaire accompanied only by a plastic-fantastic PR flack pretending to be an ordinary grassroots mom?
- A "grassroots" group that incorporates two other fully bought-and-paid-for Bloomberg efforts?
- A "grassroots" group from the man whose recent nationwide anti-gun tour desperately tried to hide its event dates because only a handful of antis would turn out while pro-gunners would, on short notice, turn out crowds of counter-demonstators?
- A "grassroots" group from the man who can't even keep the handful of members in the groups he's already got? (Not to mention the members who've been arrested).
- The man who had to send a New York City employee out to lobby in Nevada?
- The man who had to run his group on taxpayer-funded computers?
Oh yes, now there's a true Man of the People, striding out to lead millions of common folk who've ... apparently been waiting for him to show up with his money before they could manage to open their mouths.
As gun-blogger Robb Allen of Sharp as a Marble observed:
I'm cool with Bloomie wasting his money, which is exactly what this will do. However, the hilarity is that he thinks he can buy and build grassroots. This is like trying to use GMOs & Pesticides to create the perfect organic produce.
Spend your money, Mikey. It'll be $50,000,000 out of your pocket and you'll see what real grass roots look like when we gun owners (not the NRA) make you realize what a crappy investment it was.
The new group is supposed to challenge the NRA. Now you and I know that, with five million members, the NRA has a valid claim to being a grassroots group, even if it does have a corporate structure that's cozy with D.C. But you and I also know that the NRA is only the biggest of literally hundreds of genuine pro-gun grassroots groups across the land. And while the Bloomberg crowd wants ignorant people to believe that the NRA is a slavering beast of uncompromising radicalism, you and I also know that a huge portion of the real grassroots thinks the NRA's biggest problem is that it's too darned nice to the enemies of freedom.
In short, Bloomberg is setting up faux "grassroots" group to fight an imaginary adversary. He's just too high up there in the rarified air of billionaire urbanity to understand that the real enemy is us -- ordinary gun owners, loosely organized, but adamant. And nimble enough to out-manuver him at every turn.
The real grassroots is already surrounding Mr. Bloomberg.
In an embarrassing attempt to be folksy, Bloomberg announced that his new group would be called "Everytown for Gun Safety."
His advance planning was so terrible that pro-gunners were immediately able to set up dozens of "Everytown for Gun Safety" Facebook pages. And at least one set up an "Everytown for Gun Safety" blog.
To their credit, those pages aren't sarcastic parodies of Bloomberg's "astroturf" organization. They're actually focusing on gun safety -- as in muzzle control and Eddie the Eagle.
No doubt parody sites will follow. But this first round demonstrates very clearly who really cares about being safe with firearms -- and who's merely interested in control.
Bloomberg is marching into history. And obscurity.
I laughed along with everybody else when billionaire Bloomberg told the New York Times how very "grassroots" he was. But I also remembered something from a darker time.
Back in the 1990s, when victim disarmers were ascendant and looked terrifyingly unstoppable, a cagey acquaintance of mine got ahold of a copy of Handgun Control, Inc.'s organizing manual. I never found out how he came by it; very hush-hush he was about that. But he passed the manual along to me with the request that I use it as a model for a pro-gun organizing manual.
His reasoning was that HGI -- then monumentally successful -- must know something we gun-people didn't. Whatever it was, he reasoned, we could benefit by copying it.
At that time, although gun people were quietly gathering strength and determination, it looked (and felt!) as though we'd inevitably lose all our gun-rights -- then the rest of the Bill of Rights after that. If we could gain by copying the methods of our enemies, so be it.
It took me about five minutes with that manual to realize that it couldn't be done.
There was not a thing in the Handgun Control manual about organizing actual people. Not a word about recruiting dues-paying members, or encouraging individuals to go from disgruntled to active. Nothing on organizing an effective rally or getting people out to quiz political candidates. There was literally not one, single thing in that fat binder about plain old human beings. The entire production was dedicated to getting money from corporations and foundations and getting coverage in the media.
Today, of course, we know from ample evidence that "gun control" is an elitist agenda item that has only minimal, lukewarm public support. Back then that was an eye-opener.
Handgun Control, Inc. is now gone. A remnant lives on, constantly renaming itself into into ever-deeper obscurity.
Since those hoplophobe-heady days, anti-gunners (facing increasingly powerful opposition) have repeatedly tried -- and failed -- to present themselves as plain old ordinary grassroots people, just brimming with "common sense" and "reasonableness." They don't want to ban anything, they swear. They're just concerned about our safety.
They've even stooped, pathetically, to pretending to be ordinary gun owners -- who just happen to agree with virtually every item on the anti-gun agenda. And one-by-one, their phony "grassroots" groups have collapsed after getting no public support.
Americans for Gun Safety. Now as dead as its billionaire founder, Andrew McKelvey.
The American Hunters and Shooters Association. Ditto.
GunGuys.com, a blog funded by the rabidly anti-gun Joyce Foundation. Kaput.
The American Rifle and Pistol Association. Founded in 2013, it had gone inactive before year's end.
Still they arise, and still they deceive. And always, they fail.
As Chad Baus of the Buckeye Firearms Association notes, deception has become the stock-in-trade of the anti-gunners. Knowing they can't get anywhere by coming right out and stating what they really want, they assume we're all a bunch of rubes who'll buy into their agenda as long as they pretend to be "just like us." Just plain folks. Yeah, grassroots.
Mr. Bloomberg joins a long and ignominious tradition. We can look forward to watching him blow $50 million of his pocket change on yet another laughable lie.
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